TALANTA XXVIII-XXIX (1996-1997)

BLACK ATHENA TEN YEARS AFTER

towards a constructive re-assessmenfl

Wim van Binsbergen

African Studies Centre, Leiden/ Department of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of
Development, Free University, Amsterdam

L Introduction
This special issue of TALANTA is based on the proceedings of the one-
day conference 'Black Athena: Africa's contribution to global Systems of
knowledge', held at the Afncan Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands,
28 June, 1996. That conference was conceived and initial préparations
were made at the Netherlands Institute for 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 Martin Bernai's controversial two
volumes of Black Athena would be timely considenng the minimum extent
to which Dutch scholarship had so far participated in the debate smce its
inception in the late 1980s.2 The stakes of this debate include not only the

© 1997 W M J van Binsbergen

'Earlier versions of this argument were presented at the conference on 'Black
Athena Afnca's contribution to global Systems of knowledge', African Studies Centre,
Leiden, The Netherlands, 28 June, 1996, and at the Afnca Research Centre, Catholic
University Louvain, 8 November, 1996 I am indebted to Martin Bernai, Jan Best,
Josme Blok, and Arno Egberts, for repeated and profound exchanges on the theoretical
and empincal problems central to the present volume, to these colleagues, and to Pieter
Boele van Hensbroek, Filip de Boeck, and Renaat Devisch, for useful comments, to the
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS),
Wassenaar, where the present argument was largely conceived when I spent a fruitful and
excitmg academie year 1994-95 at NIAS as a member of the thème group on 'Religion
and Magie m the Ancient Near East', and to my wife and children, without whose

t.me/BooksandYou
unconditional support this book project — modest in itself but glanngly ambitious in
view of my academie background and skills, and unexpectedly difficult because of lts
ideological tangles — would never have been completed For official acknowledgements
see the mam text
^Bernai, M , 1987, Black Athena The Afroasiatic roots of classical civihzation,
Vol I, The fabrication of Ancient Greece 1787-1987, London Free Association Books/
New Brunswick Rutgers University Press, Bernai, M , 1991, Black Athena The

11
rewriting of the history of the eastern Mediterranean in the third and Operating from thé national African Studies Centre, which is part of the
second millennium BCE; and the Eurocentric déniai — as from the Leiden University social science faculty, meant being aloof of the U.S.A.
eighteenth Century CE — of intercontinental contributions to Western scène where thé debate had concentrated. It also meant being separated,
civilisation; but also the place of Africa in global cultural history, and and by a considérable social, institutional and geographical distance, from
today's re-assessment of that place especially by 'Afrocentric'3 scholars — scholars who at Leiden and elsewhere in thé Netherlands pursue thé
in majority Blacks holding appointments in the U.S.A. and in African disciplines which had so far dominated thé Black Athena debate: classics,
universities.4 ancient history, archaeology, historical linguistics, Egyptology, thé history
of ideas and of science. From the beginning it was clear that crossing that
distance would require such major efforts (also because such few Dutch
Afroasiatic roots of classical civilisation, II. The archaeological and documentary responses to Black Athena as existed had been largely dismissive),5 that
évidence, New Brunswick (N.J.): Rutgers University Press; also cf. Bernai, M., 1990,
Cadmean letters: The transmission of the alphabet to the Aegean andfurther west bef ore thé immédiate resuit could only be eclectic and initiatory, at best.
1400 B.C., Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. The main collection of critica! studies of Black If nonetheless the conference was a success and led to the présent
Athena is: Lefkowitz, M.R., & MacLean Rogers, G., eds., 1996, Black Athena collection of papers, it was largely to thé crédit of others. Martin Bernai
revisited, Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press.
