Black Athena Ten Years After

7/26/2019 Black Athena Ten Years After

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TALANTA XXVIII-XXIX(1996-1997)

BL CK THEN

TEN

YE RS FTER

towards a constructive re-assessmenfl

Wim vanBinsbergen

African

Studies

Centre,

Leiden/Department ofCulturalAnthropology andSociologyof

Development,

Free

University, Amsterdam

L

Introduction

This

special issueo f

TALANTA

isbasedon the

proceedings

of the one-

da y

conference Black

Athena:Africa'scon tribution to

global Systems

of

knowledge',

held

at the

AfncanStudies Centre, Leiden,

T he

Netherlands,

28 June, 1996.

That

conference was conceived and initial prparations

were made at the Netherlands Institute fo r Advanced Study in the

Humanities

and

Social

Sciences

(NIAS). Late 1995

I

persuaded

Dr.

Rijk

van Dijk,the

Afncan Studies Centre conference organiser, that

a

Dutch

conference

on the

debate

imtiated by

MartinBernai'scontroversial

two

volumes

of

Black Athenawould betimely considenng the minimum extent

to

which Dutch

scholarshiphad so far participated in the

debate

smceits

inceptionin the

late

1980s.

2

Thestakesofthis

debate include

not only the

1997W M J van Binsbergen

'Earlier versions of

this

argument were presented at the conference on 'Black

Athena

A fnca s contributiontoglobal Systemsofknowledge , African StudiesCentre,

Leiden, TheNetherlands,28 June, 1996, and at the Afnca Research Centre,Catholic

Universi ty Louvain,

8November , 1996 I am indebted to Martin Bernai, Jan Best,

JosmeBlok,andArnoEgberts,forrepeatedandprofoundexchangeson thetheoretical

and

empincal

problems

central

to the presentvolume,to

these

colleagues, and to

Pieter

Boele

va n

Hensbroek,

Filip de

Boeck,

a nd

Renaat

Devisch,

fo r

useful

comments,

to the

Netherlands InstituteforAdvanced Studyint heHum ani t iesan dSocial Sciences (NIAS),

Wassenaar, whereth epresent argumentwas largely conceived whenIspenta

fruitful

an d

excitmgacademie year1994-95atNIAS as amemberof thethme group on 'Religion

and Magie m the Ancient Near East',and to my

wife

and children, without whose

unconditional

support this

book

project modest in itselfbutglanngly ambitiousin

view of my academie backgrounda nd skills, an dunexpectedly

difficult

because of lts

ideologicaltangles wou ldnever have been completed Fo r

official

acknowledgements

see the mam

text

^Bernai, M , 1987,

Black Athena Th e

Afroasiatic

roots

of

classical

civihzation,

Vol I,

Th e

fabrication of Ancient Greece 1787-1987,London Free AssociationBooks/

New Brunswick Rutgers University Press, Bernai,

M ,

1991,

Black Athena

The

11


2/28

rewr iting of the history of the eastern Mediterranea n in the third and

second mi l lenn ium BCE;

and the

Eurocentric dniai

as

from

the

eighteenth

Century

CE of

intercontinental contributions

to

Western

civilisation; but also the place of Africa in global

cultural

history, and

today's re-assessmentofthat

place especially

by

'Afrocentric'

3

scholars

in majority Blacks holding appointments in the U.S.A. and in African

universities.

4

Afroasiatic roots

of

classical civilisation, II. The archaeological and documentary

vidence,

New

Brunswick

(N.J.): Rutge rs Univ ersity Press; also cf. Bernai, M., 1990,

Cadmean

letters: The transmission

of

the alphabet to the Aegean

andfurther

westbe fore

1400 B.C.,

Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. The main collection of

critica

studies of

Black

Athena is: Lefkowitz, M.R., &

MacLean

Rogers, G., eds.,

1996,

Black Athena

revisited, Chapel Hill& London: University of North Carolina

Press.

3

The term Afrocentrism was coined by

M.K.

Asante, cf. 1990, Kernet,

Afrocentricity,

and knowledge, Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press

(on

Bernai,

see pp.

100-104 of

that

work).

Por clarity's

sake we

must distinguish between

two

essential

variants

of Afrocentrism: one which cherishes images of an original (or prospective)

African home as a source of inspiration, identity and

self-esteem;

a nd

th

other variety,

which

claims that Africa possesses thse qu alities for

th

spcifie reason that ail

civilisation originales there. I personally identify with

th

former variant; it is the latter

one I object to, for reasons of

bothhistorical

vidence and rejection of all subordinative

claims in the field of culture. Given the ambiguity of the term Afrocentrism it is

understandable that Bernal's position in

this

respect has caused someconfusion. Despite

his grt sympathy for

th

movement he has repeatedly distanced himself from its

exclusivist, even racialist variants (e.g.

Black Athena II,

p. xxii). In his review of

Lefkowitz,

M., 1996, Not out of Africa: Ho wA frocentrism

became

an excuse to

teach

myth as

history, New York, Basic Books, Bernai States(Bryn Mawr Classical Review,

1996, Internet journal,

p. 3):

'th

label 'Afrocentrist'

has

been

attached to a numberof intellectual positions

ranging from (...) "Africa crtes, Europe

imittes"

tothose, among whom I see

myself,

who merely

maintain that Africans

o r

peoples

of

Africandescenthave made

many significan t contributions to world progress and that for the past two

centuries,

these have

been systematically played down

by

European

and

North

American historians'.

4

Cf.

Diop, C.A., 1974,The African origin of civil isation: Myth or reality? trans.

M. Cook, Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill; Diop, C.A., 1987, Precolonial Black

Africa: A comparative study of thepolitical and social Systems of Europe and Black

Africa,

from

Antiquity to

th formation

of

modem

States,

trans. H J. Salemson,

Westport, Conn.: Lawrence

Hil l ;

Diop, C.A., 1989, The

cultural unity

of

Black Africa:

The domains of patriarchy and of matriarchy in classical antiquity,

London: Karnak

House; James, G.G.M., 1973,S tolen legacy:

The

Greeks

were not the

authors

ofGreek

philosophy, but t hpeople ofNorth Africa,

commonly

called th

Egyptians,

New York:

Philosophical Library, reprinted, Sa n Francisco: Jul i an Richardson Associates,

first

published 1954; Noguera, A., 1976, Ho wAfrican wa s Egypt: A comparative study of

Egyptian and

Black African cultures, Ne w

York: Vantage Press; Asante,

Kernet',v an

Sertima,

I., 1983,

d.,

Black ,m science.

Ancien

an d

modem,N ew

Brunswick, N.J.:

Transaction Books;

van Sertima, I.,

1984,

Black

Women in

Antiquity, New Brunswick,

N.J.: Transaction Books;

van

Sertima,

I.,

1985, d.,

African prsence

inearly

Europe,

Ne w

B run swick, N.J.: Transaction Books (with Martin

Berna l 's

contribution: Black

12

Operating from

t h

national African Studies Centre, which

is

part

of the

Leiden

University social

science

faculty,meant being aloof of theU.S.A.

scne

where

th

debate

h ad

concentrated.

I t

also meant

being

separated,

an d by aconsidrable

social,

insti tutionalan d geographical

distance,

from

scholars who at Leiden and

elsewhere

in th Netherlandspursueth

disciplines whichhad so fardominated th Black Athena debate: classics,

ancient history, archaeology, historical ling uistics, Egyptology, th history

ofideasand ofscience.From the

beginning

it wasclearthat

crossing

that

distance

would

require

such major efforts (also

because

such

few

Dutch

responses to

Black Athena

as

existed

had been largely

dismissive),

5

that

th

immdiate resuit couldonly

be

eclectic

and

initiatory,

at

best.

If nonetheless the conference was a success and led to theprsent

collectionof papers, it waslargelyto thcrditof others.

Martin Bernai

no t

only

agreed to

participate

and did so

with inspiring openness

an d

charm, b ut

also

hi s

three

original contributions to th prsentvolume

6

already lendit far

greater

relevance tothongoingdebatethanIcould hve

hoped for.

Ja n

Best,

the

ancient historian,

put his

network, advice

an d

enthusiasm

atm y

disposai, besides contributing

a

stimulatingpaper

of his

own examining

Cretan

sealsfrom

th

early2nd millennium BCE for

signs of Egyptian influence.

