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Black Athena #3
Black Athena: Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 3: The Linguistic Evidence
Could Greek philosophy be rooted in Egyptian thought? Is it possible that the Pythagorean theory was conceived on the shores of the Nile and the Euphrates rather than in ancient Greece? Could it be that much of Western civilization was formed on the “Dark Continent”? For almost two centuries, Western scholars have given little credence to the possibility of such scenarios. In Black Athena, an audacious three-volume series that strikes at the heart of today’s most heated culture wars, Martin Bernal challenges Eurocentric attitudes by calling into question two of the longest-established explanations for the origins of classical civilization. To use his terms, the Aryan Model, which is current today, claims that 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 maintained in Classical Greece, held that the native population of Greece had initially been civilized by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists and that additional Near Eastern culture had been introduced to Greece by Greeks studying in Egypt and Southwest Asia. Moving beyond these prevailing models, Bernal proposes a Revised Ancient Model, which suggests that classical civilization in fact had deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. This long-awaited third and final volume of the series is concerned with the linguistic evidence that contradicts the Aryan Model of ancient Greece. Bernal shows how nearly 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary has been plausibly derived from two Afroasiatic languages—Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic. He also reveals how these derivations are not limited to matters of trade, but extended to the sophisticated language of politics, religion, and philosophy. This evidence, according to Bernal, greatly strengthens the hypothesis that in Greece an Indo-European–speaking population was culturally dominated by Ancient Egyptian and West Semitic speakers
Provocative, passionate, and colossal in scope, this volume caps a thoughtful rewriting of history that has been stirring academic and political controversy since the publication of the first volume.
Provocative, passionate, and colossal in scope, this volume caps a thoughtful rewriting of history that has been stirring academic and political controversy since the publication of the first volume.
848 pages, Hardcover
Published November 3, 2006
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February 26, 2025
À fuir. Ce livre manque de toute évidence de rigueur et d'intégrité scientifiques. Si remettre en cause les consensus et les partis pris me semble primordial en matière de recherche, Bernal s'y prend de manière vindicative et biaisée, s'aventurant dans un domaine qu'il ne maitrise visiblement pas, sans parler des très nombreuses fautes de frappe et inexactitudes dans l'orthographe ou la translittération des mots non-anglais.
June 25, 2024
THE THIRD AND FINAL VOLUME OF THE ‘BLACK ATHENA’ PROJECT
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 his retirement in 2001. The other books in the ‘Black Athena’ series are Black Athena: Volume 1, and Black Athena: Volume 2. Bernal replied to many of the criticisms of his 3-volume series in 'Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics.'
He wrote in the Preface to this 2006 book, “This volume was promised in 1987 and expected in the early ‘90s! My excuses for the elephantine gestation are, first, that I was distracted by the polemics surrounding the first two volumes and by the need I felt to compile ‘Black Athena Writes Back’ and work on it aborted twin ‘Debating Black Athena.’ A more important factor, however, was that I had massively underestimated the work required to enlarge and make my scrappy manuscript for this volume presentable. Above all there has been my congenital laziness.”
He explained in the Introduction, “the pioneer anthropologist E.B. Tylor … wrote… ‘The probability of contact increases in ratio to the NUMBER of ARBITRARY similar elements in any two trait-complexes.’ Volume III of this project is based on this principle. It is concerned with language, different aspects of which are more or less arbitrary. Phonology is ultimately limited by the mouth and tongue. Therefore, to link two items convincingly they must share multiple phonetic similarities either within the word or in its context. Morphology, syntax and lexicon, however, are inherently arbitrary… In any event, words are not fishhooks. Phonetic and semantic similarities between items in different languages should be taken much more seriously than similarities in fishing gear.” (Pg. 1-2)
He states, “[The] defense of the discipline of classics refutes charges that it failed to set Ancient Greece in its wider geographical and cultural context. The professionals can now argue that my work and that of all the Afrocentrists are redundant because for many decades they themselves have been completely open to the idea of foreign influences on Ancient Greece. What is more, they can view our work as pernicious because they see it as ‘politicizing,’ and making polemical, issues that should remain objective and purely academic. The idea that the Afrocentrists and I introduced politics into this area of ancient history is no longer tenable. Thoughtful observers now generally accept the fact that ideology intensely influenced classics as a discipline IN ITS FORMATIVE PERIOD in the early nineteenth century, as I set out in Volume I of ‘Black Athena.’” (Pg. 5)
He explains, “the general principle upon which my whole project is organized: THERE ARE NO SIMPLE ORIGINS. Thus, imaging historical linguistic or biological developments by using the model of a tree, with a single stem from which grow branches and ever smaller branches and twigs, is seldom useful. Only if one takes the multiple roots into account can the tree model sometimes be useful. The past, I believe, is better envisioned as a river in which currents come together to form a unity, then diverge and combine with others to form new unities and so on. The uncertainty of this image should not lead to despair or paralysis. The fact that the chase is endless adds to, rather than detracts from, its fascination.” (Pg. 34)
