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ISSN: 0952-8822 (Print) 1475-5297 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctte20
Black Athena
Hannah Vowles & Glyn Banks
To cite this article: Hannah Vowles & Glyn Banks (1988) Black Athena, Third Text, 2:3-4, 151-155,
DOI: 10.1080/09528828808576195
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151
Black Athena
The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization
Vol 1: The Fabrication of
Ancient Greece 1785-1985
by Martin Bernai
Published by Free Association Books 1987
pp 576 £30 (paperback £15)
A review article by
Hannah Vowles/Glyn Banks
"The scholarly purpose of (Black Athena) is to open up new areas
of research to women and men with far better qualifications than I have.
The political purpose is, of course, to lessen European cultural
arrogance."
Thus Martin Bernai ends his introduction to 'The Fabrication of
Ancient Greece', the first published volume of his trilogy Black Athena.
These twin themes—that fundamental challenges to professional
disciplines tend to come from outside of them and to be looked upon
as heresy in the face of professionals' intellectual and emotional
investment in the academic status quo; and that Europeans have
"insisted on reserving a place in the most distant past for the peoples
who dominate world politics in their own period: that is to say, for
the Europeans"—provide two key reference points throughout Bernal's
history of the histories of Classical civilization.
Coming himself from an academic background in Chinese studies
via a concern with Vietnamese culture during the Vietnam war, and
then becoming intrigued with his own partially Jewish roots, Bernai
began to study the Hebrew and Phoenician languages. Surprised to
find that the two were mutually intelligible, he then also began to notice
striking correspondence with Greek. From there he found plausible
Indo-European and Ancient Egyptian roots which together with the
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two Semitic languages, accounted for 80-90% of the Greek vocabulary.
This did not fit however with the history of Ancient Greece which
Bemal had been taught—that Greek civilization was the result of the
mixture of the natural indigenous 'pre-Hellenic' population and an
invading force of superior Indo-European 'Hellenes' from the north.
Egyptian influence was entirely denied and Phoenician/Semitic
influence was considered highly questionable.
Later on in his researches he discovered that this version of the
history of Ancient Greece, which he calls the "Aryan Model", had
only emerged in the 1840s and 50s when, mainly in Germany, but also
in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, "counter-revolutionary intellectuals
saw the study of the Greeks as a way of re-integrating people alienated
by modern life, and even of re-establishing social harmony in the face
of the French Revolution."
At this time the threat of Egyptian philosophy to Christianity had
become acute. The Freemasons, who were at the centre of the
Enlightenment in its attack on Christianity, took Egyptian religion,
architecture, symbols and rituals as the basis of their cult, seeking a
return to what they understood as the natural and pure original religion
of Egypt, believing that Christianity was merely a collection of
misunderstood fragments of that great civilization and culture. In
opposition to Masonic thought and Sie dynamic seen to lie behind the
French Revolution, there developed a growing interest in classical
Greek culture as the ideal of artistic perfection. It was seen as a unified
but dynamic culture which could also provide a model for political
development that avoided both extremes of reaction and revolution.
Gradually the "Ancient Model" of Greek civilization—that the
Greeks were merely pupils of the Egyptians who had preserved and
transmitted a small part of their teachers' ancient wisdom—was eroded
by this hostility to the French Revolution. Bemal argues that there were
three other major factors influencing the growing interest in the Greeks
and their transformation into the pure and uncontaminated origin of
European civilization—the Aryan Model. These interconnected
phenomena were the notion of 'progress', the increase in racism, and
the impact of Romanticism.
The Ancient Greeks own view of their history, as written by
Herodotus, Plato and others, which forms the basis of the Ancient
Model, was generally accepted up until and during the Renaissance.
In the late 17th century the spread of European imperialism, especially
the continuing colonisation of the New World, with its twin policies
of extermination of the native Americans and the enslavement of
African blacks, coincided with the establishment of two new academic
disciplines in British and German universities—Altertumswissenschaft
('science of antiquity') or Classics, and 'racial science'. In Britain the
study of Classics was supposed to have a beneficial educational and
moral effect on the boys who were to be rulers of Britain and its empire.
