Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 2: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence

Black Athena #2

by Martin Bernal

Winner of the American Book Award, 1990. This volume is the second in a projected four-part series concerned with the competition between two historical models for the origins of Greek civilization. The model current today is the Aryan Model, according to which Greek culture arose as the result of the conquest from the north by Indo-European speakers or "Aryans" of the native "pre-Hellenes." The Ancient Model, which was the model maintained in Classical Greece, held that the native population of Greece had initially been civilized by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists and that more Near Eastern culture had been introduced to Greece by Greeks studying in Egypt and Southwest Asia. In these and later volumes, Martin Bernal proposes a Revised Ancient Model. According to this, the Indo-European aspects of Greek language and culture should be recognized as fundamental and the considerable non-Indo-European elements should be seen largely as Egyptian and Levantine additions to this basis. Volume II is concerned with the archaeological and documentary evidence for contacts between Egypt and the Levant on the one hand and the Aegean on the other, during the Bronze Age from c. 3400 B.C. to c. 1100 B.C. These approaches are supplemented by information from later Greek myths, legends, religious cults, and language. The author concludes that contact between the two regions was far more extensive and influential than is generally believed. In the introduction to this volume, Bernal also responds to some reviews and criticisms of Volume I of Black Athena.

Genres: History, Race, Nonfiction, European History, Africa, Antiquities, Ancient History

Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Jean Piriou · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book, like the other three BAs, makes some valid points about racism in 19th classical scholarship and the influence of Southeast Mediterranean cultures on ancient Greece. These claims are neither new nor rejected by most commentators who have expertise in the appropriate disciplines. What is innovative about Bernal's claims is the alleged extent of the racism and the influence of Semitic and Egyptian peoples on Greece. Bernal, who was trained in Chinese history and language, argues for a continuous and fundamental influence from the the third millennium onward, all the way to Classical Greece (5th century). The problem is there really is not enough evidence available for the period between the 12th and 5th centuries to substantiate Bernal's claims, so he invents the evidence or offers speculation or possibility in lieu of facts. This capacity for invention is documented in Black Athena Revisited and Not Out of Africa. It is also evident in some of his replies to his critics. A primary example is an epistolary exchange Bernal has with the archeologist Emily Vermeule. Contra Vermeule, he rejects writing in BA 1 that he argues for a "an Egyptian conquest of Boetia during the Old Kingdom." In reply, Vermeule furnishes roughly two dozen quotations from BA 1 which show that Bernal does in fact make precisely the argument he denies. Truly, Bernal does not come off as an honest scholar in this debate, and gives credibility to the repeated charges that his whole scholarly adventure concerning Greece (which is not without merit in many respects) is motivated by a certain ideological disposition, even a hatred for European peoples. The exchange can be found in the New York Review of Books (May 1992). I encourage all readers who think Bernal a sincere and honest scholar to read this exchange and draw their own conclusions.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE SECOND VOLUME OF THE CONTROVERSIAL, THOUGHT-PROVOKING BOOK

Martin Gardiner Bernal (1937-2013) was a British scholar who was a Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University, where he taught until 2001. The other books in this series are Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Volume 1, Black Athena: Volume 3: The Linguistic Evidence; he also wrote an autobiography, Geography of a Life.

He wrote in the Preface of this 1991 book, “The publication of Volume I of ‘Black Athena’ transformed my life. Before then, I was working in isolation or… with a few close friends and colleagues… With the appearance of the book they took on a social substance… I found that in both [England and America] there was a significant number of ancient historians and classicists who were sympathetic to my views and had in fact begun to articulate similar ones… a significant number of classicists have been more ready to accept my arguments than the lay public, who knew little or nothing about the field… It is now simply too late to crush the ideas I have been proposing. They have become an established academic discourse…”

He states, “There is no doubt that the Greeks saw Memnon as an Ethiopian, that is, as a Black. However, there are complications because the Greeks saw two peoples as ‘Ethiopians’; the Ethiopians to the south of Egypt and the Ethiopians or ‘Blacks’ who formed the basic population of the ancient kingdom of Elam to the east of Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. Elamite civilization was as old as that of the Semitic and Sumerian peoples of Mesopotamia.” (Pg. 32)

Of the ‘Diffusionist’ and ‘Isolationist’ debates, he says, “My position is that, while I fully accept their criticism of the ‘evidence,’ I believe that we should make the best of what we have and continue to construct hypotheses, while constantly reminding ourselves of their precariousness. I maintain this because I am convinced that, firstly, research without them produces a meaningless jumble and, secondly, that although they cannot be absolutely ‘true’ different hypotheses can be more or heuristically useful and that our job is to concoct and select the least bad.” (Pg. 65)

He explains, “I have argued at length elsewhere that we should be particularly wary of the ‘argument from silence’ when it applies to writing, as this generally consists of slight marks on perishable or fragile surfaces. Thus, I am not troubled by the failure to find traces of script from Early Helladic Greece.” (Pg. 146) Later, he adds, “I have frequently argued that one should not pay too much attention to the ‘argument from silence’ and it is possible that the cultic use of bulls’ horns existed in Anatolia without any attestation for three thousand years.” (Pg. 166)