7

The Egyptologist Arno Egberts' chance

attendance at the conference led to an

improvised intervention

(o n th

historical

linguistics relevant

to

Bernal'sproposed drivation

of theGreek

name

Athena

fromth Ancient Egyptian expressionHt Nt, 'House

of the

goddess Neith' i.e.

th

western

Delta

town

o f

Sas);

Egberts'

argument

ha s

Athena: The African and L evantine roots ofGreece',p p.66-82 so the

first

published

product

ofth BlackAthena

project, already with that controversial title

firmly in

place,

appeared in an Afrocentrist context ); Rashidi, R., & I. van Sertima, eds., 1985, African

prsence

in

earlyAsia,

spcial issue

ofJournal

of African Civilisations; Rashidi,

R. ,

1992, Introduction

to

th study

of

African classical civilizations,

London: Karnak

House;

va n

Sertima,

I.,

d., 1986,

Grt African

thinkers,

vol. I: CheikhAnta Diop,

New

Br unsw ick & Ox ford: Transaction Books; Finch, C.S., 1990, Th e African

background

to

mdical science, London: Karnak House. For a soberingAfrican critique,

cf. Appiah, K.A., 1993, 'Europe upside down: Fallacies of the new Afrocentrism',

Times Literary Supplment (London), 12 February, pp.

24-25.

For a cri t ique of

Afrocentrism

with spcial rfrence

to

M artin Bernal 's Afrocentrist sympathies

in Black

Athena,

cf. Palter, R., 1993, 'Black Athena, Afro-centrism, and th history ofscience',

History ofScience, 31, no. 3:

227-87, reprinted

i n:

Lefkowitz

&

MacLeanRogers,

o.e.,

pp.

209-266

(see also Bernal's response: Bernai,

M .,

1994, 'Response

to

Robert

Palter',

History of Science, 32, no. 4: 445-64, an d Palter's rejoinder, ibidem, pp. 464-68);

Snowden, F.M.,

Jr ,

1996, 'Bernal 's

"Blacks"

an dt h

Afrocentrists',

in :

Lefkowitz

&

MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 112-127; and Lefkowitz,Not outof Africa.

5

Ont hedetailsof the Dutch reception,s ee

extensive

footnote26 below

6

Martm Berna i , 'Responses to Black Athena. General and linguistic issues',

'Responset o Arno Egberts', 'Responset o Josme Blok' (allm

this

volume).

'Jan Best, 'The ancient toponyms of Mallia: A

post-Eurocentnc

reading of

Egyptianising Bronze

Ag e

documents'

(this

volume).

13


3/28

now been worked intofully-fledged, well documented criticalpaper.

8

The

historian

(both

ancient and

modern) JosineBlk

in her

paper insisted

on

historiographie

method

an d

intima te knowledge

of

early 19th-century

C E

classical scholarship

s

devastatingly criticised

by

Bernal;

in

this

way she

raisescrucial problems:

the

requirement

of

examining

a ll

available factual

data

before passing judgement (notably, a verdict of anti-Semitisma nd

racism) on historical actors; the relative w eight of external (socio-political)

and internai (new data and methods) in th history of science; and finally

academie and political integrity in the context of such sensitive topics as

identity, ethnicity,

and

especiallyrace.

9

Wim vanB insbergen,

Africanist

andtheoretician of ethnie and intercultural relations, explored some of the

implications

of theBlack Athena

thesis both from

atheoretical

point

of

view

10

and on the basis of a historical and comparative empirical analysis

of twomajor African formal Systems.

11

T he

latter

leadshim to

conclude

that the Black Athena thesis strikingly illumintes Africa's vital, initial

contribution

to

global cultural history

in

Neolithic

and

(outsideAfrica)

Bronze Age contexts, butfailsto

appreciate

Africa's cultural achievements

as well as involution in

th

more

rcent millennia;

this allows him to

identify substantial tasksfor

further

researcha ndrethinking.

Tw o

other contributors who helped

to make

thconfrence

a

success

could most regrettably not be incorporated in

th

prsent collection for

personal

and technical

reasons:

the

historian

o f

ideasRobert Young,

wh o

looked at th appropriation of Egyptological m aterial in th 'scientific'

discourse of racism in th U.S.A. S outh of the mid-19thCenturyCE; and

th linguist and ancient historian Fred Woudhuizen, who in an oral

prsentation

assessed

Bernai 's Egyptocentric linguistic claims

in th

context

of

lingu istic diversity

an d

interaction

i n

th easternMediterranean

inth second millennium BCE.

Further indispensable contributions camefromRijk van Dijk whoco-

organised

th

confrence with me. And

from th

African Studies Centre in

gnral,

which

not for the first time

trustfully

endorsed

my

explorations beyond thstandard topics

o f

African Studies,

and

provided

adquate

financial, library

an d

secrtariat support without which

th

prsent volumewouldneverhvematerialised. Fred W oudhuizen made it

possible

that

th

confrence

proceedings are now

published

as aspcial

8

Arno

Egberts, 'Consonants in collision:

Neith

and

Athena

reconsidered' (this

volume).

9

Josine

H. Blok, 'Proof and persuasion inBlack

Athena

I: The

case

of K.O.

Mller'

(this volume).

'"in

a

paper

now greatly

revised

and

expanded

so as to

form

the

presentargument.

11

Wim van Binsbergen, 'Rethinking Africa's contribution to global cultural

history:Lessons from acomparative historical analysis of mankala board-gamesa nd

geomantic

divination' (this

volume).

14

issue of

TALANTA, which

is particularlyfitting since this journal is a

Netherlands-basedinternational venueforancient historyand

archaeology,

specialising

o n

th eastern M editerranean.

The

editors

of

TALANTA (Dr.

Jan

Stronk

and Dr.

Maarten

de

Weerd,

with

their colleagues

Dr. Jan de

Boer

and Dr.

Roald

Docter, and as

archaeological

artist Mr

Olaf

E.

Borgers) have ensured thatthisvolume

meets

professional

standards,

and

facilitated itsproductionin

every

possible way.

Here

they no wappear in very heavily edited, revised and expanded

form,augmentedwith

n ew

contributions

no t

only fromArno Egberts

bu t

also

from

Wim van

Binsbergen

(triggered by Jan

Best'spaper),

12

as

well

as two responses by Martin B ernal to the papers by Josine Blok and Arno

Egberts.Thiscollection

a tleast

marks

the

fact that

in the

Netherlands

the

reception of the

Black Athena

problematic ha s progressed beyond the

initial stage. It

constitutes

an invitation to our national colleagues to

contribute

further critical

an d

constructive work along these lines.

If

Black

Athena hasmanagedtogeneralecomprehensive and complex, passionate

interdisciplinary

international debate over

the

past

ten

years, scholarship

in

the Netherlands can only benefit

from

being drawn in to that debate, even if

ata late stage.

It is certainly no t too late, fo r despite unmistakable hopes to the

contrary on the part of the editors of the recent collection of critical essays

Black Athena revisited,

13

the issue is still

alive

an d kicking. With

understandable delay, more volumes of

Black Athena

and a dfiant

answer

14

to the dismissive

Black Athena

revisitedhave been projected b y

MartinBemal.What is more important is that enough m aterial, debate and

reflection has now

been

generaled

for us to try and

sort ou i whalever

lasling conlribulion Bernal may have made, sifting such support and

acclaim as he has received (not only in Ihe form of Afrocentrist

appropriation of nis work but also from some of the most distinguished

scholars

in

Ihe

relevanl

fields),

from

hi s obvious errors

an d

one-

sidedness

whichthe mass ofcriticalwrilingon ihisissue since

1987

h as

brought to

light.

Suchatask cannot befully accomplishedwithin

ihe 200-odd pages

of

Ihe present collection.

Yet its

tilleBlack Athena: Te n Years

After has a

significance beyond Ihe flavour of alavistic chivalry, continuous

skirmishes

an d

ambushes,

and the

hopes

of

ultimale glory,

as in A.

van Binsbergen, 'Alternative models ofintercontinental interaction towards

the earliest Cretanscript' (this volume).

13

M.R. Lefkowitz & G . MacLean Rogers, eds ,

Black

Athena revisited, Chapel

Hil l

& London Univers i tyo f North Caroline Press, 1996.

14

Bernal,

M., m prparation,

Black

Athena

writes back,

Durham: Duke Univers i ty

Press

15


4/28

Dumas' The ThreeMusketeers, with

Martin Bernaicast

in the

obviousrle

of

d'Artagnan. It brings

ou t

that

ours is not

merely

another

instalment

to

th debate.

There is ofcourse that element too, vide th exhaustive and,in my

opinion, dfinitivecritical essays by Blokan d Egberts on twocentral

issues of

th

Black Athena argument which hitherto hve met with

relatively

little specialist

treatment:Greek-Egyptian etymologies,

and th

methods

an d

politics

ofBernal s historiography of

nineteenth-century

classical

studies.

15

Martin BernaPs

responsetoJosine Blokis

courteous

and

rceptive.

H is

admittance

ofhaving

grossly

misinterpreted, in

Black

Athena I,th limited

material

h hadread on thepioneer classicist K.O.

Mlleris

scholarly

a nd

sincre.

Yet one can hardly

believethat

he

(cf.

p.