Scientific racism established the principle that different races were
intrinsically unequal in physical and mental endowment; there were
strong and vital races ana there were weak and feeble ones.
In fact the two disciplines neatly functioned together in their use of
the classical writer Aristotle to justify slavery. In common with many
of his contemporaries, he believed that the Greeks were inherently
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superior to other races: "The races that live in cold regions and those
of Europe are full of courage and passion but somewhat lacking in
brainpower; for this reason, while remaining generally independent,
they lack political cohesion and the ability to rule others. On the other
hand, the Asiatic races have both brains and skill but are lacking in
courage and will-power; so they have remained both enslaved and
subject. The Hellenic race, occupying mid position geographically, has
a measure of both. Hence it has continued to be free, to have the best
political institutions and to be capable of ruling others given a single
constitution." (our emphasis)
In this way Aristotle linked racial 'superiority' to the right to enslave
others, especially those of a 'slavish disposition'. For the new academics
it was sett-evident that the greatest 'race' in world history was the
European or Aryan one. It alone had, and always would have, the
capacity to conquer all other peoples and to create advanced and
dynamic civilizations—as opposed to the static societies ruled.by Asians
and Africans.
European expansionism went hand-in-hand with its economic and
industrial advance or 'progress'. This paradigm of progress, the revival
of the Augustinian analogy between human history and the growth
of a child to maturity, naturally favoured 'later' civilizations over
'earlier' ones. In the same vein, 'progress' in academia radicalised the
methods of study of the new disciplines. The laws and practice of
natural science were now applied to the teaching of history, linguistics
etc., emphasizing objectivity, proof and factual evidence. 'Source
criticism'—the comparative assessment of the value of different
historical sources with reference to the social and historical context,
the 'spirit of the age', in which they were written, with preference being
given to those which the 'objective' historian judged to best reveal that
spirit—lent an air of scientific reliability to a process which in effect
merely reflected the era and concerns of the historian.
Thus "with the rise of racism, the ancient notion that Greece was
a mixed culture that had been civilised by Africans and Semites became
not only abominable but unscientific. Just as one had to discount the
'credulous' Greeks' stories about sirens and centaurs, so one had to
reject legends of their having been colonised by inferior races.
Paradoxically, the more the 19th century admired the Greeks, the less
it respected their writing of their own history." The illusion was created
of historical research progressing through time towards an ever more
reliable 'truth' about the past. Academic study in general was
transformed into separate specialised disciplines with their associated
professions, increasingly separate from each other and distant from
the traditional folk wisdom and knowledge of the lay public
Romanticism was perhaps the culmination of all the forces at work.
Bernai shows how the movement, although originally a reaction to
Enlightenment reason which it saw as inadequate and without emotion,
was also passionately concerned with 'origins'. Arising in the face of
that nation's cultural 'occupation' by the French, German Romanticism
was rooted in nationalism—linguistic, racial, geographic, cultural: the
attempt to recreate an authentic German civilization from the German
soil and German blood. Ancient Greece was looked upon as an ideal
for this, with the Greeks themselves as their literal ancestors.
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Nations were perceived by the Romantics to be formed by climate
and landscape. But more than that, they felt a particular combination-
temperate, mountainous and remote—produced the vigorous, virtuous
and primitive folk who were their ancestors. They believed in a pure
racial essence, progressively perfected by their invigorating homeland,
transmitted from generation to generation not through reason which
would reach any rational mind, but flowing through feeling which
could touch only those with 'blood' ties.
What was understood as the essentially pure racial characteristics
evolved in their remote past would appear by the same logic to be
compromised by any historical intermixing with inferior races moulded
in less favourable locations; especially those who were black and
therefore down at the bottom of the hierarchy of human racial
classification according to the new 'scientific' academic studies.
Bernai goes on to document the reaction against Egypt resulting from
this political and academic climate. Stable for thousands of years, the
Egyptian culture had maintained a high reputation for its philosophy
and science, but in particular for its political system. Gradually this
view was transformed into one of a static and sterile cul-de-sac riddled
with mysticism: an early civilization obsessed with death, whose
attempts in mathematics and philosophy had been sapped by
superstition and priestly dogmatism.