He outlines, “Linguists seem to have stopped, or at least suspended, the debate over whether there was a single of multiple origin of all existing languages. A consensus that all existing languages are ultimately related to each other now appears to have emerged. Bitter debates remain, however, as to whether it is possible to demonstrate specific relationships or to reconstruct any aspect of the original ancestral language. In general terms, the division is between those crudely identified as ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitter.’ Lumpers look for the common features manifested in different phenomena, while splitters are more interested concerned with the distinctions among them. Splitters can be characterized as having a desire for certainty and a fear of error. Lumpers tend to believe that perfect accuracy and certainty are not attainable and that the most one can or should aim for is a ‘competitive plausibility.’” (Pg. 46)
He asserts, “The failure of Indo-Europeanist and other historical linguists even to consider the possibility of some relationship between the strikingly obvious similarities shared by the Indo-European and Afroasiatic gender systems is an example of the general academic tendency to avoid the obvious. In this particular case it is an indication that the men and women formed in the linguistic tradition of the Neo-Grammarians are still reluctant, or unable, to ‘think outside the box.’ The limiting effects of this tradition must also be taken into account when considering Indo-Europeanists’ approaches to the possibilities of exchanges between individual languages belonging to the Afroasiatic and Indo-Hittite.” (Pg. 136)
He acknowledges, “It must be emphasized here again that I do not claim that Greek is anything but an Indo-European language. Its morphology fits into the family as well as does any other member and better than most. Its verbal system appears to be closer to that of PIE than any other language except Sanskrit. This is not surprising as Greek is, apart from Hittite, by far the oldest attested Indo-European language.” (Pg. 145)
He observes, “I have argued that in certain ways one can go beyond the phonetic limits on proposed borrowings set out in correspondences established by Greek transcriptions of Egyptian and Semitic words and proper nouns and in the loans accepted by cautious and conservative scholars… The only other extension to the limits I impose on myself is that of the possibility of a metathesis of a liquid /t/ or /l/ between the second and third places in a root. This I believe is justifiable because it is so common in all three languages: Egyptian, West Semitic and Greek. I do not accept other metatheses, not because they have not occurred but because if I were to accept them anything becomes possible and rules, regularities and constraints are essential to any project of this kind.” (Pg. 247-248) He suggests, “it should be borne in mind that each Egyptian and Semitic loan or copy that is accepted makes the next proposal more likely.” (Pg. 328)
He explains “the principle of modified diffusion in which ideas are taken from their original context and blended with others to produce something that is completely new and unique to the receiving culture.” (Pg. 356)
He recounts, “When I began this project in 1975, I focused exclusively on Semitic loans into Greek… By the mid-1980s, when I wrote the first drafts of what became Volume I, I had realized that the first two factors could also explain parallels between Western Semitic and Greek… I believed that some 20 percent of the basic stems in the Greek vocabulary came from West Semitic and an equal number from Ancient Egyptian. Further research made me modify … the proportions within it. I now estimate that there are rather fewer Semitic loans… while there are more from Egyptian---around 25 percent.” (Pg. 386)
He argues, “Semitic influences on the Greek language and, hence, Greek civilization as a whole cannot be restricted to what the stereotypical Jews of the past COULD have provided. Rather. We should consider what they did, in fact, contribute.” (Pg. 403)
He notes, “Many of the Greek words in this section are related to religious offerings, but others are secular, although they may have derived from the religious… The profound Egyptian association with Greek religion has been a central theme of the whole Black Athena project…” (P g. 441)
He summarizes, “The etymologies in this book vary greatly both in their importance and in their quality. On both scores the range is probably at its greatest in this section… however, [these examples] show the centrally important role of Afroasiatic languages in the formation of Greek social terms and hence the great influence of Egyptian and West Semitic speakers on early Greek society itself.” (Pg. 491-492) Later, he adds, “The relationship between the Greek mysteries and Egypt are particularly close. The etymologies claimed in this chapter … indicate an intimate connection between Greek religion and those of Afroasiatic speakers… the Egyptian component is larger than the Semitic. Because of the great reputation of Egyptian religion in the ancient world, I had anticipated that the disproportion would be far greater...” (Pg. 538)
He outlines, “[Chapter 19] is an attempt to vindicate Herodotus’ statement … ‘The names of nearly all the gods came from Egypt.’ The fact that the exceptions to his list have reasonable Indo-European or Semitic etymologies make his claim all the more plausible... this chapter enables us to go beyond Herodotus’ claim for the gods and show that the majority of other names found in Greek mythology and tradition are primarily Egyptian and secondarily West Semitic.” (Pg. 576)
He concludes, “I hope to have demonstrated that neither Ancient Egypt nor the pagan levant were dead ends. Both of them, through Greece and Rome and the civilizations of the monotheistic religions, have been central and crucial to western history… After thirty years studying these topics, I am more than ever convinced that approximately 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary and an even greater proportion of proper nouns can be derived from Afroasiatic languages. I do not accept the mantra often repeated by orthodox historical linguists that ‘a few certain etymologies are worth more than thousands of uncertain ones.’ This idea assumes that there is no connection between languages ‘x’ and ‘y’ and that any argument to the contrary needs to have ‘proof.’ … while quality of etymologies is desirable, quantity is also important.” (Pg. 695, 697)
This book is VERY detailed, and will probably be of much less interest to more “general” readers than was the first volume in the series. Nevertheless, it provides Bernal’s long-promised defense and explanation of the linguistic ideas asserted in the two previous volumes.
