Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics

After reading Bernal's first two black athenas (BA)I thought that Bernal is above Racism;I did use him in my work " urdu/hindi an artificial divide " (2006) which traces man/languages from africa and dispersal by mideast farmers; After his BA writes back i realise
that he is really defending " semitism" against the pro aryanaism/ greek culture; There is solid evidence for mideastern origin of greece according to many others e g Stephanie Dalley and Thomas Mcvelly. Bernal bypasses
these authors conveniently and assumes that Aryan semitic nations are for real and Semites created greece.He thus seems to be faithfull creationist. THus his latest work along with the others
seems to be an "Aryan semitic war" where blind is leading the blind;It does help the survival of creationism/linguistic noahism/biblical racism.
There is not a smell of fresh air;Both Aryanist and semitist blindly assumes their languages from " tower of Babel"; No scholar of repute can buy this anymore;semetic 3 consonant system had evolved from mono syllabism out of africa; Sumerian ,man's oldest( 5000 BC) reveals such an evolution; Now many diehard semitists have called Sumerians
"proto jews";Bernal may have that fantacy but has not spelled out;
ON page 469 elaborating on Race/racism his focuss remains on
europe as " european baggage" of superiority/inferiority;He is bypassing Biblical Japhet,shem,Ham( black) and also hinduic creationism--caste racism etc. I certainly see these pro-Aryan and pro semitist scholars as " creationist-crusaders". This is elaborated in my book( cited above)which uncovers aryanism/semitism
and linguistic Noahism as "political priestolgy",directly responsible for " african slavery", holocaust and India,s plunder/partition as well as other
human messacres all in the name of GOD.Bernal's book is certainly informative, useful for advance work in anthropolgy.However his discourse too promotes racism.

That's right. The Egyptians and Phoenicians were Semitic/Hamitic,
NOT negroid. Egypt was only breifly ruled by negroid peoples at the invasion of the southern Nubians. Anybody who knows anything about the Ancient Hellenes, knows that they learnt a vast amount from the Egyptians and Phoenicians. I mean are language via Latin and Greek is related to the Phoenician alphabet via Egypt's...Duh!

If this author is criticizing a Eurocentric archetype, than he should equally criticize his afrocentric archetype. Greek culture, though it was heavily benefited from Asia and Africa is neither Euro or Afrocentric....it is Ancient Hellenic. We are projecting inept models and types on the Ancient Greeks!!!!!!!

Unless any of you people have studied a history book, Western Civilization is not apart of Ancient Greek Civilization, they are seperate. Furthermore what is wonderous about the Greeks is that they severed themselves from Asian/African cruelty and theocratic madness to form their own 'UNIQUE' culture in the first place!!!

Greece was not governed by a system religion or priestly caste which retained all the knowledge from the common man. THIS IS THE TRUE REBELLION AND MIRACLE IN HISTORY: THAT THE GREEKS WERE ABLE TO GROW FROM AND THEN REBEL AGAINST THE STERILE, THEOCRATIC CULTURES OF ASIA AND AFRICA TO FORM SOMETHING TOTALLY NEW!

It is funny reading the five-star reviewers. They have the least amount of knowledge in the field of classics, and yet they can make claims like the "Greeks learned everything in the science from the Egyptians who had mastered all of science first". Really? As I classics major myself who studied both the Greek as well as the Near Eastern histories I can assert that Greece absorbed very little from Egypt; and moreover, Greeks via the Hellenistic Empire of Alexander influenced Egypt far more. Bernal claims that the period of Egyptian involvment in Greece was during the proto-greek stage of the Myceneans, and the dark age that soon followed, which by the way is the most inconclusive period in Greek history. Yet, Bernal, a "scholar" not even trained in the Classics, can claim that this is obviosly because of western ignorance and rascism, that chooses to hide this shameful history. He claims that the Hyskos were a semitic people that invaded the Aegean region in time lending the Greeks their culture etc. First, the Hyskos where a minor group who are only mentioned in respect to Israelite history as they both are said to have entered Egypt at the same time. Bernal leaves out the fact that Egypt and the entire Levant was invaded by "Sea People" who originated form Ionia and the Aegean Islands and were the remnant of the Mycenean Age Homer wrote about. These Sea People devestated Egypt and the Levant, and actually forged colonies. The Egyptians named them the Peleset, who later are known as the Philistines. However they are Myceneans.
Further, Egypt was a theocracy with very little to offer the world in the sciences. The great breakthroughs came in the Classical and Hellenistic Age where Astronomy and Calculus flourished to name a few. Prior to this period the only other notable contributions came from the Babylonians in Mesopotamia.

Furthermore, SEMITIC PEOPLE ARE CAUCASIAN AS WELL.

Meaning Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews, Hyskos, Sumerians, and most likely Egyptians, a fact that can be seen in the present day inhabitants. While Arabic has been absorbed, this does not mean the aboriginal inhabitants have been erased. Furthermore, Bernal claims these eurocentric view is centered on a Greco-Roman model of western civilization; however western scholars are first to point out the contributions of other middle eastern peoples, like the the Mesopotamians, the Hittite, and the Persian. The latter two spoke indo-european by the way, in the midst of the so-called "black" semitic language he so readily attempts to usurp. In fact the word Arryan is the derived from the word Iran, as it literally mean the "land of the Arryans". Caucasians do not dwell soley in western Europe; in fact it might be better for these Afrocentric revisionists to expand their propaganda to calibrate for the entire Caucasian world which stretches into a Eurasian model going as far as the Russian steppes and Iranian peripheries.
Furthemore, this idea of Egypt as black is derived on the premise of non-european otherness, where because someone is not European it automatically means they are not white, and because they are not white that natuarally means they fall into the black camp. The whole train of though is ludicrous.

In Black Athens Bernal argued that Greek history had been written when racism was dominating Europe. The origins of "super", "pure" races had to be super and pure. We're still under the influence of this racist history. In the opening ceremony of 2004 Athens Olympic games, the NBC speaker had said "now the sport is returning to where it originated", as if there was no sport elsewhere in the world. European civilization advanced our world, and its origin Greece started everything from nothing. This is the idea Bernal criticizes.
But Can you name a civilization which didn't take from others? Building a civiliziation is all about trading ideas. But we were given the impression that Greeks created philosophy, art, mathematics and everything else out of nothing.
But didn't Phthogoras study in Egypt? Didn't Phoenicians invent the alphabet and give it to the Greeks? While even Herodotus mentions Egyptians colonizing Greece, how can we not appreciate Bernal's Black Athens and his this reply? Sure few of us have the sophistication to evaluate his and his opponents' evidence. But Bernal has a rock solid thesis which makes perfect sense. 19th and 20th centuries were the ages of positivism where there was a pure science (physics), where there were pure races. White race was drunk of its supremacy over blacks, native Americans, Indians and was justifying its ruthless colonization with the theory of evolution. Of course when the origin of Europe had to be pure, not contaminated by "backward" African Egyptians, and Semitic Phoenicians and Asians. This was the European-Western arrogance and it still exists today (e.g. current US policy in Iraq, EU Christian Democrats' statements against Turkey's EU membership). The truth is, Greece learned from Egyptians and Phoenicians, contributed to it, and gave it to the world.

People may dislike Bernal's writing style, but that doesn't mean they should ignore his ideas.

By naming his books "Black Athena" Bernal doesn't mean that Athena, the symbol of the Athenians and their culture, which we call Greek culture, was imagined as black. More likely he believes she was a light Mediterranean brown. Even the famous classicist Bernard Knox (a professor who wrote introductory essays to Robert Fagel's translations of The Iliad and Odyssey) concedes this point in his ironic essay collection "The Oldest of the Dead White European Males" when he politely describes Greeks as an olive colored people.

Bernal's use of black in "Black Athena" refers to the historical misconception of her skin color by Romantics, Racists, and Imperialists who were not necessarily the same people. It also refers to the poetically and politically motivated misunderstanding of the historical origins of Greek myth, culture, and language. Not to say that Athena wasn't a Greek Goddess but rather that Greek ideas of Gods and Nature have significant (and uncredited) roots in more ancient civilizations (whether Egyptian, Sumerian, or more broadly Afro-Asiatic).

Bernal is attempting to undermine the false popular idea (especially among people who specialize in the study of the Greco-Roman Classics) that, poetically speaking, Greek culture just sprang out of the ground like Cadmus' dragon teeth. Oh wait, no; actually, that myth tells of how a Phonecian, who we classify as Afroasiatic, brought literacy to the Greeks. Other ancient Greek sources attest to having recieved the basic tools of Greek Culture from their neighbors, why should we disbelieve them? Then there's etymology...

Of course, Afroasiatic roots do not detract from the genius of Greek theater, literature, and philosophy! That would be like saying Newton was an idiot because he didn't invent numbers. That would be like saying Shakespeare was worthless because he didn't create the theater, because he learnt from the literary examples of Geoffrey Chaucer, Christopher Marlow, and Ben Johnson, because the subject matter of his plays were shaped by thousands of years of preceding history, and because his plots were not original.

Clearly parents have a large role in the raising of children, but posterity does not praise parents for their childrens' accomplishments, not with great artists, scientists, or statesmen. Though they lay the foundations of a child's moral, literary, and technological culture, what is built on those foundation is not theirs. Ultimately Shakespeare's father was not Shakespeare, but who would believe that Shakespeare's family had no influence on his intellectual development? Likewise, using and improving the brilliant ideas of neighbors and ancestors does not rob scientific progress or artistic excellence of value. Is it more important that an idea is perfectly original? none are, or that it is good? Cultural innovators keep their worth when credit is given where credit is due, and their supporters have their importance recognized too.

It seems like the subject of intellectual precedence stirs up great anxiety in lovers of Classical literature. It shouldn't. Greek achievements are no less grand because they sprang from foreign soil. If anything, appreciation of Bernal's ideas will hopefully convince linguists and classicists with philosophical inclinations to shape up their fields erroneous notions of cultural origins, especially regarding etymology (read his books for details). It would be wonderful if a love of truth leads to more precise translations and a better understanding of the ancient literature we love.