Overview

Winner of the 1990 American Book Award What is classical about Classical civilization? In one of the most audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the foundation of our thinking about this question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. But these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied or suppressed since the eighteenth century—chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers—Aryans—from the North. But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this “Aryan model.” They did not see their institutions as original, but as derived from the East and from Egypt in particular. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal links a wide range of areas and disciplines—drama, poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of “modern scholarship.”

Full Product Details

Author:   Martin Bernal
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press Classics
Dimensions:   Width: 13.20cm , Height: 4.80cm , Length: 20.30cm
Weight:   0.503kg
ISBN:  

9781978807129

ISBN 10:   1978807120
Pages:   669
Publication Date:   14 February 2020
Recommended Age:   From 16 to 99 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements        Transcription and Phonetics   Maps and Charts         Chronological Table   Introduction    Background    Proposed historical outline     Black Athena, Volume I: a summary of the argument                       Greece European or Levantine? The Egyptian and West Semitic Components of Greek Civilization / a summary of Volume 2                       Solving the Riddle of the Sphinx and Other Studies in Egypto-Greek Mythology / a summary of Volume 1          The Ancient Model in Antiquity        Pelasgians        Ionians Colonization The colonizations in Greek tragedy   Herodotos       Thucydides     Isokrates and Plato      Aristotle          Theories of colonization and later borrowing in the Hellenistic world Plutarch’s attack on Herodotos The triumph of Egyptian religion Alexander son of Ammon 2          Egyptian wisdom and Greek transmission From the Dark Ages to the Renaissance         The murder of Hypatia The collapse of Egypto-Pagan religion Christianity, stars and fish      The relics of Egyptian religion: Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism Hermeticism – Greek, Iranian, Chaldaean or Egyptian?        Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism under early Christianity, Judaism and Islam Hermeticism in Byzantium and Christian Western Europe   Egypt in the Renaissance        Copernicus and Hermeticism Hermeticism and Egypt in the 16th century 3          The triumph of Egypt in the 17th and 18th centuries Hermeticism in the 17th century        Rosicrucianism: Ancient Egypt in Protestant countries         Ancient Egypt in the 18th century      The 18th century: China and the Physiocrats The 18th century: England, Egypt and the Freemasons         France, Egypt and ‘progress’: the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns   Mythology as allegory for Egyptian science  The Expedition to Egypt        4          Hostilities to Egypt in the 18th century          Christian reaction        The ‘triangle’: Christianity and Greece against Egypt           The alliance between Greece and Christianity           ‘Progress’ against Egypt Europe as the ‘progressive’ continent ‘Progress’        Racism            Romanticism   Ossian and Homer Romantic Hellenism Winckelmann and Neo-Hellenism in Germany Göttingen 5          Romantic linguistics The rise of India and the fall of Egypt, 1740–1880 The birth of Indo-European The love affair with Sanskrit Schlegelian Romantic linguistics The Oriental Renaissance The fall of China Racism in the early 19th century What colour were the Ancient Egyptians? The national renaissance of modern Egypt Dupuis, Jomard and Champollion Egyptian monotheism or Egyptian polytheism Popular perceptions of Ancient Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries Elliot Smith and ‘diffusionism’ Jomard and the Mystery of the Pyramids 6           Hellenomania, 1 The fall of the Ancient Model, 1790–1830    Friedrich August Wolf and Wilhelm von Humboldt Humboldt’s educational reforms        The Philhellenes          Dirty Greeks and the Dorians Transitional figures, 1: Hegel and Marx         Transitional figures, 2: Heeren Transitional figures, 3: Barthold Niebuhr Petit-Radel and the first attack on the Ancient Model Karl Otfried Müller and the overthrow of the Ancient Model 7          Hellenomania, 2 Transmission of the new scholarship to England and the rise of the Aryan Model, 1830–60            The German model and educational reform in England        George Grote  Aryans and Hellenes   8          The rise and fall of the Phoenicians, 1830–85 Phoenicians and anti-Semitism           What race were the Semites?  The linguistic and geographical inferiorities of the Semites  The Arnolds    Phoenicians and English, 1: the English view            Phoenicians and English, 2: the French view Salammbô       Moloch The Phoenicians in Greece: 1820–80 Gobineau’s image of Greece  Schliemann and the discovery of the ‘Mycenaeans’  Babylon 9          The final solution of the Phoenician problem, 1885–1945 The Greek Renaissance Salomon Reinach Julius Beloch Victor Bérard Akhenaton and the Egyptian Renaissance Arthur Evans and the ‘Minoans’ The peak of anti-Semitism, 1920–39 20th-century Aryanism Taming the alphabet: the final assault on the Phoenicians 10         The post-war situation The return to the Broad Aryan Model, 1945–85        The post-war situation Developments in Classics, 1945–65   The model of autochthonous origin    East Mediterranean contacts   Mythology      Language        Ugarit  Scholarship and the rise of Israel        Cyrus Gordon Astour and Hellenosemitica Astour’s successor? – J. C. Billigmeier An attempt at compromise: Ruth Edwards The return of the Iron Age Phoenicians Naveh and the transmission of the alphabet The return of the Egyptians? The Revised Ancient Model Conclusion Appendix        Were the Philistines Greek? Notes   Glossary          Bibliography Index  