22X below)

had truly

Blok's kind of devastating criticism 'in mind'

when,a t

t h

end of

BlackAthenaI,

he

expressed

t he

hopethatt h

book

would

open

up new

areas

of

research

b ywomenand m en with far

better

qualifications thanmyself

;muchas oneregrets

that

h edoesno taddress

what are

clearly Blok s

main points, on

integrity,identity,race,

an d

t h

rleof internai and external

factors

in

th

history of science. If Martin

Bernal 'sresponse

to

Egberts paper

is

short, dismissive,

and (in

il s

long

digression o n

Sovietlinguistics,

and his

promise

to

write

his

memoirs

at

th geof 80 as his

only

concession)

ratherflippant, it is partly

because

in

his

ow n

original

paper

fo r

this

collection,

16

he has

covered

muchof the

same

etymological

ground in

considrable

dtail notwithstanding his

15

Yurco,

F.J., 1996,

Black Athena:

AnEgyptological r eview , in: Lefkowitz &

MacLean

Rogers,

o.e.,pp.

62-100,

p. 78, has one11-lineparagraphonth drivationof

Athena from fit

Nt.

Jasanoff, J.H., & Nussbaum, A., 1996, 'Word games: The

linguistic vidence inBlack

Athena',

in: Lefkowitz&MacLean Rogers,o.e.,pp. 177-

205, prsent a dismissive assessment of thHt Nt-Athenaetymology whichhowever is

exc lus ively based

on

established Indo-European historical linguistics

and has no

grounding in Egyptology; Rendsburg, G.A., 1989, Black Athena: An etymological

response', m: M. Myerowitz Levine & J. Peradotto, eds., TheChallenge of Black

Athena , spcial issue,Arethusa,22:

67-82, p.

72-73, also raises objections from

a

historical l inguis t icpoint;cf .Black Athena

I, p.

452, n. 4 and M.Bernai, Responses

tocritica reviews

of

Black Athena, volumeI',Journal ofMediterranean Archaeology3,

1990, pp. 111-137.Egberts paper Consonants incollision citesa nd builds upon that

earlier work

b ut

goes

beyond

it and is the first

full-length

Egyptological treatment.

A s

far

asBlok's article

is concerned, Bernal's 18th-century

CE

historiography

was first

questioned in twoarticles which,hkeJasanoff&Nussbaum'setymological attack, were

especially commissioned forBlack Athena revisited:Norton, R.E., 1996, The tyra nny

of

Germany

over Greece? Bernai, Herder,

and

th

German

appropriation

of

Greece',

in:

Lefkowitz &MacLean Rogers,

o.e.,

pp.403-409, and: Palter, R., 1996, 'Eighteenth-

century historiography

mBlack Athena',in:

Lefkowitz

&

MacLean Rogers,o.e.,

pp.

349-401.Blo k s paper wa s first presented at th Leiden 1996 conference, when a

shortened

version was in thpress wi th thJournal of th Historyofldeas. By

mutual

agreementofa ilparties concerned thlonger version

ispubhshed

m

this

volume.

16

M. Bernai,

Responsesto

Black

Athena.Generala nd

hnguistic

issues .

16

highly significantclaim (towhichI return below)thatin the

case

of

proper

names and

between

languages

from

different

families,

t he

established

sound laws ofhistorical linguistics do not workanyway.Inth same

paper, helooks back at the

Black Athena

discussion over thepast ten

years,

denounces

BlackAthena revisitedin

strongterms,engages

in an

enlightening discussion of some

common misrepresentations

of his

work

an d

views,

and for the first

time explicitly seeks

to

situate

Africa

linguistically and phenotypically

(but

hardly culturally)

within

t heBlack

Athena context. Also for the first time heprsents a more systematic

treatment of the

historical

and

interactive linguistics

on

which

his

views

on

the 'Afroasiatic

17

roots

o f

classical civilization

are

based.

Jan

Best argues

for

an Egyptianising

reading

of the

Cretan

seals,

thusoffering

a spcifie

example

of how theBlack

Athenathesiscould

be

fruitfully deployed

in

spcifie

research contexts;

m eanwhile

he

calls

attentionto Syrio-Palestinian

an d Anatolian, in addition to Egyptian influences.

18

Wim van

Binsbergen,

19

in acontributionspecificallywritten inresponsetoBest s

analysis, argues the complexities of the intercontinental cultural interaction

which produced the

earliest Cretan script;

he

stresses

the

argument

of

transformative

localisation

as a

necessary complement

of the

argument

of

diffusion. H is claim is that after tw o successive transformative

localisationsat

focal

pointsalong theLevantine coast (Byblosand northern

Black Athena's subtitle. Theterm 'Afroasiatic' dsigntes a language group

which

includesSemitic e.g. Phoenician, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Akk adian, Aramaic, as

well

as theSouth ArabianandEthiopie languages besides

non-Semitic

branches such

as ancient Egyptian,Chadic,Beja,

Berber,

and three branches of

Cushic.

Bernai uses

theterm (andits counterparts: thedsignations ofother such language families ncluding

Indo-European) bothin a narrowlylinguistic sense and inorder todnote the spcifie

culturesof speakers of these

languages,

and

occasionally

to

dnote

the

large

dmographie

clustersconstitutingthegene poolof peoplespeakingsuch languages andhaving such

cultures.Cf.Martin Bernai, Responses toBlack Athena: General andlinguisticissues',

this volume, for

illustrations

of this

usage.

Such

usagemay

not be

totally

unjustified

considering the Whorf thesis which however iscontroversial; cf. Whorf , B.

L.,

1956,

Language, Thought,

and Reahty,

New York/

London:

M.I.T. Press:

Black,

M.,

1959,

'Linguistic relativity: the views of Benjamin Lee

Whorf,

Philosophical Review,

LXVIII:

228-38.

Also, culture including language is among other things a form of

communication

and

distinction serving,

in practice if not in the

actors'

conscious

intention,to demarcate thegene poolof thelocal reproducmgCom munity. Evenso the

correspondencesand corrlations between language, culture andphenotypeare merely

statistical,

very often spurious, and

they never rise

to the point of one to one

relationships.ThereforeBernal s use ofAfroasiatic and ofother such terms mtroduces a

lack

of

prcision which

has

been

one of the

factors producing

the

emotional

and

occasionally vicious overtones of theBlack Athena

debate.

It

means

an

invitation

to be

appropnated

by

pnmordialist identitydiscourses from

left

an d

right, White

an d

Black.

See my discussionm section 4.3 below.

*J Best, The ancient toponymsof Malha'.

19

Wim

v an

Binsbergen,

Alternativ e modelso f intercontinentalinteraction .

17


5/28

Syria)

a ny

original Egyptian

contribution would

hav e been greatly eroded

and conventionalised before it ever contributed to Cretan hieroglyphic.

Like so

many

other part icipants in th

Black Athena debate,

20

both

contributing

authorsconcur

with

M artin Bernai's stress onintercontinental

exchangesin

th

eastern Mediterraneani n

th

secondan d

third millennium

BCE, but they express concern about

th

by and large probably

unintended suggestiono fu nidirectional Egyptocentrism insomeof his

work.

However, th prsent collection is also an attempt to go beyond a mre

listing

of

pros

an d

cons.

It

seeks

to

help define

i n

what

ways, on what

grounds,

an dunderwhich stringent methodologicala nd epistemological

conditions, Martin

Bernal 's

crusade deserves to hve a lasting impact on

ou r

perception of the ancient eastern Mediterranean; on our perception of

th intercon tinental antcdentso fth European civilisation whichis one of

th principal contributorsto th global cu ltural domain whose mergence

we arew itnessing today;and on ourperceptiono fAfrica.

Apart from

th

African dimension, which

is new to th

debate, this

is

as in previous spcial issues of scholarly Journals devoted to th Black

Athena debate,

21

yet reveals almost th opposite

ai m from Black Athena

revisited, l

a m

very

pleased

that,

contrary to that

much

more voluminou s,

comprehensive

an d

prestigieus book from which Martin Bernai

wa s

deliberately excluded an d which wa s intended to render ai l

further

discussion

o f

B lack Athena

a waste of time, h is the principal contributor

to the present collection. In a way whichdoes credit to that remarkable

scholar, it will beclearto the careful reader tha t this state of

affairs

ha s

enhanced,

not dim inished, thevolume'spotential for criticism but of a

constructivekind.

So far I have taken a basic knowledge of the

Black Athena

debate for

granted,

but for

many readers some

further

introduction

may be

needed.

20

Cf. Bowersock, G.W.,1989,

Journal

of Interdisciplmaiy History, 19: 490-91,

Konstan,

D.,

1988,

Research in

African

Li teratures, 4

(Winter):

551-554;

Myerowitz

Levine, M.,

1990,

'Classical

scholarship:

Ant i -Black ant i -Semit ic? '

Bible

Review,

6

(6/1990).

32-36and

40-41;

M a la m ud ,

M.A.,

1989,

Criticism,

1:317-22; Rendsburg ,

G.A., 1989,

'Black

Athena:An etymological response';

Trigger,

B., 1992."Brown

Athena: Postprocessual goddess?,

CurrentAnthropology,

2/92: 121-123; Vickers,

M.,

1987, Antiquity, 61 (Nov.):480-8J; Whittaker, C.R., 1988, 'Dark ges ofGreece',

BntishMedicalJournal, 296

(23/4):

1172-1173.