3
The term Afrocentrism was coined by M.K. Asante, cf. 1990, Kernet, not only agreed to participate and did so with inspiring openness and
Afrocentricity, and knowledge, Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press (on Bernai, see pp. charm, but also his three original contributions to thé présent volume6
100-104 of that work). Por clarity's sake we must distinguish between two essential already lend it far greater relevance to thé ongoing debate than I could hâve
variants of Afrocentrism: one which cherishes images of an original (or prospective) hoped for. Jan Best, the ancient historian, put his network, advice and
African home as a source of inspiration, identity and self-esteem; and thé other variety,
which claims that Africa possesses thèse qualities for thé spécifie reason that ail enthusiasm at my disposai, besides contributing a stimulating paper of his
civilisation originales there. I personally identify with thé former variant; it is the latter own — examining Cretan seals from thé early 2nd millennium BCE for
one I object to, for reasons of both historical évidence and rejection of all subordinative signs of Egyptian influence.7 The Egyptologist Arno Egberts' chance
claims in the field of culture. Given the ambiguity of the term Afrocentrism it is attendance at the conference led to an improvised intervention (on thé
understandable that Bernal's position in this respect has caused some confusion. Despite
his gréât sympathy for thé movement he has repeatedly distanced himself from its historical linguistics relevant to Bernal's proposed dérivation of the Greek
exclusivist, even racialist variants (e.g. Black Athena II, p. xxii). In his review of name Athena from thé Ancient Egyptian expression Ht Nt, 'House of the
Lefkowitz, M., 1996, Not out of Africa: How Afrocentrism became an excuse to teach goddess Neith' i.e. thé western Delta town of Saïs); Egberts' argument has
myth as history, New York, Basic Books, Bernai States (Bryn Mawr Classical Review,
1996, Internet journal, p. 3):
Athena: The African and Levantine roots of Greece', pp. 66-82 — so the first published
'thé label 'Afrocentrist' has been attached to a number of intellectual positions product of thé Black Athena project, already with that controversial title firmly in place,
ranging from (...) "Africa créâtes, Europe imitâtes" to those, among whom I see appeared in an Afrocentrist context!); Rashidi, R., & I. van Sertima, eds., 1985, African
myself, who merely maintain that Africans or peoples of African descent have made présence in early Asia, spécial issue of Journal of African Civilisations; Rashidi, R.,
many significant contributions to world progress and that for the past two 1992, Introduction to thé study of African classical civilizations, London: Karnak
centuries, these have been systematically played down by European and North House; van Sertima, I., éd., 1986, Gréât African thinkers, vol. I: Cheikh Anta Diop,
American historians'. New Brunswick & Oxford: Transaction Books; Finch, C.S., 1990, The African
4 background to médical science, London: Karnak House. For a sobering African critique,
Cf. Diop, C.A., 1974, The African origin of civilisation: Myth or reality? trans.
M. Cook, Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill; Diop, C.A., 1987, Precolonial Black cf. Appiah, K.A., 1993, 'Europe upside down: Fallacies of the new Afrocentrism',
Africa: A comparative study of the political and social Systems of Europe and Black Times Literary Supplément (London), 12 February, pp. 24-25. For a critique of
Africa, from Antiquity to thé formation of modem States, trans. HJ. Salemson, Afrocentrism with spécial référence to Martin Bernal's Afrocentrist sympathies in Black
Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill; Diop, C.A., 1989, The cultural unity of Black Africa: Athena, cf. Palter, R., 1993, 'Black Athena, Afro-centrism, and thé history of science',
The domains of patriarchy and of matriarchy in classical antiquity, London: Karnak History of Science, 31, no. 3: 227-87, reprinted in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e.,
House; James, G.G.M., 1973, Stolen legacy: The Greeks were not the authors ofGreek pp. 209-266 (see also Bernal's response: Bernai, M., 1994, 'Response to Robert Palter',
philosophy, but thé people of North Africa, commonly called thé Egyptians, New York: History of Science, 32, no. 4: 445-64, and Palter's rejoinder, ibidem, pp. 464-68);
Philosophical Library, reprinted, San Francisco: Julian Richardson Associates, first Snowden, F.M., Jr, 1996, 'Bernal's "Blacks" and thé Afrocentrists', in: Lefkowitz &
published 1954; Noguera, A., 1976, How African was Egypt: A comparative study of MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 112-127; and Lefkowitz, Not out of Africa.
5
Egyptian and Black African cultures, New York: Vantage Press; Asante, Kernet', van On the details of the Dutch reception, see extensive footnote 26 below
6
Sertima, I., 1983, éd., Black!, m science. Ancien! and modem, New Brunswick, N.J.: Martm Bernai, 'Responses to Black Athena. General and linguistic issues',
Transaction Books; van Sertima, I., 1984, Black Women in Antiquity, New Brunswick, 'Response to Arno Egberts', 'Response to Josme Blok' (all m this volume).
N.J.: Transaction Books; van Sertima, I., 1985, éd., African présence in early Europe, 'Jan Best, 'The ancient toponyms of Mallia: A post-Eurocentnc reading of
New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books (with Martin Bernal's contribution: 'Black Egyptianising Bronze Age documents' (this volume).

