Product Description

A challenge to the whole basis of thinking on the subject of classical civilization. The author argues that it has its roots in Afroasiatic cultures, and that these influences have been systematically ignored, suppressed or denied since the 18th century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76185 in Books
• Published on: 1991-11-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Customer Reviews

Exposing racism in the academy
Martin Bernal believes that the civilisation of ancient Greece was heavily influenced by the ancient Egyptians. This, he says, was the view of the Greeks themselves, and it continued to be accepted by most historians through to the 18th century. However the growth of racism and romanticism in the 19th century made it increasingly hard for classical scholars to accept the idea of any influence from Africa (including Egypt); or indeed from any other non-IndoEuropean source such as the Semitic Phoenicians. Instead they developed what Bernal calls an Aryan model of Greece, which saw the Greeks as the archetypal pure white European super-race. In this project they were bolstered by their increasingly confident use of positivist approach to the study of history based on the methods of the "hard" sciences.

This is just the first volume of a planned 3(?) volume work designed to revive the traditional view of Greek origins by looking at evidence from myth, language, place names etc. However the present volume, which tells the story of how racism and antisemitism became mainstream in the academic world, is the one that is most likely to be of interest to the lay reader.

Black Athena was fiercely attacked by people who conflated his views with those of the lunatic-fringe Afrocentrist school of history. Don't let any of that put you off - this book will open your eyes to the secret history of ancient Greece and classical scholarship.

highly recommended
In this book Martin Bernal examines the destruction of what he terms the "Ancient Model" of Greek history (which recognized the contribution of ancient Egyptian and Phoenician societies to the formation of Greece) and the fabrication of an "Aryan" model (which was purely Eurocentric). While the Ancient Model had been the belief of the ancient Greeks themselves and had survived up till the 18th century, it had been replaced by a more Eurocentric version as a result of, amongst other things, the rise of racist thinking in Western intellectual circles. Bernal presents a brilliant analysis of the sociology of modern knowledge systems, revealing the interactions between the dominant social and cultural biases of the time and what was enshrined as academic "fact" by scholars. This work is not about Afro-centrism. Rather, it is a well-researched and objective explanation of why 18th century Europe decided to inteprete known facts of ancient history the way it did and why this intepretation may not provide an accurate representation of the origins of Greek (and, consequently, European) history. It is a difficult book to read because of the high levels of technicality. However, it is defintely worth the trouble.