He acknowledges, “it should be made clear that, as with the archaeological evidence, there are no ‘smoking guns.’ There are no contemporary documents of the type ‘X the Egyptian/Phoenician arrived at this place in Greece and established a city/kingdom (t)here,’ explicitly confirming the Ancient Model. Nor, for that matter, are there others denying it. All one can do in their absence is to look at the circumstantial evidence that Bronze Age documents can provide concerning contacts between the Levant and the Aegean during the Middle and Late Bronze Age.” (Pg. 187)

He points out, “The explicit arguments used by the mature [Edward] Gibbon for not studying Sesostris’ ‘conquests’ were ‘that I no longer presume to connect the Greek, the Jewish and the Egyptian antiquities which are lost in a distant cloud.’ This cloud has been at least partially dispelled by linguistic and archaeological advances since the 1770s. However, we are left with what may have been implicit in Gibbon and was certainly present among later northern scholars, that is an ideological objection to the very idea of a ‘civilized’ African marching in triumph not only across Southwest Asia but also through regions of a ‘barbaric’ Europe. The notion that there was any truth to the tradition has been literally unthinkable to the 19th and most of the 20th century. It is now time to reassess it.” (Pg. 273)

Of the traditions from writers such as Plato about Atlantis, he states, “I belong to the moderate majority on this issue. I believe that the narrative does not form a single historical whole. On the other hand, it would appear equally certain that some sections do refer to actual places and events. The problem is how to sort them out.” (Pg. 297)

He argues, “there would seem no reason to deny the inherently plausible notion that horses and chariots came in with the Hyksos, and that the Hyksos ‘invasion’ was directly or indirectly connected to the Hurrian expansion and further that there may have been Indo-Aryan speakers involved in the movement. All this looks disturbingly like the Aryanist or even Nazi image of the Indo-Europeans as a ‘master race.’ However, I am convinced that one should clearly distinguish between what one likes and what is likely... the fact that arguments suit or are even created for distasteful or immoral reasons does not in itself falsify them. Here, as in Northern India but unlike in Ancient Greece, there seems to be a case where the Aryan Model works.” (Pg. 322-323)

He explains, “I am convinced that a scholar should try as far as possible to detach her of his historical interpretation from any ideological preferences. In this case, where I accept the Aryanists’ interpretation, I refuse to accept their basic Social Darwinist premise that conquest or domination through violence somehow makes a people or linguistic group morally or creatively BETTER than those who are conquered or dominated…” (Pg. 359-360)

He states, “The first revision of the Ancient Model I propose … is to accept the 19th century philologists’ demonstration that Greek is essentially Indo-European and hence the implication that at some stage there must have been one or more invasions or infiltrations from the north… Therefore, I am forced to part company with the ancient historians and argue that the colonizations, or the wave of Egypt-Levantine influence, took place at the beginning of the Hyksos period in the late 18th century not at the period’s end in the early 16th.” (Pg. 363)

He says, “I want to stress that at this point I depart from the Ancient Model, according to which there is no doubt that Danaos and his fellow voyagers settled in Greece in the 16th century BC and that this settlement was associated with the Egyptian expulsion of the Hyksos. This is because the archaeological and contemporary evidence will not allow for any such invasion at this time. Although I have a great respect for the historical knowledge and judgement of the Greeks in Classical and Hellenistic times, I do not believe that they were infallible. Sometimes they were clearly too credulous and exaggerated the age and geographical extent of conquests and migrations to impress their readers. At others they seem to have minimized both, presumably for some of the same reasons that caused Marco Polo to tell only half of what he had seen and that make scholars cautious today---to avoid awkward gaps, to appear sober and reasonable and to be believed by their audience.” (Pg. 404)

He observes, “While the denial of the historicity of Homer’s Trojan War would have a devastating effect on the credibility of less well-attested traditions, its re-establishment does not have such dramatic repercussions. It was much more central to ancient historiography than, for example, the colonizations of Kadmos and Danaos. Even so, the confirmation of the historicity of the Trojan War does give some credibility to other Greek traditions such as these.” (Pg. 517)

He concludes, “The purpose of this volume has been to show how the documentary and archaeological evidence from the Bronze Age supports the two hypotheses that Egypt and the Levant had a fundamental impact on the Aegean in this period and that the Classical and Hellenistic writers knew what they were talking about when they referred to colonizations of Greece from Egypt and Phoenicia. I believe that this purpose has been achieved… Thus, a number of the controversial ideas in this volume are only ‘outrageous’ in the light of modern conventional wisdom.” (Pg. 522-523)

Obviously a provocative and controversial book, this book remains (even after thirty years) “must reading” for anyone interested in the debate about the origin of Greek ideas and culture.