12 13
now been worked into fully-fledged, well documented critical paper.8 The issue of TALANTA, which is particularly fitting since this journal is a
historian (both ancient and modern) Josine Blök in her paper insisted on Netherlands-based international venue for ancient history and archaeology,
historiographie method and intimate knowledge of early 19th-century CE specialising on thé eastern Mediterranean. The editors of TALANTA (Dr.
classical scholarship äs devastatingly criticised by Bernal; in this way she Jan Stronk and Dr. Maarten de Weerd, with their colleagues Dr. Jan de
raises crucial problems: the requirement of examining all available factual Boer and Dr. Roald Docter, and as archaeological artist Mr Olaf E.
data before passing judgement (notably, a verdict of anti-Semitism and Borgers) have ensured that this volume meets professional standards, and
racism) on historical actors; the relative weight of external (socio-political) facilitated its production in every possible way.
and internai (new data and methods) in thé history of science; and finally Here they now appear in very heavily edited, revised and expanded
academie and political integrity in the context of such sensitive topics as form, augmented with new contributions not only from Arno Egberts but
identity, ethnicity, and especially race.9 Wim van Binsbergen, Africanist also from Wim van Binsbergen (triggered by Jan Best's paper),12 as well
and theoretician of ethnie and intercultural relations, explored some of the as two responses by Martin Bernal to the papers by Josine Blok and Arno
implications of the Black Athena thesis both from a theoretical point of Egberts. This collection at least marks the fact that in the Netherlands the
view10 and on the basis of a historical and comparative empirical analysis reception of the Black Athena problematic has progressed beyond the
of two major African formal Systems.11 The latter leads him to conclude initial stage. It constitutes an invitation to our national colleagues to
that the Black Athena thesis strikingly illuminâtes Africa's vital, initial contribute further critical and constructive work along these lines. If Black
contribution to global cultural history in Neolithic and (outside Africa) Athena has managed to generale comprehensive and complex, passionate
Bronze Age contexts, but fails to appreciate Africa's cultural achievements interdisciplinary international debate over the past ten years, scholarship in
as well as involution in thé more récent millennia; this allows him to the Netherlands can only benefit from being drawn into that debate, even if
identify substantial tasks for further research and rethinking. at a late stage.
Two other contributors who helped to make thé conférence a success It is certainly not too late, for despite unmistakable hopes to the
could most regrettably not be incorporated in thé présent collection for contrary on the part of the editors of the recent collection of critical essays
personal and technical reasons: the historian of ideas Robert Young, who Black Athena revisited,13 the issue is still alive and kicking. With
looked at thé appropriation of Egyptological material in thé 'scientific' understandable delay, more volumes of Black Athena and a défiant
discourse of racism in thé U.S.A. South of the mid-19th Century CE; and answer14 to the dismissive Black Athena revisited have been projected by
thé linguist and ancient historian Fred Woudhuizen, who in an oral Martin Bemal. What is more important is that enough material, debate and
présentation assessed Bernai's Egyptocentric linguistic claims in thé reflection has now been generaled for us to try and sort oui whalever
context of linguistic diversity and interaction in thé eastern Mediterranean lasling conlribulion Bernal may have made, sifting such support and
in thé second millennium BCE. acclaim as he has received (not only in Ihe form of Afrocentrist
Further indispensable contributions came from Rijk van Dijk who co- appropriation of nis work but also from some of the most distinguished
organised thé conférence with me. And from thé African Studies Centre in scholars in Ihe relevanl fields), — from his obvious errors and one-
général, which — not for the first time — trustfully endorsed my sidedness which the mass of critical wriling on ihis issue since 1987 has
explorations beyond thé standard topics of African Studies, and provided brought to light.
adéquate financial, library and secrétariat support without which thé Such a task cannot be fully accomplished within ihe 200-odd pages of
présent volume would never hâve materialised. Fred Woudhuizen made it Ihe present collection. Yet its tille Black Athena: Ten Years After has a
possible that thé conférence proceedings are now published as a spécial significance beyond Ihe flavour of alavistic chivalry, continuous
skirmishes and ambushes, and the hopes of ultimale glory, as in A.
8 Arno Egberts, 'Consonants in collision: Neith and Athena reconsidered' (this
volume).