2J

Cf.

Meyerowitz

Levine

&

Peradotto,

in '

Arethusa,22 (Fall), 1987,

Journal

of

Mediterranean

Archaeology, 3, l (1990), Isis, 83, 4 (1992), Journal of Women's

History, 4, 3 (1993); History of

Science,

32, 4 (1994),

VEST

Tidsknft for

Vetanskapsstudier, 8, 4

(1995).

2. Martin Bernal's Black

Athena

project

Brit ish-born Martin Bernai (1937- ) is a Cambridge (U.K.)-trained

Sinologist . His spcialisat ion on the intellectual history of

Chinese/

Western exchanges around

1900

CE,

22

in combination with his at the

time

rather more topical articles

o n

Vietnam

in the

Ne w

YorkReview of

Books, earned

him,

in

1972,

a professorship in the Department of

Government

at

Cornell University, Ithaca (N.Y., U.S.A.).

Thereh was

soon to widen the, geographical and historical scope of hisresearch, as

indicated by the fact that already in

1984

h w as to combine this

appointment with one as

adjunct

professor of Near Eastern Studies at the

same university. Clearly,

in

mid-career h

ha d

turned

23

to a set of

questions which were rather remote

from

his original academie field. At

the same time they are crucial to the North Atlantic intellectual tradition

since the eighteenth

Century

CE , and to the way in which this tradition has

hegemonically claimed for itself a place as the allegedly un ique centre, the

original historical source, of the increasingly global production of

knowledge in the world today. Is as in the dominant Eurocentric view

m odern global civilisation the product of an intellectual adventure that

started, as from scratch, with the ancient Greeks the u niqu e resuit of the

latter'sunprecedented and

history-less

achievements? Or is the view of the

Greek

(read

Eu ropean) g enius as the sole and oldest source of civilisation,

merely a racialist myth. If the latter, its doubl aim has been to underpin

delusions of European cultural superiority in the Age of European

Expansion (especiallythe nineteenth

CenturyCE),

and to free the history of

European civil isat ion

from an y

indebtedness

to the

(undoubtedly much

older)

civil isat ions

of the

rgion

of

O ld World agricultural rvolution,

extending from the once fertile Sahara and from Ethiopia, through

Egypt,

Palestine an d Phoenicia, to Syria, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Iran thus

encompassing

the

narrower Fertile Crescent

and the

Indus

Valley. Hre

Minoan, subsequently Mycenaean Crte occupies a pivotai position as

either

'the

first European civilisation in the EasternMediterranean' ;or as

an

'Afro asiatic'-speaking island outpost of more ancient

West

Asian and

Egyptian cu ltures; or as both at the same time. The most likely view wo uld

stress foreboding the equally dissimulated dependence of mdival

European civilisation on Arab and Hebrew sources a vital 'Afroasiatic'

contr ibut ion

to the very origins of a c iv i l isa t ion (se. th e

Greek,

subsequentlyEuropean, now North Atlantic one) which has bred the most

viciousanti-Semitism , both anti-Jewa ndanti-Arab/ Islam,in thecourseof

the twentiethCentury.

22

Bernal,M , 'Chinese sociahsm before 1913', Ph.D.,Cambr idge Universi ty.

23

Cf.

Black

AthenaI,

p.

xiiff.

18

19


6/28

Berna l 's monum enta lBlack Athena,projected a s a tetralogy of which

so far the first tw o

volumes have been published, addresses these issues

along two main linesof argum ent. The

first

volume, besides presenting an

extremely

ambi t ieus

bu t

provisional

an d

deliberately unsubstantiated

outline of the promised findings of the project as a whole, is mainly a

fascinating exercise in the history and sociology of European academie

knowledge. It traces the historical awareness, among European cultural

producers, of ancient Europe's intel lectual indebtedness to Africa and

Asia,

as

well

as the

subsquent repression

of

such awareness with

th e

invention

of the

ancient

Greek

miracle since

the

18th

Century

CE. The

second lineofargument prsents theconverging historical,archaeological,

linguistic and mythological vidence for this indebtedness, which is then

symbolised b y

Bernal's re-reading

(taking Herodotus seriously)

24

of

Athena, apparently

the

most ostentatiously Hellenic

of

ancient Greek

deities, as a peripheralGreekmu lationof thegoddessNeitho fSas as

BlackAthena.

Reception of the two volumes of Black

Athena

so far has been

chequered. Classicists, who read the worknot somuc h as apainstaking

critique

o f

North Atlantic Eurocentric intellectual culture

as a

whole

but as

a denunciation of their discipline by an

unquali fied

outsider, hve

often

been viciously dismissive;

far

less

s o

especially b efore th publication

of Volume II specialists in archaeology, th cultu res and languages of

th

Ancient Near East,

an d

comparative religion. Virtuallyevery critic

has

been impressed withthextent an d depthof B ernal 's scholarship he

shows himself

a

dilettante

in

th best possible tradition

of the

homo

universalis. At the same

time, much

of his

a rgument

is

based

on th

al legedly substantial

25

traces of lexical an d syntactic material from

Afroasiatic (including Ancient Egyptian, and

West-Semitic)

languages in

classical

Greek;

while there

is no

doub t that

he has

th required command

of th

main languages

in

this connexion (Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek),

th

ques t ion

hre

is whether his insight in theoretical , historical and

24

On Egypt ian Athena:

Hist.

II 28, 59, 83 etc., and in gnral on th Greeks'

religieus indebtednessto Egypt: Hist. II50ff The identification ofNeith withAthena

was

n ot

limited

t o

Herodotus

but was a

generally held view

in

Graeco-Roman

Antiquity.

25

Cf.

Black Athena I,

484 n.

141:

'Ntura l ly, I maintain that th e reason it is so remarkably easy to find

correspondences between E gyptian and Greek words is that between 20 and 25

percentof theGreekvocabularydoes infactdrivefrom Egyptian

This prcise statistical statement is often repeated in Bernal's work, Yet the

numerical

procedures

underpinning it

have

so far not

been made

exphci t by

him.

Meanwhile

th e

sample

of

proposed Egyptianetymologies

of

Greek wordss

included

in

his 'Responses

to

Black Athena' (this volume)may convince

the

reader that,

at

least

at

the

qualitative

level,t heclaim is not withoutgrounds.

20

comparative linguistics isadequate.

Meanwhilein theNetherlands theechoesof theongoing Black Athena

debateha sbeen, as said above, scarcely audible.

26

Where

Bernal's

central thesis

was

picked

up

most enthusiastical ly,

immediately to be turned into an article of faith, was in thecircles of

African American intellectuals.

Here

the grt present-day signifianceo f

Black Athena wa srigh tly recognised: not somuc ha s a purely academie

26

This

is best substantiated by the modest length and the often obscure venues of

publication,of whatever Dutch literature existed on Black

Athena

up to the date of our

1996 conference: Best, J.,

1992-93

(actually published 1994), 'Racism in classical

archaeology', in: Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical

Society,

24-25: 7-10; Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H ., 1995, 'Was Athene

z wa r t ? ' ,

Amsterdam se Boekengids Interdisciplinair,

p. 10-15;Derks, H., 1995,D e koe van Troje:

De mythe van de Griekse oudheid, Hilversum: Verloren,

p. 87, n.;

Leezenberg,

M. ,

1992, 'Waren

de

Grieken negers?Black Athena

en het

Afrocentrisme', Cimedart, Feb/

Mar. Outside academia,

in the

context

o f

drama production,

and

remarkably

Afrocentrist:

Ockhuyzen, R., 1991, 'Het verzinsel van de Griekse beschaving', in: Aischylos, De

smekelingen, [Suppliants] trans.

G .

Komrij, Amsterdam: International Thtre

&

Film

Books

/

Theater

van het

Oosten,

pp.

11-13.

I was

unable

to

trace

an

article

on

Black

Athena

reputed to be published in the Dutchconservt veweekly

Elsevier,

Spring 1996.

Of three subsquent Dutch contributions, two were directly related to our 1996

conference an d appear in altered form in the present volume: B lok, J.H., 1996, 'Proof

and persuasion in Black Athena; The caseo f K.O. Mller ', Journal of

the

History

of

Ideas, 57: 705-724; and: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1996, 'Black

Athena

and Africa's

contribution to global cultural history', Quest

Philosophical

Discussions:

An

International African Journal of Philosophy, 1996,

9, 2 / 10,

1: 100-137.

