Black Athena

BLACK ATHENA

The following has been taken from a website by Mark Alford that discusses Bernal`s views on African influences on the Greek culture.

In his three volume work, Bernal provides strong evidences to prove his hypothesis that the Greek has substantial cultural influences from a mixture of Ancient Egyptian and Semitic cultures, both of which belong to the Afro-asiatic language family and contain an Indo-European base. In “Black Athena”, Martin Bernal disputes the origin of Greek Civilization as has been brought forward by classicists and historians. Although, he agrees to the influence the Indo-European invaders from the North for being responsible to bring in democracy to the corrupt Mediterranean civilizations but argues that the Greek culture does not come from these invasions but it is the influence of the Egypto-Semitic culture in the 18th century BC “when the Hyskos invasion of Egypt overflowed into Crete, and on through the Aegean to Greece” [1], and alleges the Classicists of giving a kind of racial superiority to the to the Northern invaders by altering actual events and crediting them as originators of the Greek culture. He also credits the Greek words to Egyptian and Semitic etymologies in Black Athena, with the introduction of Egyptian religion, the Phoenician alphabet during the period.

Leading scholars contesting the thesis set forth by Bernal, argued with his use of selective evidence lacks a historical perspective. They argue that the achievements of Classical Greece cannot be based on cultural diffusion alone.

Although we are in no position to judge the claims in the “Black Athena”, it is true that there is “no reliable historical narratives about early Cretan civilization”, (TWE, 34). Hence, a work such as that presented in Black Athena makes us question the very narrative adopted by historians and their cultural bias, whether it has been inherited from the past or imposed by the present.