9
Josine H. Blok, 'Proof and persuasion in Black Athena I: The case of K.O. van Binsbergen, 'Alternative models of intercontinental interaction towards
Müller' (this volume). the earliest Cretan script' (this volume).
'"in a paper now greatly revised and expanded so as to form the present argument. 13
11
M.R. Lefkowitz & G. MacLean Rogers, eds , Black Athena revisited, Chapel
Wim van Binsbergen, 'Rethinking Africa's contribution to global cultural Hill & London University of North Caroline Press, 1996.
history: Lessons from a comparative historical analysis of mankala board-games and 14
Bernal, M., m préparation, Black Athena writes back, Durham: Duke University
geomantic divination' (this volume). Press

14 15
Dumas' The Three Musketeers, with Martin Bernai cast in the obvious rôle highly significant claim (to which I return below) that in the case of proper
of d'Artagnan. It brings out that ours is not merely another instalment to names and between languages from different families, the established
thé debate. sound laws of historical linguistics do not work anyway. In thé same
There is of course that element too, vide thé exhaustive and, in my paper, he looks back at the Black Athena discussion over the past ten
opinion, définitive critical essays by Blok and Egberts on two central years, denounces Black Athena revisited in strong terms, engages in an
issues of thé Black Athena argument which hitherto hâve met with enlightening discussion of some common misrepresentations of his work
relatively little specialist treatment: Greek-Egyptian etymologies, and thé and views, and for the first time explicitly seeks to situate Africa
methods and politics of Bernal's historiography of nineteenth-century linguistically and phenotypically (but hardly culturally) within the Black
classical studies.15 Martin BernaPs response to Josine Blok is courteous Athena context. Also for the first time he présents a more systematic
and réceptive. His admittance of having grossly misinterpreted, in Black treatment of the historical and interactive linguistics on which his views on
Athena I, thé limited material hè had read on the pioneer classicist K.O. the 'Afroasiatic17 roots of classical civilization' are based. Jan Best argues
Müller is scholarly and sincère. Yet one can hardly believe that he (cf. p. for an Egyptianising reading of the Cretan seals, thus offering a spécifie
22X below) 'had' truly Blok's kind of devastating criticism 'in mind' example of how the Black Athena thesis could be fruitfully deployed in
when, at thé end of Black Athena I, he expressed the hope that thé book spécifie research contexts; meanwhile he calls attention to Syrio-Palestinian
would 'open up new areas of research by women and men with far better and Anatolian, in addition to Egyptian influences.18 Wim van
qualifications than myself ; much as one regrets that he does not address Binsbergen,19 in a contribution specifically written in response to Best's
what are clearly Blok's main points, on integrity, identity, race, and thé analysis, argues the complexities of the intercontinental cultural interaction
rôle of internai and external factors in thé history of science. If Martin which produced the earliest Cretan script; he stresses the argument of
Bernal's response to Egberts' paper is short, dismissive, and (in ils long transformative localisation as a necessary complement of the argument of
digression on Soviet linguistics, and his promise to write his memoirs at diffusion. His claim is that after two successive transformative
thé âge of 80 as his only concession) rather flippant, it is partly because in localisations at focal points along the Levantine coast (Byblos and northern
his own original paper for this collection,16 he has covered much of the
same etymological ground in considérable détail — notwithstanding his
^ Black Athena's subtitle. The term 'Afroasiatic' désignâtes a language group
which includes Semitic — e.g. Phoenician, Ugaritic, Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, as
15
Yurco, F.J., 1996, 'Black Athena: An Egyptological review', in: Lefkowitz & well as the South Arabian and Ethiopie languages — besides non-Semitic branches such
MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 62-100, p. 78, has one 11-line paragraph on thé dérivation of as ancient Egyptian, Chadic, Beja, Berber, and three branches of Cushiüc. Bernai uses
Athena from fit Nt. Jasanoff, J.H., & Nussbaum, A., 1996, 'Word games: The the term (and its counterparts: the désignations of other such language families including
linguistic évidence in Black Athena', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 177- Indo-European) both in a narrowly linguistic sense and in order to dénote the spécifie
205, présent a dismissive assessment of thé Ht Nt-Athena etymology which however is cultures of speakers of these languages, and occasionally to dénote the large démographie
exclusively based on established Indo-European historical linguistics and has no clusters constituting the gene pool of people speaking such languages and having such
grounding in Egyptology; Rendsburg, G.A., 1989, 'Black Athena: An etymological cultures. Cf. Martin Bernai, 'Responses to Black Athena: General and linguistic issues',
response', m: M. Myerowitz Levine & J. Peradotto, eds., The Challenge of 'Black this volume, for illustrations of this usage. Such usage may not be totally unjustified
Athena', spécial issue, Arethusa, 22: 67-82, p. 72-73, also raises objections from a considering the Whorf thesis which however is controversial; cf. Whorf, B. L., 1956,
historical linguistic point; cf. Black Athena I, p. 452, n. 4 and M. Bernai, 'Responses Language, Thought, and Reahty, New York/ London: M.I.T. Press: Black, M., 1959,