The

third

contribution, smugly insisting on the primai originalityo f Anaximanderas the first

scientific

astronomer w hile ignoring an y pre-existing astronomy in the Ancient Near

East, is:

Coupr ie ,

D.L.,

1996, 'The concept

of

space

and the

"Out

of

Afr ica"

discussion', paperreadat TheSSIPS [Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and

Science]

/

S AGP [Society

of

Ancient Greek Philosophy] 1996, 15th Ann ual

Conference: 'Global andMulticultural DimensionsofAncientan dMdival Philosophy

and

Social Thought: Africana, Christian, Greek, Islamic, Jewish, Indigenous

a nd

Asian

Traditions,' Binghamton University, Department of

Philosophy/

Center fo r Mdival

and Renaissance studies

(CEMERS),

B inghamton (N.Y.), U.S.A.

In his main contribution to the present volume, Martin Bernai bitterly signais a

widespread conviction thatth epub licationofBlack Athena revisited has putpaidto the

entire debate; this effect is also noticeable in: Bommelj, B., 'Waren de Grieken

afronauten? ' , NRC-Handelsblad, book review section,

2/5/1997,

p. 37. Egberts in the

title of his cr i t ique ( this volume) puns on the title of the pseudo-scientist I.

Vel ikovski 's Worlds in collision, London: Gollancz, 1950

;

fortunately,

Egberts does

not try tosupporthis psychoanalytical suggestionsas toB ernal's motivesb y a rfrence

to I. Velikovski's

Oedipus and

Akhnaton: Myth

and history,

London: Sidgwick, 1960,

which claims that even the Oedipusmyth the oneachievement of classical Greek

civilisation to

become

ahousehold word throughout North Atlantic culture today

originated in

pharaonic court intrigue.

For

Bernai

on

Velikovski,

cf.Black Athena I,p .

6. Withh is

choice

o f title, the science journa list Bommelj chooses to

highlight

what

he

thmks is

aparallelwith another pseudo-scientist,E. von Daniken, Waren de goden

astronauten?,Deventer: Ankh-Hermes, 1970,originally German,publ ishedin English

as Chariotso ft he gods (thepun onlyworksfor the titleof theD utch dition).

21


7/28

correction

of

remote, ancienthistory,

but as

arevolutionr? contributionto

th global politics

ofknowledge

in

o ur

own ge and time.T hel iberating

potentialo fBemal's

thesis

has

been

thati t

ha s accorded intellectuals from

outside th polit ically an d materially dominantNorth Atlantic, White

tradition an independent, even senior, historical

bir th-right

to fll

admission and

part icipation under th global intellectual sun. Egypt

is

claimed

to

h ve civilised Greece,

an d from

there

it is

only

on e

step

to the

vision

that Africa,

th

South, Black people,

hve

civil ised Europe,

th

North, Wh ite people; the u lt imate answer to the imperialist (including

cultural-imperial ist)

claims

of the

'whi te man 's brden ' . Such

a

view

clearly ties

in with a

host

of

current Afrocentrist publications making

similar

claims

or

withth Egyptocentric idiom s

among

present-day African

intellectuals in,

e.g., Nigeria, Senegal

an d

Zaire.

B ut

comingfrom

a

White

upper-class

academician

who is

socially

an d

somatically

an

outsider

to

Black issues,

th

impact

istrulyenormous.HreBlack Athena isbui lt into

th ongoing constructionof amil itant Black identity,offeringas anoption

not

contemptuou s rejection,

no r

parallel self-glorification

as in th

context of

Senghor's

a ndCsaire'sngritude,in thefaceof thedominant,

White,

North Atlantic model,

but the

explosion

of

that model.

An d

this

leads

on to its

replacement

by a

model

of

intercontinental intellectual

indebtedness,

in which

Europe

is affirmed to

have been,until

a s

recently

as the first

mil lenn ium BCE,

a

rceptive

periphery of the

civilisations

of

th e

rgion of Old World agricu ltural rvolu tion; classical G reek

civilisation, whatever its achievements, no longer can be taken to have

been original an d autonomous, but was bu i ld ingon this intercultura l

indebtedness.

Given the phnomnal expansion of Ancient Near Eastern and

Egyptological studies

in the

course

of the

twentieth

Century,w e

should

not

haveneeded Bernaito broadcast this insightin the

first

place.Ex oriente

lux, 'l ightcornes from theeast',not only sums up the dailysubjective

exprience ofsunrise anywhereon earth, but has also been the sloganof

an

increasing number of students of the Ancient Near East since the

beginningof the twentiethCentury.

27

The message how ever was scarcely

27

Scholarly

studies outside

t he

context

of the

Black Athena

debate

ye t

insisting

on

the essential continuity between thecivilisationsof theAncient NearEast, includee.g.,

Kramer, S.N., 1958, History

begins

at Suiner, London; Neugebauer , O., 1969, The

exact sciences

in Antiquity,

Ne w

York: Dover,

2n d

di t ion;

first

published 1957;

Gordon,

C.,

1962,

Before

the

Bible:

The common background of Greek and Hebrew

Civilizations, New York: Harper & Row; Gordon, C.H., 1966,

Evidence

for the

Minoan language, Ventnor (NJ): Ventnor Pu bhshers; Saunders, J .B .

de

C.M., 1963,

Th e Transitions from ancient Egyplian to Greek

mdiane,

Lawrence: University of

KansasPress; Astour ,

M.C.,

1967, Hellenosemitica: An

ethnie

and cultural

study

in

WestSenutic impact on Mycenean

Greece,

2d ed., Leiden- Bn l l ;Fontenrose,

J. ,

1980,

22

welcome whenit was first formulated,and imaginative Semitist scholars

like Gordon

an d

Astour

found

themselves under siege when they

published

their significant contributions in the 1960s.

Black Athena

ha s

done

a lot to

drive this insight home

and to

popularise

it,

making

it

available

tocircles

thirst ing

for it

while building

and

rebuilding their

ow n

identity.

Meanwhile Bernai himself does not claim excessive originality:

'...it

should

be clear to any

readerthat

my

books

are

based

on

modern

scholarship.

The

ideas

and

informat ion

I

use,

do not

a lways

come

from

the

champions

of

conventional wisdom,

bu t

very

few of the

historicalhypotheses

pu t

forward

in

Black

Athena

are

original.

The series'

originality

comes

f rom br ing ing together

and

making cen tral, information that has

previously

been scattered andperipheral'.

2

^

3. Into Africa?

'Der Kulturmorphologie wird also vor der Frage gestellt, ob

die R u m e jenseits der gyp t i sch-babylonischen Ku ltur

vlkerkundliches Mater ia l zu bieten vermgen, das zum

Verstndnis der Entfaltung der gyptischen und babylonischen

Kultur rum-, zeit-

un d

sinngem Entscheidenes beitragen

kann.' (Leo Frobenius, 193l)

29

Although

Egypt is a part of North East Africa,

Black Athena

displays a

double blind spot where Africa is

concerned.

An obvious implication of

Bernal'sthesis wouldb e to explore the roots of Eg yptian civilisation in its

turn .

Towards ancient Egyptian origins,

people

from elsewhere

on the

African continent, e.g.

the

Upper

Nile

valley

and the

once fertile central

Python: A study ofDelphic mythand its

origins,

Berkeleyetc.:Universityo f California

Press;paperback dition, reprintof the 1959 firstdition.ExOrienteLuxof course has

alsobeen,

for

decades,

the

name

of the

Dutch society

for the

study

of the

Ancient Near

East,

and of its

journal. Also

cf.

Bernal's

rather

telling admission

of

in i t i a l ly

overlooking the significance of this rallying

cry,

Black

Athena

II,p. 66. M. Liverani

(1996, 'The bathwater and thebaby',in:Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e.,pp. 421-

427) m eanwhi le

callso ur

attention

to the

essential Eurocentrism implied

in the

slogan,

whichh therefore refuses to accept as a valid guideline for ancient history today:

'The

shift

of

cultural primacy from

the

Near East

to

Greece (the

on e

dealt with

in

Bernal ' s book)

was interpreted in

line with

tw o

slogans:

E x

Oriente

Lu x (...)

mostly used by

Orientalists)

a nd 'The Greek miracle' (mostly used by classicists).

These slogans appeared to represent opposing ideas but in fact were one and the

same

notion: the Western appropriation of anc ient Near Eastern culture for the sake

ofits own development' (p. 423).

28

Bemal,M .,

i n

press, 'Review

of"Word

games:

Th e

l inguist i c vidence

i n

Black

Athena", Jay H. Jasanoff & Alan Nussbaum' , forthcormng m B er n a l ' s

Black

Athena

writes

back,o.e.

2

^Leo

Frobenius,

1931,

Erythraa:Lnder und Zeiten des

heiligen

Konigsmordes,

B e r l i n /Z r i c h : Atlantis-Verlag, 1931,

p.

347.

23


8/28

Sahara,

m ade the principal co ntributions. What

di d

the interior of Africa

thus contribute to

Egypt,

and via Egypt, to classical Greek, European,

North

Atlantic, global, civilisation? Bernai has remained largely silent on

this

point. Also one mightexpectth argum ent on Afroasiatic languages to

be

traced

further

inland into

th

A frican continent.These steps Bernai

obviouslycould not yettake.

30

He

can hard ly be blamed for this, not only

inview of theenormityof this additional task and of thescopeof nis actual

accomplishments, but

also because

Africanists have so far, with few

except ions ,

31

ignored

him. They have refrained from exploring the

30

Cf.

J. Baines, 1996,

'O n

the aims and methods of Black Athena', in: Lefkowitz

& MacLean Rogers, o.e.,

pp .

27-48,

p. 32.

However,

cf.

Bernai, 'Responses

to

Black

Athena: General

a nd

linguisticissues'(this volume).

In

fact, Bernai explored Afroasiatic

and Semiticlanguage

origins

in one of hisfirst papers the

Black Athena

project was to

yield:

Bernai, M., 1980, 'Sp culations on the disintegration of Afroasiatic', paper

presented at the 8th Conference of the North American Conference of Afroasiatic

Linguistics, San Francisco, A pril 1980, and to the Ist internati onal Conference of

Somali

Studies, Mogadishu, July 1980. The paper was never published but is

currently

attractingrevived interest.

31

Africanist discussions ofBlack Athena

are few and far

between. Understandably

in the

light

of the emphatically anti-colonial and

anti-racialist

orientation of Basil

Davidson's workingnral, heimmediately showedhissympathyin alongiframbl ing

review: Davidson, B. , 'The ancient world andAfrica: Whose roots?' [Review of M.

Bernai, Black Athena

f\ ,Race and Class: A

Journalfor Black

an d

Third World

Liberation, 29,2 : 1-15, 1987, reprinted in:Davidson,B. , 1994, The search far Africa:

History, culture,politics,

Ne w

York: Times Books/ London: James Currey,

p p.

318-

333. A sympathetic rfrence also in: Jewsiewicki, B., 1991, 'Le prim itivism e, le

postcoloniahsme, lesantiqui ts"ngres" et laquestion nationale',

Cahiers

d'tudes

africaines, 31 ,

12l/

122: 191-213. Jon athan Friedman, a prominent wri ter on

globalisation issues,

makes

a passing rfrence to Bernai: Friedman, J., 1992, 'The Past

in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity',American Anthropologist, 94, 4:

837-59,

p.

840.

A

non-Africanist contribution

in an

Africanist environment

ha s

been:

Young, R.,

1994, 'The postcolonial construction

of

Africa', paper read

at the

conference

'African

research futures', University of Manchester, April 1994. Also cf. van

Binsbergen inQuest, 1996, o.e. The Africanists'aloofness and part of its background is

well voiced by Preston

Blier,

S., 1993, 'Trutha ndseeing: Magic, custom, andfetish in

art history', in: Robert H. Bates, V.Y.Mudi m be&Jean O'Barr , eds., Africa

and the

disciplines: The

contributions

of research in Africa to the social sciences an d

humanities, Chicago: Universityo f Chicago Press, pp. 139-166(the only rfrence to

Bernai

in thatauthoritative Africanist book), p. 16 1f, n. 23:

'One can cite an issue of importance to both

Africanists

and Europeanists.

It

is

already so deeply embroiled in a "homet's nest"of feelings and scholarly discord,

that rational academie interchange is vi r tua l ly impossible. I am speaking, of

course,

of

Martin Bernal 's

query

into

th e

philosophical links between Egypt

and

Europe in his controversial book Black Athena. I

will

not enter into the thick of

the

fray

by

discussing

the

relative merits

o r

demerits

of the

work,

b ut

suffice

it so

say thatIhave heard amplyand angrily

from

both sides.A nd even

if

I didhavethe

expertise in both

Egyptian

an d Classicsto be able togivean informed opinion,my

observations

would be far more

important

at this pointi n t imefor theirassumed

politica worth thanf or their scholarly ment.M ypast field work exprience

with

24

implications of Bernal's view for the historical, political and intellectual

images of Africa which Africanists professionally produce today, and

which

perhaps more important

circulate incessantly

in the

hands

of

non-Africanists, in the media, public debate, and identity construction by

both

Whites

an dBlacks in thecontext ofboth local an dglobal

issues.

T he

reasons for the Africanists '

non-response

ar e manifold an d largely

respectable:

African

pre-colonial

history, a rapidly growing field in the1960san d

early

1970s,

ha s

gone

out of

fashion

as an

academie topic,

and so

have, more in

gnral,

at least, until therecent mergenceof the

globalisation perspective gran d

schemes

claiming extensive

interactions an dcontinuities

across

vast

expanss

oftimea ndspace.

Lingu istic skill amon g Africanists ha sdwindled to the

extent

that they

are prepared,

perhaps eveneager,

toaccept

withou t further proof

some

linguists' dismissive verdict on

Black Athena'&

linguistics.

Egyptocentric

claims wereconspicuous in African Studies in thefirst

halfof the

twentieth Century.

32

Besides

these

'Egyptianising'

scholarly

issues of art, belief, and societal change suggests that because of the

vitriolic

tenor

of the

associated debates, Black Athena clearly must deal with

a

subject

of

vital

scholarly importance...'

Nor is the

harvest

much greater from cosmopolitan, non-Afrocentrist African

philosophers. Mudimb e wrote a rather positive review: Mudimbe, V.Y. 1992, 'African

Athena?',

Transition,

5 8: 114-123.But although appearing five years after

Black Athena

I, K.A. Appiah's influential In myfather's house:

Africa

in the philosophy of culture,

New York & London: Oxford University Press, 1992, devotes only on e l ine in a

footnote to Bernai, merely as a source on the lack of racialism among the ancient

Greeks; later, when expou nding the dangers of

Afrocentrism,

Appiah is more elaborate,

identifies Bernai as a non-Afrocentristhero of Afrocentrists, but continues to be only

mildly interested: Appiah, 'Europe Upside Down',

o.e.

"Cf. Breui l ,H., 1951, 'Further dtailso frock-paintings and other discoveries. 1.

The painted rock 'Chez Tae', Leribe, Basutoland,2. A new typeo frock-painting

from

th rgion of Aroab, South-West Africa, 3. Egyptian bronze

found

in Central Congo',

South

African

Archaeological

Bulletin,

4 :46-50 (which

estabhshes

for a fact th

occasional pntration of items of ancient Egyptian

materia

culture far into sub-Saharan

Africa, Shinnie however believes it to be a rcent intrusion : Shinn ie, P.L., 1971, 'The

legacy to Africa', in J.R. Harris, ed.,

Th e

legacy

of Egypt,

2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon

Press, pp.

434-55,

p. 438); Meyerowitz, E.L.R., 1960, The

divine

kingship in

Ghana

and inAncient Egypt, London: Faber & Faber; Ptrie,

W.M.F. ,

1915, 'Egypt in

Africa',

Ancient

Egypt,

1915, 3-4: 115-127, 159-170; Schmidl, M. , 1928, 'Ancient

Egyptian techniques in

African

spirally-woven baskets', in: Koppers,

W .,

ed.,

Festschrift/Publication

d'hommage

o f f e r t e

au

P.W.

Schmidt,

Vienna : Mechita ris ten-

Congregations-Buchdruckerei, pp

282-302; Sel igman, C.G., 1934, Egypt

and Negro

Africa'

A

study

in

divine kmgslup, London. Routledge; Seligman, G.G., 1913, 'Some

aspects

of

th Hamit ic

problem m th Anglo-Egyptian

Sudan ' ,

Journal

of the

Royal

Anthropological

Institute o f Grt

Bntain

and Ireland,43'

593-705,

W a m w n ght,

G.A.,

1949, 'Pharaonic surviva i s , Lake Chad to the west coast',

Journal

of Egyptian

25


9/28

studies

byestabl ishedAfricanist anthropologists an d archaeologists,

present-day Africanists are particularly concerned not to revive the

cruder forms of Egyptocentric

diffusionism

as in the works byEll iot

Smith

and Perry (the first Manchester School in

anthropology,

before

Ma x G lu c k m a n founded his ) ,

w ho

saw Egypt as the only global

civilising force,

whose

seafarers presumably carried their

su n cult

throughout the Old World and beyond.

33

Another spectre to be

left

locked up in the cupboard is that of the civil ising Egyptians (or

Phoenicians, for that matter), invoked as the origin ators of any lasting

physical

sign of civilisation in sub-S aharan Africa, especially the Great

Z imbabwe complex

in the

country

of

that

name.

34

More recently,

Egyptocentrism hasbeen sovoc ally reiterated inCheikh AntaDiop's

work and his Afrocentric followers in Africa and the

U.S.A.,

35

that

excessive

careis

taken among many Africanists today

not to

become

entangled in that sort of issue.

Q u i c k

to

recognise

th e

ideological element

in the

Africas

as

propounded byothers,Africanists most of which are North Atlantic

Whites

are, with notable

exceptions,

36

ratherless

accustomed

to

consider,

self-consciously,

the political and identity implications of the

images of Africa they themselves produce.