At the same time he documents the parallel rise of the Greeks—the
Greek War of Independence of 1821, perceived similarities in the
German and Greek languages and the further opening up of Greece
to travellers, especially Romantics who had to read the Iliad in situ.
Ancient Greek civilization provided the perfect model of a strong
conquering and colonising race with a supposedly pure culture,
triumphing over inherently weaker races. This civilization eventually
came to be seen as transcending history altogether, cultural, political
and linguistic—it became the innocent childhood of Europe and of the
Aryan race.
As Bannister Fletcher wrote in his History of Architecture (1896 edition):
"Greek architecture stands alone in being accepted as beyond criticism
and as being obligatory study for students of otherwise very different
principles"; and on Indian and Chinese architecture: "From an
architect's point of view, these non-historical styles can scarcely be so
interesting as those which have progressed on the solution of constructive
problems, resolutely met and overcome, as was the case in Europe." (our
emphasis)
The final consolidation of the extreme version of the Aryan Model
and the denial of both Egyptian and Phoenician/Semitic influence on
Greece is clearly related by Bernai to the transformation of traditional
religious hatred of the Jews into racial anti-Semitism, and in particular
to its two climaxes—first, the mass migration of Eastern European Jews
into Western Europe and the Dreyfus affair of the 1880s and 90s; and
second, the crucial role of Jews in international Communism and the
Russian Revolution, and during the economic crises of the 1920s and
30s. And although the academic credibility for the Aryan model was
primarily established in Germany and culminated in the Third Reich,
Bernai shows that anti-Semitism, racism, hero-worship of the Greeks,
and belief in the infallibility of 'objective science', continue to be all
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commonplace in 'democratic society', including universities and their
academic publications, all over northern Europe and North America.
Throughout the book Martin Bernai cites many authors who have
to varying degrees put forward unorthodox views challenging the
Aryan model. For most of them their credibility has been virtually non-
existent within the mainstream; many of them have given up their
research in this area, having been treated as cranks and heretics (except
sometimes by the 'ignorant' public), unable to publish in the university
presses or sometimes at all, and therefore ignored or scorned. 'Black
Athena' itself is published by Free Association Books and is written
in a style which does not exclude the 'interested amateur', but which
is nevertheless exhaustive in its detailed and fascinating research in
etymology, linguistics, literary criticism, music, social history,
mythology, historiography, and so on, and is obviously also meant
to be usable as a text book.
Bernai says emphatically that he has tried to put forward theoretical
arguments on the basis of competitive plausibility—that he is not trying
to prove that the Aryan model is 'wrong'—but to argue that it has been
constructed using a particular hierarchy of evidence in the name of
scientific objectivity, and that a different attitude to the available
evidence, be it archeological finds, or linguistic studies, or myths and
legends, can provide a more fruitful framework for futher research.
In short, history is a discourse not a search for definitive truth.
Perhaps his greatest challenge is to the legacy of the Greeks as the
godlike ancestors of Europe, beyond history and beyond criticism.
Ahistorical and apolitical categories such as geometry, proportion,
harmony, beauty—so-called universal forms and universal value—are
brought potentially into the harsh critical arena of ideology and vested
interests.
Hoever, despite the consequences of anti-Semitism revealed in 1945,
the 'scientific' Extreme Aryan Model survived for more than thirty years
afterwards, demonstrating the hold of scientific proof. Gradually it has
given way to a 'Broad Aryan Model' which has relented on racism but
still cannot tolerate Egypt. Thus in Volume 2 ('Greece European or
Levantine? The Egyptian and West Semitic Components of Greek
Civilization') he will be investigating linguistic connections between
Greek, Egyptian and Semitic, given the failure of scholars working
within the Aryan model over the past 160 years to explain 50% of the
Greek vocabulary and 80% of proper names in terms either of Indo-
European or the Anatolian languages with their supposed relationship
to the 'pre-Hellenic' theory. And in Volume 3 ('Solving the Riddle of
the Sphinx and Other Studies in Egypto-Greek Mythology') he looks
at possible Egyptian influences on Greek mythological and religious
names, thus making comprehensible large areas of what has hitherto
all too conveniently been a complete mystery.