to critica! reviews of Black Athena, volume I', Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 3, 'Linguistic relativity: the views of Benjamin Lee Whorf, Philosophical Review,
1990, pp. 111-137. Egberts' paper 'Consonants in collision' cites and builds upon that LXVIII: 228-38. Also, culture including language is among other things a form of
earlier work but goes beyond it and is the first full-length Egyptological treatment. As communication and distinction serving, in practice if not in the actors' conscious
far as Blok's article is concerned, Bernal's 18th-century CE historiography was first intention, to demarcate the gene pool of the local reproducmg Community. Even so the
questioned in two articles which, hke Jasanoff & Nussbaum's etymological attack, were correspondences and corrélations between language, culture and phenotype are merely
especially commissioned for Black Athena revisited: Norton, R.E., 1996, 'The tyranny statistical, very often spurious, and they never rise to the point of one to one
of Germany over Greece? Bernai, Herder, and thé German appropriation of Greece', in: relationships. Therefore Bernal's use of Afroasiatic and of other such terms mtroduces a
Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 403-409, and: Palter, R., 1996, 'Eighteenth- lack of précision which has been one of the factors producing the emotional and
century historiography m Black Athena', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. occasionally vicious overtones of the Black Athena debate. It means an invitation to be
349-401. Blok's paper was first presented at thé Leiden 1996 conference, when a appropnated by pnmordialist identity discourses from left and right, White and Black.
shortened version was in thé press with thé Journal of thé History ofldeas. By mutual See my discussion m section 4.3 below.
agreement of ail parties concerned thé longer version is pubhshed m this volume. !*J Best, 'The ancient toponyms of Malha'.
19
16
M. Bernai, 'Responses to Black Athena. General and hnguistic issues'. Wim van Binsbergen, 'Alternative models of intercontinental interaction'.

16 17
 Syria) any original Egyptian contribution would have been greatly eroded 2. Martin Bernal's Black Athena project
and conventionalised before it ever contributed to Cretan hieroglyphic.
Like so many other participants in thé Black Athena debate, 20 both British-born Martin Bernai (1937- ) is a Cambridge (U.K.)-trained
contributing authors concur with Martin Bernai's stress on intercontinental Sinologist. His spécialisation on the intellectual history of Chinese/
exchanges in thé eastern Mediterranean in thé second and third millennium Western exchanges around 1900 CE,22 in combination with his — at the
BCE, but they express concern about thé — by and large probably time — rather more topical articles on Vietnam in the New York Review of
unintended — suggestion of unidirectional Egyptocentrism in some of his Books, earned him, in 1972, a professorship in the Department of
work.
Government at Cornell University, Ithaca (N.Y., U.S.A.). There hè was
However, thé présent collection is also an attempt to go beyond a mère soon to widen the, geographical and historical scope of his research, as
listing of pros and cons. It seeks to help define in what ways, on what indicated by the fact that already in 1984 hè was to combine this
grounds, and under which stringent methodological and epistemological appointment with one as adjunct professor of Near Eastern Studies at the
conditions, Martin Bernal's crusade deserves to hâve a lasting impact on same university. Clearly, in mid-career hè had turned23 to a set of
our perception of the ancient eastern Mediterranean; on our perception of questions which were rather remote from his original academie field. At
thé intercontinental antécédents of thé European civilisation which is one of the same time they are crucial to the North Atlantic intellectual tradition
thé principal contributors to thé global cultural domain whose émergence since the eighteenth Century CE, and to the way in which this tradition has
we are witnessing today; and on our perception of Africa. hegemonically claimed for itself a place as the allegedly unique centre, the
Apart from thé African dimension, which is new to thé debate, this is original historical source, of the increasingly global production of
as in previous spécial issues of scholarly Journals devoted to thé Black knowledge in the world today. Is — as in the dominant Eurocentric view
Athena debate,21 yet reveals almost thé opposite aim from Black Athena — modern global civilisation the product of an intellectual adventure that
revisited, l am very pleased that, contrary to that much more voluminous, started, as from scratch, with the ancient Greeks — the unique resuit of the
comprehensive and prestigieus book from which Martin Bernai was latter's unprecedented and history-less achievements? Or is the view of the
deliberately excluded and which was intended to render ail further Greek (read European) genius as the sole and oldest source of civilisation,
discussion of Black Athena a waste of time, hè is the principal contributor merely a racialist myth. If the latter, its doublé aim has been to underpin
to the present collection. In a way which does credit to that remarkable delusions of European cultural superiority in the Age of European
scholar, it will be clear to the careful reader that this state of affairs has Expansion (especially the nineteenth Century CE), and to free the history of
enhanced, not diminished, the volume's potential for criticism — but of a European civilisation from any indebtedness to the (undoubtedly much
constructive kind.