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 his retirement in 2001. The other books in the ‘Black Athena’ series are Black Athena: Volume 1, and Black Athena: Volume 2. Bernal replied to many of the criticisms of his 3-volume series in 'Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics.'
He wrote in the Preface to this 2006 book, “This volume was promised in 1987 and expected in the early ‘90s! My excuses for the elephantine gestation are, first, that I was distracted by the polemics surrounding the first two volumes and by the need I felt to compile ‘Black Athena Writes Back’ and work on it aborted twin ‘Debating Black Athena.’ A more important factor, however, was that I had massively underestimated the work required to enlarge and make my scrappy manuscript for this volume presentable. Above all there has been my congenital laziness.”
He explained in the Introduction, “the pioneer anthropologist E.B. Tylor … wrote… ‘The probability of contact increases in ratio to the NUMBER of ARBITRARY similar elements in any two trait-complexes.’ Volume III of this project is based on this principle. It is concerned with language, different aspects of which are more or less arbitrary. Phonology is ultimately limited by the mouth and tongue. Therefore, to link two items convincingly they must share multiple phonetic similarities either within the word or in its context. Morphology, syntax and lexicon, however, are inherently arbitrary… In any event, words are not fishhooks. Phonetic and semantic similarities between items in different languages should be taken much more seriously than similarities in fishing gear.” (Pg. 1-2)
He states, “[The] defense of the discipline of classics refutes charges that it failed to set Ancient Greece in its wider geographical and cultural context. The professionals can now argue that my work and that of all the Afrocentrists are redundant because for many decades they themselves have been completely open to the idea of foreign influences on Ancient Greece. What is more, they can view our work as pernicious because they see it as ‘politicizing,’ and making polemical, issues that should remain objective and purely academic. The idea that the Afrocentrists and I introduced politics into this area of ancient history is no longer tenable. Thoughtful observers now generally accept the fact that ideology intensely influenced classics as a discipline IN ITS FORMATIVE PERIOD in the early nineteenth century, as I set out in Volume I of ‘Black Athena.’” (Pg. 5)
He explains, “the general principle upon which my whole project is organized: THERE ARE NO SIMPLE ORIGINS. Thus, imaging historical linguistic or biological developments by using the model of a tree, with a single stem from which grow branches and ever smaller branches and twigs, is seldom useful. Only if one takes the multiple roots into account can the tree model sometimes be useful. The past, I believe, is better envisioned as a river in which currents come together to form a unity, then diverge and combine with others to form new unities and so on. The uncertainty of this image should not lead to despair or paralysis. The fact that the chase is endless adds to, rather than detracts from, its fascination.” (Pg. 34)
He outlines, “Linguists seem to have stopped, or at least suspended, the debate over whether there was a single of multiple origin of all existing languages. A consensus that all existing languages are ultimately related to each other now appears to have emerged. Bitter debates remain, however, as to whether it is possible to demonstrate specific relationships or to reconstruct any aspect of the original ancestral language. In general terms, the division is between those crudely identified as ‘lumpers’ and ‘splitter.’ Lumpers look for the common features manifested in different phenomena, while splitters are more interested concerned with the distinctions among them. Splitters can be characterized as having a desire for certainty and a fear of error. Lumpers tend to believe that perfect accuracy and certainty are not attainable and that the most one can or should aim for is a ‘competitive plausibility.’” (Pg. 46)
He asserts, “The failure of Indo-Europeanist and other historical linguists even to consider the possibility of some relationship between the strikingly obvious similarities shared by the Indo-European and Afroasiatic gender systems is an example of the general academic tendency to avoid the obvious. In this particular case it is an indication that the men and women formed in the linguistic tradition of the Neo-Grammarians are still reluctant, or unable, to ‘think outside the box.’ The limiting effects of this tradition must also be taken into account when considering Indo-Europeanists’ approaches to the possibilities of exchanges between individual languages belonging to the Afroasiatic and Indo-Hittite.” (Pg. 136)
He acknowledges, “It must be emphasized here again that I do not claim that Greek is anything but an Indo-European language. Its morphology fits into the family as well as does any other member and better than most. Its verbal system appears to be closer to that of PIE than any other language except Sanskrit. This is not surprising as Greek is, apart from Hittite, by far the oldest attested Indo-European language.” (Pg. 145)
