Black Athena Revisited

by Lefkowitz, Mary R.; Rogers, Guy MacLean

• ISBN13: 9780807845554
• ISBN10: 0807845558
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Ancient Egyptian Chronology	p. xix
Introduction	p. 1
Introduction	p. 3
Notes	p. 22
Egypt	p. 25
On the Aims and Methods of Black Athena	p. 27
Conclusion	p. 46
Egypt and Greece the Bronze Age Evidence	p. 49
Black Athena an Egyptological Review	p. 62
Notes	p. 98
Race	p. 101
Ancient Egyptians and the Issue of Race	p. 103
Note	p. 111
Bernal's "Black" and the Afrocentrists	p. 112
Notes	p. 128
Clines and Clusters Versus " Race" a Test in Ancient Egypt and the Case of a Death on the Nile	p. 129
Notes	p. 162
The Near East	p. 165
The Legacy of Black Athena	p. 167
Linguistics	p. 175
Notes	p. 203
Science	p. 207
Black Athena, Afrocentism, and the History of Science	p. 255
Notes	p. 256
Greece	p. 267
The World Turned Upside Down	p. 269
Note	p. 279
Did Egypt Shape the Glory That Was Greece?	p. 280
Black Athena Vision or Dreams of Greek Origin	p. 303
Historiography	p. 331
When is a Myth? Not a Myth? Bernal's "Ancient Model"	p. 333
Notes	p. 348
Eighteenth- Century Historiography in Black Athena	p. 349
Two Notes on Bernal's Methodology	p. 388
Two Notes on Bernal's Methodology	p. 392
Two Notes on Bernal's Methodology	p. 394
The Tyranny of Germany Over Greece?	p. 403
Bernal and the Nineteenth Century	p. 411
The Bathwater and the Baby	p. 421
Multiculturalism and the Foundations of Western Civilization	p. 428
Conclusion	p. 445
Quovadis?	p. 447
Bibliocraphy	p. 455
Contributors	p. 505
Indexes	p. 507
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