older) civilisations of the région of Old World agricultural révolution,
So far I have taken a basic knowledge of the Black Athena debate for extending from the once fertile Sahara and from Ethiopia, through Egypt,
granted, but for many readers some further introduction may be needed. Palestine and Phoenicia, to Syria, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Iran — thus
encompassing the narrower Fertile Crescent — and the Indus Valley. Hère
Minoan, subsequently Mycenaean Crète occupies a pivotai position as
either 'the first European civilisation in the Eastern Mediterranean'; or as
an 'Afroasiatic'-speaking island outpost of more ancient West Asian and
20
Cf. Bowersock, G.W., 1989, Journal of Interdisciplmaiy History, 19: 490-91, Egyptian cultures; or as both at the same time. The most likely view would
Konstan, D., 1988, Research in African Literatures, 4 (Winter): 551-554; Myerowitz
Levine, M., 1990, 'Classical scholarship: Anti-Black anti-Semitic?' Bible Review, 6 stress — foreboding the equally dissimulated dependence of médiéval
(6/1990). 32-36 and 40-41; Malamud, M.A., 1989, Criticism, 1: 317-22; Rendsburg, European civilisation on Arab and Hebrew sources — a vital 'Afroasiatic'
G.A., 1989, 'Black Athena: An etymological response'; Trigger, B., 1992. "Brown contribution to the very origins of a civilisation (se. the Greek,
Athena: Postprocessual goddess?, Current Anthropology, 2/92: 121-123; Vickers, M., subsequently European, now North Atlantic one) which has bred the most
1987, Antiquity, 61 (Nov.): 480-8J; Whittaker, C.R., 1988, 'Dark âges of Greece',
BntishMedicalJournal, 296 (23/4): 1172-1173. vicious anti-Semitism, both anti-Jew and anti-Arab/ Islam, in the course of
2J
Cf. Meyerowitz Levine & Peradotto, in' Arethusa, 22 (Fall), 1987, Journal of the twentieth Century.
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). 22
23
Bernal,
M , 'Chinese sociahsm before 1913', Ph.D., Cambridge University.
Cf. Black Athena I, p. xiiff.

18
19
 Bernal's monumental Black Athena, projected as a tetralogy of which comparative linguistics is adequate.