He observes, “I have argued that in certain ways one can go beyond the phonetic limits on proposed borrowings set out in correspondences established by Greek transcriptions of Egyptian and Semitic words and proper nouns and in the loans accepted by cautious and conservative scholars… The only other extension to the limits I impose on myself is that of the possibility of a metathesis of a liquid /t/ or /l/ between the second and third places in a root. This I believe is justifiable because it is so common in all three languages: Egyptian, West Semitic and Greek. I do not accept other metatheses, not because they have not occurred but because if I were to accept them anything becomes possible and rules, regularities and constraints are essential to any project of this kind.” (Pg. 247-248) He suggests, “it should be borne in mind that each Egyptian and Semitic loan or copy that is accepted makes the next proposal more likely.” (Pg. 328)
He explains “the principle of modified diffusion in which ideas are taken from their original context and blended with others to produce something that is completely new and unique to the receiving culture.” (Pg. 356)
He recounts, “When I began this project in 1975, I focused exclusively on Semitic loans into Greek… By the mid-1980s, when I wrote the first drafts of what became Volume I, I had realized that the first two factors could also explain parallels between Western Semitic and Greek… I believed that some 20 percent of the basic stems in the Greek vocabulary came from West Semitic and an equal number from Ancient Egyptian. Further research made me modify … the proportions within it. I now estimate that there are rather fewer Semitic loans… while there are more from Egyptian---around 25 percent.” (Pg. 386)
He argues, “Semitic influences on the Greek language and, hence, Greek civilization as a whole cannot be restricted to what the stereotypical Jews of the past COULD have provided. Rather. We should consider what they did, in fact, contribute.” (Pg. 403)
He notes, “Many of the Greek words in this section are related to religious offerings, but others are secular, although they may have derived from the religious… The profound Egyptian association with Greek religion has been a central theme of the whole Black Athena project…” (P g. 441)
He summarizes, “The etymologies in this book vary greatly both in their importance and in their quality. On both scores the range is probably at its greatest in this section… however, [these examples] show the centrally important role of Afroasiatic languages in the formation of Greek social terms and hence the great influence of Egyptian and West Semitic speakers on early Greek society itself.” (Pg. 491-492) Later, he adds, “The relationship between the Greek mysteries and Egypt are particularly close. The etymologies claimed in this chapter … indicate an intimate connection between Greek religion and those of Afroasiatic speakers… the Egyptian component is larger than the Semitic. Because of the great reputation of Egyptian religion in the ancient world, I had anticipated that the disproportion would be far greater...” (Pg. 538)
He outlines, “[Chapter 19] is an attempt to vindicate Herodotus’ statement … ‘The names of nearly all the gods came from Egypt.’ The fact that the exceptions to his list have reasonable Indo-European or Semitic etymologies make his claim all the more plausible... this chapter enables us to go beyond Herodotus’ claim for the gods and show that the majority of other names found in Greek mythology and tradition are primarily Egyptian and secondarily West Semitic.” (Pg. 576)
He concludes, “I hope to have demonstrated that neither Ancient Egypt nor the pagan levant were dead ends. Both of them, through Greece and Rome and the civilizations of the monotheistic religions, have been central and crucial to western history… After thirty years studying these topics, I am more than ever convinced that approximately 40 percent of the Greek vocabulary and an even greater proportion of proper nouns can be derived from Afroasiatic languages. I do not accept the mantra often repeated by orthodox historical linguists that ‘a few certain etymologies are worth more than thousands of uncertain ones.’ This idea assumes that there is no connection between languages ‘x’ and ‘y’ and that any argument to the contrary needs to have ‘proof.’ … while quality of etymologies is desirable, quantity is also important.” (Pg. 695, 697)
This book is VERY detailed, and will probably be of much less interest to more “general” readers than was the first volume in the series. Nevertheless, it provides Bernal’s long-promised defense and explanation of the linguistic ideas asserted in the two previous volumes.
June 10, 2016
I've written a critical summary of Martin Bernal's 'Black Athena' volume 3 under the title 'Language and Abstraction in Egypt and Greece'. It's at:
http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.co.uk/...
There is much more to the book than appears at first sight, and I've highlighted some areas that ought to be further explored.
Thomas Yaeger June 10, 2016.
http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.co.uk/...
There is much more to the book than appears at first sight, and I've highlighted some areas that ought to be further explored.
Thomas Yaeger June 10, 2016.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews