Black Athena Revisited

by Mary R. Lefkowitz (Editor), Guy Maclean Rogers (Editor)

Was Western civilization founded by ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians? Can the ancient Egyptians usefully be called black? Did the ancient Greeks borrow religion, science, and philosophy from the Egyptians and Phoenicians? Have scholars ignored the Afroasiatic roots of Western civilization as a result of racism and anti-Semitism?

In this collection of twenty essays, leading scholars in a broad range of disciplines confront the claims made by Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. In that work, Bernal proposed a radical reinterpretation of the roots of classical civilization, contending that ancient Greek culture derived from Egypt and Phoenicia and that European scholars have been biased against the notion of Egyptian and Phoenician influence on Western civilization. The contributors to this volume argue that Bernal's claims are exaggerated and in many cases unjustified.

Topics covered include race and physical anthropology; the question of an Egyptian invasion of Greece; the origins of Greek language, philosophy, and science; and racism and anti-Semitism in classical scholarship. In the conclusion to the volume, the editors propose an entirely new scholarly framework for understanding the relationship between the cultures of the ancient Near East and Greece and the origins of Western civilization.

The contributors are: John Baines, professor of Egyptology, University of Oxford Kathryn A. Bard, assistant professor of archaeology, Boston University C. Loring Brace, professor of anthropology and curator of biological anthropology in the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan John E. Coleman, professor of classics, Cornell University Edith Hall, lecturer in classics, University of Reading, England Jay H. Jasanoff, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Linguistics, Cornell University Richard Jenkyns, fellow and tutor, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and university lecturer in classics, University of Oxford Mary R. Lefkowitz, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Wellesley College Mario Liverani, professor of ancient near eastern history, Università di Roma, 'La Sapienza' Sarah P. Morris, professor of classics, University of California at Los Angeles Robert E. Norton, associate professor of German, Vassar College Alan Nussbaum, associate professor of classics, Cornell University David O'Connor, professor of Egyptology and curator in charge of the Egyptian section of the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania Robert Palter, Dana Professor Emeritus of the History of Science, Trinity College, Connecticut Guy MacLean Rogers, associate professor of Greek and Latin and history, Wellesley College Frank M. Snowden, Jr., professor of classics emeritus, Howard University Lawrence A. Tritle, associate professor of history, Loyola Marymount University Emily T. Vermeule, Samuel E. Zemurray, Jr., and Doris Zemurray Stone-Radcliffe Professor Emerita, Harvard University Frank J. Yurco, Egyptologist, Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago.

Mary R. Lefkowitz is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College. She is author of Not Out of Africa and coeditor of Women's Life in Greece and Rome. Guy MacLean Rogers, professor of Greek and Latin and history at Wellesley College, is author of The Sacred Identity of Ephesos: Foundation Myths of a Roman City.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Africa, Politics, Greece, Ancient

544 pages, Paperback

First published April 29, 1996

About the author

Mary R. Lefkowitz (born April 30, 1935), American scholar of Classics. She studied at Wellesley College before obtaining a Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Radcliffe College in 1961. Lefkowitz has published on subjects including mythology, women in antiquity, Pindar, and fiction in ancient biography.
She came to the attention of a wider audience through her criticism of the claims of Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in her book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth As History. In Black Athena Revisited (1996), which she edited with Guy MacLean Rogers, her colleague at Wellesley College, the ideas of Martin Bernal are further scrutinized.

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent refutation of Martin Bernal's "Black Athena" books, which basically claim that all of Western Civilization is somehow "stolen" from Africa, and that racism and anti-Semitism prevent this from being more generally known. Bernal's shaky linguistic fantasies are thorougly demolished!

[Ann]

I had the (dis)pleasure of going to a lecture given by Lefkowitz and she's just as boring and her opinions and scholarship is just as obtuse (I literally cannot remember what her thesis about the Trojan Women even was) as you would expect from reading (her introduction in particular to) this collection. The funniest thing was that my professor blithely skipped over Lefkowitz's blatant racist scholarship by calling it "interesting."

Yeah. Interesting.

She disavows ANY and ALL Egyptian influence on ancient Greek ANYTHING, including thought and architecture, which is just mind-blowingly wrong. Lefkowitz is also not above ad hominem attacks against Bernal himself, citing his background as NOT a trained classicist as somehow proof he doesn't know what he's talking about. Come on, that doesn't prove anything. Get it together, Mary.

[Артемис Сашенька · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing work conducted by Mary Lefkowitz. It was my first personal real touch with afrocentrism and Martin Bernal. I would later read and study more on afrocentrism and I've never came across such a powerful research that says things as they are. Lefkowitz here addressed dogmatism in the historical field and dogmatic ideologies which have as their offsprings sciolism and propaganda.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Contributors of varying quality so far. Nothing in the intro or conclusion that is really damaging to Bernal's case... they mostly exaggerate his claims and then accuse him of not being reflective as to his own multiculti agenda. Would be more effective if less high-strung.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

While pointing out obvious methodological flaws and proposed possibilities that lack solid evidence, or even attempts to find evidence in Bernal’s book, the authors of BAR come across as having mostly hurt egos, with many angrily defending their life’s work. Some authors contradict each other, while some focus mainly on critiquing minutiae in Bernal’s first and second volumes. One even defends an eighteenth-century scholar with the equivalent argument of “he has black friends, so he can’t be racist”.

How the times have changed since the early 90’s when this book was written. I’d like to read BAR Revisited Again. Anyone writing it?

[Jean Piriou · Rating 5 out of 5]

A piece by piece demolition of the major claims of Bernal's arguments concerning the continuous and fundamental influence of ancient Southeast Mediterranean cultures on Greece from the third millennium BCE all the way to the 5th century. No rational and objective person can read this book and not see just how weak Bernal's major arguments are, or infer just how ideologically motivated they are as well. This motivation extends to Bernal's response to his critics. A primary example is an epistolary exchange he has with the archeologist Emily Vermeule in the NY Review of Books (May 1992). There, he rejects Vermeule's claims that in BA 1 he ever argues that the Egyptians conquered Boetia during the Middle Kingdom. Moreover, he cites this as one of numerous misrepresentations on Vermeule's part. Vermeule's reply? Roughly two dozen quotations from BA 1 that show that Bernal argues precisely the thing he denies arguing. Either he was not aware that he made the argument or he is betraying his propensity for lying. Either way, he does not emerge from the exchange in a favorable light. Everyone who thinks Bernal, trained in Chinese history and language, a sincere scholar should read this exchange and draw their own conclusions. And of course they should read BAR.

[Walt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Systematically debunks many of the arguments of Martin Bernal's controversial work.

[John P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Βιβλίο αντίδοτο στα τάχα μου ιστορικά ντοκιμαντέρ του Νετφλιξ. Καταρρίπτει τον μύθο ότι οι αρχαίοι Έλληνες έκλεψα κομμάτια του αιγυπτιακου πολιτισμού και τα παρουσίασαν ως δικά τους. Απ ότι φαίνεται η woke κουλτούρα υπήρχε ήδη από την δεκαετία το 1990.