so far the first two volumes have been published, addresses these issues Meanwhile in the Netherlands the echoes of the ongoing Black Athena
along two main lines of argument. The first volume, besides presenting an debate has been, as said above, scarcely audible.26
extremely ambitieus but provisional and deliberately unsubstantiated Where Bernal's central thesis was picked up most enthusiastically,
outline of the promised findings of the project as a whole, is mainly a immediately to be turned into an article of faith, was in the circles of
fascinating exercise in the history and sociology of European academie African American intellectuals. Here the gréât present-day signifiçance of
knowledge. It traces the historical awareness, among European cultural Black Athena was rightly recognised: not so much as a purely academie
producers, of ancient Europe's intellectual indebtedness to Africa and
Asia, as well as the subséquent repression of such awareness with the 26
invention of the ancient Greek miracle since the 18th Century CE. The 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
second line of argument présents the converging historical, archaeological, 1996 conference: Best, J., 1992-93 (actually published 1994), 'Racism in classical
linguistic and mythological évidence for this indebtedness, which is then archaeology', in: Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical
symbolised by Bernal's re-reading (taking Herodotus seriously)24 of Society, 24-25: 7-10; Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H., 1995, 'Was Athene zwart?',
Amsterdamse Boekengids Interdisciplinair, p. 10-15; Derks, H., 1995, De koe van Troje:
Athena, apparently the most ostentatiously Hellenic of ancient Greek De mythe van de Griekse oudheid, Hilversum: Verloren, p. 87, n.; Leezenberg, M.,
deities, as a peripheral Greek émulation of the goddess Neith of Saïs — as 1992, 'Waren de Grieken negers? Black Athena en het Afrocentrisme', Cimedart, Feb/
Black Athena. Mar. Outside academia, in the context of drama production, and remarkably Afrocentrist:
Reception of the two volumes of Black Athena so far has been Ockhuyzen, R., 1991, 'Het verzinsel van de Griekse beschaving', in: Aischylos, De
smekelingen, [Suppliants] trans. G. Komrij, Amsterdam: International Théâtre & Film
chequered. Classicists, who read the work not so much as a painstaking Books / Theater van het Oosten, pp. 11-13. I was unable to trace an article on Black
critique of North Atlantic Eurocentric intellectual culture as a whole but as Athena reputed to be published in the Dutch conservât!ve weekly Elsevier, Spring 1996.
a denunciation of their discipline by an unqualified outsider, hâve often Of three subséquent Dutch contributions, two were directly related to our 1996
been viciously dismissive; far less so — especially before thé publication conference and appear in altered form in the present volume: Blok, J.H., 1996, 'Proof
and persuasion in Black Athena; The case of K.O. Müller', Journal of the History of
of Volume II — specialists in archaeology, thé cultures and languages of Ideas, 57: 705-724; and: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1996, 'Black Athena and Africa's
thé Ancient Near East, and comparative religion. Virtually every critic has contribution to global cultural history', Quest — Philosophical Discussions: An
been impressed with thé extent and depth of Bernal's scholarship — he International African Journal of Philosophy, 1996, 9, 2 / 10, 1: 100-137. The third
contribution, smugly insisting on the primai originality of Anaximander as the first
shows himself a dilettante in thé best possible tradition of the homo scientific astronomer while ignoring any pre-existing astronomy in the Ancient Near
universalis. At the same time, much of his argument is based on thé East, is: Couprie, D.L., 1996, 'The concept of space and the "Out of Africa"
allegedly substantial 25 traces of lexical and syntactic material from discussion', paper read at The SSIPS [Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and
Afroasiatic (including Ancient Egyptian, and West-Semitic) languages in Science] / SAGP [Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy] 1996, 15th Annual
Conference: 'Global and Multicultural Dimensions of Ancient and Médiéval Philosophy
classical Greek; while there is no doubt that he has thé required command and Social Thought: Africana, Christian, Greek, Islamic, Jewish, Indigenous and Asian
of thé main languages in this connexion (Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek), thé Traditions,' Binghamton University, Department of Philosophy/ Center for Médiéval
question hère is whether his insight in theoretical, historical and and Renaissance studies (CEMERS), Binghamton (N.Y.), U.S.A.
In his main contribution to the present volume, Martin Bernai bitterly signais a
24
widespread conviction that the publication of Black Athena revisited has put paid to the
On Egyptian Athena: Hist. II 28, 59, 83 etc., and in général on thé Greeks' entire debate; this effect is also noticeable in: Bommeljé, B., 'Waren de Grieken
religieus indebtedness to Egypt: Hist. II 50ff The identification of Neith with Athena afronauten?', NRC-Handelsblad, book review section, 2/5/1997, p. 37. Egberts in the
was not
25
limited to Herodotus but was a generally held view in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. title of his critique (this volume) puns on the title of the pseudo-scientist I.
Cf. Black Athena I, 484 n. 141: Velikovski's Worlds in collision, London: Gollancz, 1950 ; fortunately, Egberts does
'Näturally, I maintain that the reason it is so remarkably easy to find not try to support his psychoanalytical suggestions as to Bernal's motives by a référence
correspondences between Egyptian and Greek words is that between 20 and 25 to I. Velikovski's Oedipus and Akhnaton: Myth and history, London: Sidgwick, 1960,
percent of the Greek vocabulary does in fact dérive from Egyptian ! ' which claims that even the Oedipus myth — the one achievement of classical Greek
civilisation to become a household word throughout North Atlantic culture today —
This précise statistical statement is often repeated in Bernal's work, Yet the originated in pharaonic court intrigue. For Bernai on Velikovski, cf. Black Athena I, p.
numerical procedures underpinning it have so far not been made exphcit by him. 6. With his choice of title, the science journalist Bommeljé chooses to highlight what
Meanwhile the sample of proposed Egyptian etymologies of Greek words äs included in he thmks is a parallel with another pseudo-scientist, E. von Daniken, Waren de goden
his 'Responses to Black Athena' (this volume) may convince the reader that, at least at astronauten?, Deventer: Ankh-Hermes, 1970, originally German, published in English
the qualitative level, the claim is not without grounds. as Chariots of the gods (the pun only works for the title of the Dutch édition).