Reviews

A work which has much to offer the lay reader, and its multi-disciplinary sweep is refreshing: it is an important contribution to historiography and the sociology of knowledge, written with elegance, wit, and self-awareness... a thrilling journey... his account is as gripping a tale of scholarly detection and discovery as one could hope to find. --Margaret Drabble The Observer In a spectacular undertaking, Martin Bernal sets out to... restore the credibility of what he calls the Ancient Model of the beginnings of Greek civilizations... Bernal makes an exotic interloper in Classical studies. He comes to them with two outstanding gifts: a remarkable flair for the sociology - perhaps one should say politics - of knowledge, and a formidable linguistic proficiency... The story told by Bernal, with many fascinating twists and turns and quite a few entertaining digressions, is... a critical inquiry into a large part of the European imagination... a retrospect of ingenious and often sardonic erudition. --Perry Anderson The Guardian An astonishing work, breathtakingly bold in conception and passionately written... salutary, exciting, and, in its historiographical aspects, convincing. --G. W. Bowersock Journal of Interdisciplinary History Bernal's material is fascinating, his mind is sharp, and his analyses convince. --Richard Jenkyns Times Higher Educational Supplement A formidable work of intellectual history, one that demonstrates that the politics of knowledge is never far from national politics. --Christian Science Monitor His book should be welcome to both classicists and ancient historians, most of whom will, now at least, be inclined to agree with him. --R. A. McNeal Franklin and Marshall College Bernal's work and the stir it has occasioned have caused ancient historians and archaeologists to undertake a major reexamination of methods and motives. --Robert L. Pounder American Historical Review Colossal.... Bernal aims to revise current understanding of Ancient Middle Eastern history by taking seriously the ancient Greeks' legends that portrayed much in their civilization as originating in the Middle East, especially Egypt. --New York Times Book Review Demands to be taken seriously... Every page that Bernal writes is educating and enthralling. To agree with all his thesis may be a sign of naivety, but not to have spent time in his company is a sign of nothing at all. --Times Literary Supplement A serious work that deals in a serious way with many of the principal issues of Aegean history in the second millennium B.C., and one can ask little more of any historical work. --Stanley M. Burstein, California State University Classic Philology [Bernal's] multifaceted assault on academic complacency is an important contribution to the development of a more open, historical, and culturally oriented post-processual archaeology. --Current Anthropology A breathtaking panoply of archaeological artifacts, texts, and myths. --Toronto Star Bernal's enterprise - his attack on the Aryan model and his promotion of a new paradigm - will profoundly mark the next century's perception of the origins of Greek civilization and the role of Ancient Egypt. --Transition Challenges the racism implicit in the recent 'cultural literacy' movement. --Socialist Review A monumental and path-breaking work. --Edward Said Martin Bernal has managed to make the subject of Ancient Greece both popular and controversial. --Baltimore Sun [Martin Bernal] has forced scholars to reexamine the roots of Western civilization. --Newsweek Bernal has ample justification for calling into question many widely accepted hypotheses.... He shows that Egypt and its culture were misrepresented or simply ignored by European writers. --Mary Lefkowitz The New Republic Black Athena is a powerfully written and brilliantly researched book that relentlessly unveils the historical and cultural African origins of Western civilization. Still a must read for all those in search of truth. --Ama Mazama Professor of Africology and African American Studies, Temple University Martin Bernal's Black Athena is nothing short of a monumental achievement in scholarship that re-oriented and transformed serious study of ancient civilizations. It remains a soaring accomplishment of classical erudition of the Afroasiatic foundation of Greek history. --Molefi Kete Asante author of The History of Africa, Professor, Department of Africology, Temple University

In a spectacular undertaking, Martin Bernal sets out to... restore the credibility of what he calls the Ancient Model of the beginnings of Greek civilizations... Bernal makes an exotic interloper in Classical studies. He comes to them with two outstanding gifts: a remarkable flair for the sociology - perhaps one should say politics - of knowledge, and a formidable linguistic proficiency... The story told by Bernal, with many fascinating twists and turns and quite a few entertaining digressions, is... a critical inquiry into a large part of the European imagination... a retrospect of ingenious and often sardonic erudition. --Perry Anderson The Guardian An astonishing work, breathtakingly bold in conception and passionately written... salutary, exciting, and, in its historiographical aspects, convincing. --G. W. Bowersock Journal of Interdisciplinary History A work which has much to offer the lay reader, and its multi-disciplinary sweep is refreshing: it is an important contribution to historiography and the sociology of knowledge, written with elegance, wit, and self-awareness... a thrilling journey... his account is as gripping a tale of scholarly detection and discovery as one could hope to find. --Margaret Drabble The Observer Bernal's material is fascinating, his mind is sharp, and his analyses convince. --Richard Jenkyns Times Higher Educational Supplement A formidable work of intellectual history, one that demonstrates that the politics of knowledge is never far from national politics. --Christian Science Monitor His book should be welcome to both classicists and ancient historians, most of whom will, now at least, be inclined to agree with him. --R. A. McNeal Franklin and Marshall College Bernal's work and the stir it has occasioned have caused ancient historians and archaeologists to undertake a major reexamination of methods and motives. --Robert L. Pounder American Historical Review Colossal.... Bernal aims to revise current understanding of Ancient Middle Eastern history by taking seriously the ancient Greeks' legends that portrayed much in their civilization as originating in the Middle East, especially Egypt. --New York Times Book Review Demands to be taken seriously... Every page that Bernal writes is educating and enthralling. To agree with all his thesis may be a sign of naivety, but not to have spent time in his company is a sign of nothing at all. --Times Literary Supplement A serious work that deals in a serious way with many of the principal issues of Aegean history in the second millennium B.C., and one can ask little more of any historical work. --Stanley M. Burstein, California State University Classic Philology [Bernal's] multifaceted assault on academic complacency is an important contribution to the development of a more open, historical, and culturally oriented post-processual archaeology. --Current Anthropology A breathtaking panoply of archaeological artifacts, texts, and myths. --Toronto Star Bernal's enterprise - his attack on the Aryan model and his promotion of a new paradigm - will profoundly mark the next century's perception of the origins of Greek civilization and the role of Ancient Egypt. --Transition Challenges the racism implicit in the recent 'cultural literacy' movement. --Socialist Review A monumental and path-breaking work. --Edward Said Martin Bernal has managed to make the subject of Ancient Greece both popular and controversial. --Baltimore Sun [Martin Bernal] has forced scholars to reexamine the roots of Western civilization. --Newsweek Bernal has ample justification for calling into question many widely accepted hypotheses.... He shows that Egypt and its culture were misrepresented or simply ignored by European writers. --Mary Lefkowitz The New Republic Black Athena is a powerfully written and brilliantly researched book that relentlessly unveils the historical and cultural African origins of Western civilization. Still a must read for all those in search of truth. --Ama Mazama Professor of Africology and African American Studies, Temple University Martin Bernal's Black Athena is nothing short of a monumental achievement in scholarship that re-oriented and transformed serious study of ancient civilizations. It remains a soaring accomplishment of classical erudition of the Afroasiatic foundation of Greek history. --Molefi Kete Asante author of The History of Africa, Professor, Department of Africology, Temple University

Author Information

MARTIN BERNAL (1937-2013) was a British scholar of modern Chinese political history and a Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His celebrated Black Athena trilogy is a controversial series which argues that Ancient Greek civilization and language are Eastern and Egyptian in origin.

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