To put it mildly, one cannot

rule

out the possibility that, as a

fruit

of a

similar inspiration to which Bernai attributes the

mergence

of the myth of

the

Greek genius, African Studiestoo

37

have

a

built-in

Eurocentrism

that

Archaeology, 35 : 16 7 -75. Further see my 'Rethinking Africa 's contribution ' ( this

volume).

33

Smith,

G.E., 1929,

The migratio ns ofearly culture: A study of the significance

of the geographical distribution of the

practice

of

mummtfication

as vidence of the

migration

ofpeoples and the

spread

of

certain customs

and beliefs,

2nd

ed., Manchester:

ManchesterUniversity Press;

first

published 1915; Smith, G.E., 1933, The diffusion of

culture, London; Perry,

W.J.,

1918, The megalithic culture of Indonesia, Manchester;

Manchester University Press; Perry, W.J., 1923,

The

childreno f

the

sun:

A

study

in the

early

history

of

civilization, L ondon; Meth uen ; Perry, W.J., 1935,

The

primordial

ocan,London:Methuen.

34

Caton-Thompson, G. , 1931, Th e

Zimbabwe

culture:

Ruins

an d

reactions,

Oxford:

C larendon Press; facsimile reprint, 1970, New York: Negro

Universities

Press;

Maclver,

D. Randal l , 1906, Mediaeval Rhodesia, London: Macmillan; Beach, D.N.,

1980, The Shona and Zimbabwe, 900-1850: An outline of Shona history, Gwelo:

Mamb o Press; Bent, J.T., 1969, Theruinedcitieso fM ashonaland, Buiaway o: Books of

Rhodesia,

Rhodesiana Reprint L ibrary, volume

5,

facsimile reproduction

of the third

dition, Longmans, Green & Co., London/ New York/ Bombay, 1896, first published

1892.

3

->Diop, Th e

cultural unity;

Diop, The African origin of civilization,

Diop,

Precolomal

Black Africa.

3

^Seenextfootnote.

37

Thish asbeenan

old discussion

inanthropology

which

howeverha s neverreally

26

prevents it from seriously considering such a totally reversed view of

intellectual world historya s Bernai is offering. Hre lies a tremendous

critical task

for

African

and

African American scholars today.

In an

earlier

gnration we have seen

ho w

African scholars l ike Okot p'Bitek an d

Archie Mafeje have

soughtto

explode

the

Eurocentric im plications

of the

then current work in the anthropology of African religion and ethnicity.

38

In the study of Asian societies and history, the critical reflection on the

models

imposed by North Atlantic

scholarship

has developed into a major

industry,ever

since

the

pub lication

of

Said'sOrientalism.^

B ut

where

ar e

the

Black scholars

to do the

same

fo r

Africa?

Th e

names

of

Appiah,

Mbembe,

M ud i mbe ,

could be

cited

hre;

40

b u t

their

most

obvious

intellectual peers,th eexponentso f 'African philosophy' today, seem more

concerned with re-dreaming rural Africa along dated anthropological

lines,

than waking

up to the

realities

of

cultural imperial ism

an d

repressive

tolrance

inintercontinental academia. It ishrethatthe anti-Eurocentrism

of

the

Black

Athena project could

play

a

most

valuable rle (especially

Volume I;Bernai'sstudyon th Phoenician and Egyptian contributionsto

Greek notions

o f

democracy

an d law;

41

and his

responses

o nth

history

caught

on: Cf.

Asad,

T.,

1973, d.,Anthropology an d th colonial encounter, London:

IthacaPress; Leclerc, G., 1972,Anthropologie etcolonialisme, Paris: Fayard; Copans,

J., 1975,

d.,

A nthropologie et imprialisme, Paris: Maspero; Fabian,

J -,

1983, T ime

and the other: How anthropology

makes

its object,

New York: Columbia University

Press; Asad,

T. ,

1986, 'The concept

of

cul tura l transla tion

in

Bri t i sh social

anthropology', in:Clifford , J., &Marcus, G., eds., 1986, Writing culture: The poetics

and politics

ofethnography,

Berkeley: University of California Press and many other

c on t r i bu t i on s

to

tha t important col lec tion;

Pels, P . & O.

Sa lemink, 1994,

' In troduction:

five

theses on ethnography as colonia l practice ' ,

History

an d

Anthropology,

8, 1-4: 1-34; Mu dimb e,V.Y. , 1988,

The invention

of

Africa: Gnosis,

philosophy, and the order of knowledge, Blooming ton & Indianapol is : Indiana

Univers i ty Press/ London: Currey; Mudimbe, V. Y. , 1994, The idea of Africa,

Bloomington/ London: IndianaU nivers i tyPress/ James Currey; Appiah,In

m y

father's

house.

38

Mafeje ,

A., 1971, 'The ideology of tribalism', Journal of Modern African

Studies,

9:

253-61; Okot p'Bitek, 1970, African religion in Western Scholarship,

Kampala:

EastAfrican Literature Bureau.

3

9

Said, E.W., 1979,

Orientalism, Ne w

York: Random House, Vintage Books;

Turner, B.S., 1994, Orientalism, postmodernism an d global ism,London/ New York:

Routledge;

C.

Breckenridge

& P. van der

Veer, 1993, eds., Orientalism and the

postcolonial

predicainent:

Perspectives from South Asia,

Phi ladelphia : Univers i tyof

Pennsylvania Press.

4

^Appiah,

In

my father's

house;

Mudi m be ,T he

invention

of

Africa',

Mudi m be ,

The idea

ofAfrica; Mbem be ,

A. ,

1988,Afriqu.es

indociles: Christianisme,

pouvoir et

Etat en socit postcoloniale,

Paris: Karthala;Mbemb e, A. ,

1992, 'Provisional

notes on

th post-colony',Africa, 62, 1 .

3-37.

41

Ber nal, M., 1993, 'Phoenician politics

and

Egyptian justice

m

Ancient

Greece',

m. Raaf laub,

K ,

ed.,

Anfange politischen Denkens in der Antike:

Die nah-ostlichen

Kulturenund dieGriechen,Munich:Oldenbo urg, pp. 241-61.

27


10/28

of

science

and on

Afrocentr ism,

now to be

collected

m Black Athena

writes

back; while his splendid contribution to the early history of the

alphabet

42

provides

anmspinng

model

for the

complex,

multicentred

inter-

continental interactionsatworkin and

around

t he

easternMediterranean

m

the formativem illennia of classical G reek civilisation.

Will Bernal 's thesis on the European history of ideas concerning

Egypt,

and his

stress

on the

rle

o f

Egypt

in the

context

of

actual

cultural

exchangesin theeastern M editerraneanin thethirda nd second mil lenn ium

BCE, stand up to the methodological and factual tests of the various

disciplinesconcerned?

Before

turningto theBlack Athena

debate

I

propose

to deal, in the followin g two sections,

with

two issues whichhelp to bring

that debate

in

proper perspective: the ideological component in cultural

history; an d Mar t in Berna l 's pos i t ion vis - -vis th e sociology of

knowledge.

4. Ideology an dcultural history

4.1.intercontinental interaction

Black Athena''s exposure of Eurocentrism

is

based on his work concerning

the

ancientcultural

a nd religieus

history

in the

eastern Mediterranean,

an d

concerning

the

perception

of the

Ancient Near

East in the

European

intellectual

tradition since

Antiquity

(more in particular the history of ideas

and

sociology

of

knowledge

of

North Atlantic

classical

studies since

Romanticism).

At one

level

of analysis Bernai resttes and popularises, with synthetic

scholarship,

what

ma ny

archaeologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists,

Semitists including Arabists, students of the history of science and the

history of

ideas, students

of the

history

of

magie, divination

and

astrology,

students

of

Hermetic

an d

Gnostic texts,

of

comparative religion

an d

mythology,

have begun

to

realise

in the

course

of the

twentiethCentury

on

the

basis

of

increasingly overwhelmin g

and

comprehensive vidence.

The

roots

o f

North Atlantic civil isation,includingwhat used

to beportrayeda s

the classical Greek geniu s allegedly incomparable and w ithout historical

antcdents have lon g been shown to lie to a considrable extent outside

Europe,

in

north-eastern

Africa

(Egypt)

as

well

as in the

rest

of the

Ancient

Near East: AncientMesopotamia, Iran, Syria, Anatolia, Palestine, Crte,

th e

Indus civil isation with which Mesopotamia

ha d

such ex tens ive

contacts. Of course this insight adds a most ironie commentary to North

Atlant ic cu l tu ra l hegemony as enforced by mi l i ta ry and economie

42

BernaI ,

Cadmean leners, cf my assessment of thisbook

in 'Alternative modeis'

(this volume)

28

dominance

in the

Late Modern era:

it

reduces Western European

civilisation

to upstart

status.

Even

ifEurope's

great cu ltural indebtedness

to the

Ancient Near East

(Southwest

Asia

an d

Northeast Africa)

is no

longer

the

rather carefully

constructed secret it was a hundred years ago, given thehostile rception

this insight received righ t

up to the1980s

(and perhaps even still,

as far as

languageand the classics ar econcerned) Bernai ca n only be admired fo r

the

courage

an d

persistence with which

h

emphasised

an dpopulansed

this

crucial insight, Althou gh

his

analytical attention

is

focused

on the

third

and second instead

of the

f i r st m i l l ennium BCE,

h is

simply right

in

reminding us of the

consistent

first

millennium record that claims extensive

spells

of

travel l ing

an d

s tudying

in

Egypt, Mesopotamia, perhaps even

India,

fo r

such major Greek intellectuals

asPlato,

Pythagoras, Plutarch,

an d

many others. Recent research

43

is

beg inning

to

explore

the

Greek

intellectual indebtedness

to the very

Achaemenid civilisation whose proud

military confrontation, at Marathon and Salamis, virtually and largely

through theimpacto fHerodotus' long-windedinterprtationof the Persian

wars

in his History

marks

the

beg inning

of

European geopolit ical

consciousnessas an ideological self-definition against 'theEast'.

4.2. Afroasiatic roots granted

but must w e reduce classical

Greek thoughttotheflotsam of intercontinental diffusion?

Spengler boldly states in his Untergang

de s

Abendlandes, one of the

earhest

a nd

most

uncom promising

attempts, amongEuropean scholars,

to

escapefrom Eurocentrism:

'Europeas aconcept oughtto be

struckfrom

the record ofhistory'.

43

Cf. Kmgsley, P., 1996, 'Meetings with Magi:

I raman

thmes among the

Greeks, from Xanthus of Lydia to Plato's Academy', Journal of

the

Royal Asiatic

Society of GreatBritam

and

Ireland (London), Kmgsley,P., 1994, 'Greeks, shamansan d

magie',

Studio.

Iranica, 23: 187-198

44

Spengler,

O., 1993,

D er

Untergang

des Abendlandes. Umrisseeiner Morphologie

der Weltgeschichte, Mnchen:DTV,first

pubhshed

JjggJMunchen:Beck, p. 22 n.

l .

'Das Wort Europa sollte

aus der

Geschichte gestrichen werden

'

An d

he

goes

onin the

samefootnote'

'

"Europa"

ist

leerer Schall Alles,

was

di e

Antike an

groen Schpfungen

hervorbrachte,

entstand

unter

Negationjeder kontinentalen Grenze zwischen

Ro m

un dCypern,

Byzanz

und Alexandna

Al les,

was

europaische

Kultur

heit, entstand

zwischen

W eichsel, Adn a

und Guadalquivi r

[ in other words,

way outside

Greece]

Und gesetzt,

da Griechenland zur Zeit des

Penkles "in Europa lag",

so

hegt

es

heute

[early 1920s,

when

th final sectionsofGreek terntory had onlyju s t been

wrestled

from thOttoman

Empire

Wv B ]

nicht

mehrdort'

29


11/28

His grt admirer, Toynbee,

45

although

m his later years more

optimistic

than

Spengler

as to man kind 's chances of working ou t some sort of

intercultural compromise, knewth civilisationof theWest to be only one

among

a

score

of

others,

waxingan d

waning

at the

tide

of time.

'L'Occident

est un

accident',

th French Marxist

thinker

Garaudy

46

remind s us half a century later, in a

plea

for a

dialogue

of

civilisations. Recently,

interculturalphilosophyh as

emerged (aroundt h work of

such

au thors as Kimmerle and

Mail)

47

i n

order

to

explore

the

theoretical

foundations

for a

post-racial

an dpost-

hegemonic cultural exchange at a global

scale.

Meanwhile, a more

pragmatic

axiom

o fculturalrelativism hasbeenth emain stock-in-tradeof

cultural

anthropologists eversince

th

1940s;it hasguided

individual field-

workers

through

long periods ofhumble accommodation tolocal cultural

conditionsverydiffrent

from

theirown, and on amore abstract level ha s

battled for a

theory

of cultural

equality, emphasis

on

cu l tu re

m

planned

development interventions,

etc.

Much

like

a ilother civilisations, th West

ha s developed an ideology of chauvinistethnocentrism, and m rcent

centuries it has had the

m ilitary, ideological,

technologicala nd

conomie

means of

practising this ethnocentrism aggressively

in

almost every corner

of

t h

world; unlikemanyother civilisations, however, th West ha s also

produced intellectual movements

I

mean:

th

science, technolog y,

art,

international

law, philosophy,

of th twentieth

century

C E

tha

in theory

critique and

surpass

Western ethnocentrism,and thatmpracticeobserve a

universalisai that hopefully forebodes th mergence of a global world

culture

in

which individual

cultural

traditions may meet

a nd

partly

merge.

Many

would

agre

that there (besides hunger, disease, infringement of

h u m a n rights,

war and

environmental

destruction)

lies

one of the most

crucialproblemsof the future of mankind.

In my opinion this universalism owes a spcifie original debt to th

creativity

of

classical Greek culture.

Th eproblematic of cultural creativityin a context of

diffusion

is far

^Toynbee,

A , 1988,A studv

of

history A newdition

revissa

and abridged by

th

author

and Jane Caplan,L ondon. Thames

&

Hudson, this dition

ftrst pubhshed972

4c

*Garaudy, R., 1977,Pour un dialogue des

civilisations.

L'Occident est un

accident,

Pans. Denoel

47

Kimmerle,

H ,

1983,Entwurf einer Philosophie des Wir.Schule des alternativen

Denkens,

Bo ch u m Ge r mi na l , K i mme r l e ,

H ,

1991,

ed ,

Philosophie in

Afrika

Afrikanische

Philosophie Annherungen an einen interkulturellen Philosophiebegriff,

Frankfur t am Main- Q um r a n , M a l l , R A, 1995,

Philosophie

im

Vergleich de r

Kultuien

Interkulturelle Philosophie,

eine

neue Orientierung, D a r m s t a d t

Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft

from

lost

on

Martin

Bernai,

48

whose self-identification

as a

'modified

diffusionist'

precisely

seeks

to capture th diffrence between the obsolete

model of mechanical transmission and

wholesale

adoption of unaltered

cul tura l

lments from distant provenance, and the far more attractive

model that insists

on a

local, crative transformation

of the

diffused

matenalonce it has

arrived

at the destinationarea:

'In the

early part

o f

this century , scholars

like

EduardMeyer,OscarMontehus, Sir

John Myres and Gordon Childe

49

ma i n t ame d

the two pnnciples of modif ied

diffusion an dex orientelux.In the

first

case,theyrejected thebehefsof the extreme

diffusiomsts,

wh o

maintamed that

'rnaster

races'

simply transposed

their

superior

civil izations to

otherplaces

a nd

less developed

peuples

They argued

instead,

that

unless therewas a

rapid

genocide, diffusion was acomphcated processof interaction

between the outside influences and the indigenous culture an d that thisprocess

itself

produced

something quahtatively

new.'^O

Here

we

encounter, once again

and not for the

last time

in

this

volume,

51

the

argument

of

transformative localisation

as a

necessary

complement

of the

argument

of diffusion.

Despite

hi s

occasional

Egyptocentric lapses into a view of diffusion as automatic andone-way,

Bernai often shows thath is aware of the tensions between

diffusion

an d

transformative

localisation:

'While I am convmced that thevast majonty ofGreek mythological thmescame

from Egypt

orPhoemcia,

it is equallyclear that their slection

an d

treatment

was

charactenstically

Greek,

and to

that extent theydid reflect

Greek

society.'

Even the most implacable critics of Martin Bernai (and I shall discuss them

at length below)

ca n

rest assured:

despite

their indig nant allgations

to the

contrary,

there

is no

indication that

he

tries

t o

reduce Greek culture

to the

flotsam ofintercontinentaldiffusion.

As far as the development of crit ical , universalist thought is

concerning,

admittance of th inno vative creativity of the destination area

simply means that thGreeks, like we ail, did attempt to stand on th

shoulders

of their

unmistakable

predecessors in

th

Ancient NearEast.

Admittedly, part of the production Systems, the language, the gods and

shrines, th myths , th magie an d astrology,

th

a lphabe t ,

th

mathematics, th nautical and trading skills, of the ancient Greeks were

scarcely their

ow n

invention

but had

clearly

identifiable antcdents among

.

Jsosee the 'third distortion'ofhis workasidentif ed irrB ernai, 'Responses to

Black Athena General and

hnguist i c

issues'.

49

InBlack Athena

II,

p 21 ,527, Bernai would al so ident i fyAr thurEvans , J D S

Pendlebury, and S Man natos, as

modified

diffusiomsts like himself

5

manifestation of

generalised

feg

epistemology.

Ind

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Black Athena Ten Years After