20 21
 correction of remote, ancient history, but as a revolutionär? contribution to
welcome when it was first formulated, and imaginative Semitist scholars
thé global politics ofknowledge in our own âge and time. The liberating
like Gordon and Astour found themselves under siege when they
potential of Bemal's thesis has been that it has accorded intellectuals from published their significant contributions in the 1960s. Black Athena has
outside thé politically and materially dominant North Atlantic, White
done a lot to drive this insight home and to popularise it, making it
tradition an independent, even senior, historical birth-right to füll available to circles thirsting for it while building and rebuilding their own
admission and participation under thé global intellectual sun. Egypt is
identity. Meanwhile Bernai himself does not claim excessive originality:
claimed to hâve civilised Greece, and from there it is only one step to the
vision that Africa, thé South, Black people, hâve civilised Europe, thé '...it should be clear to any reader that my books are based on modern scholarship.
The ideas and information I use, do not always come from the champions of
North, White people; the ultimate answer to the imperialist (including conventional wisdom, but very few of the historical hypotheses put forward in Black
cultural-imperialist) claims of the 'white man's bürden'. Such a view Athena are original. The series' originality comes from bringing together and
clearly ties in with a host of current Afrocentrist publications making making central, information that has previously been scattered and peripheral'.2^
similar claims or with thé Egyptocentric idioms among present-day African
intellectuals in, e.g., Nigeria, Senegal and Zaire. But coming from a White
upper-class academician who is socially and somatically an outsider to 3. Into Africa?
Black issues, thé impact is truly enormous. Hère Black Athena is built into
thé ongoing construction of a militant Black identity, offering as an option 'Der Kulturmorphologie wird also vor der Frage gestellt, ob
— not contemptuous rejection, nor parallel self-glorification as in thé die Räume jenseits der ägyptisch-babylonischen Kultur
context of Senghor's and Césaire's négritude, in the face of the dominant, völkerkundliches Material zu bieten vermögen, das zum
White, North Atlantic model, but — the explosion of that model. And this Verständnis der Entfaltung der ägyptischen und babylonischen
Kultur räum-, zeit- und sinngemäß Entscheidenes beitragen
leads on to its replacement by a model of intercontinental intellectual kann.' (Leo Frobenius, 193l)29
indebtedness, in which Europe is affirmed to have been, until as recently
as the first millennium BCE, a réceptive periphery of the civilisations of Although Egypt is a part of North East Africa, Black Athena displays a
the région of Old World agricultural révolution; classical Greek double blind spot where Africa is concerned. An obvious implication of
civilisation, whatever its achievements, no longer can be taken to have Bernal's thesis would be to explore the roots of Egyptian civilisation in its
been original and autonomous, but was building on this intercultural turn. Towards ancient Egyptian origins, people from elsewhere on the
indebtedness. African continent, e.g. the Upper Nile valley and the once fertile central
Given the phénoménal expansion of Ancient Near Eastern and
Egyptological studies in the course of the twentieth Century, we should not Python: A study ofDelphic myth and its origins, Berkeley etc.: University of California
have needed Bernai to broadcast this insight in the first place. Ex oriente Press; paperback édition, reprint of the 1959 first édition. Ex Oriente Lux of course has
also been, for decades, the name of the Dutch society for the study of the Ancient Near
lux, 'light cornes from the east', not only sums up the daily subjective East, and of its journal. Also cf. Bernal's rather telling admission of initially
expérience of sunrise anywhere on earth, but has also been the slogan of overlooking the significance of this rallying cry, Black Athena II, p. 66. M. Liverani
an increasing number of students of the Ancient Near East since the (1996, 'The bathwater and the baby', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 421-
beginning of the twentieth Century.27 The message however was scarcely 427) meanwhile calls our attention to the essential Eurocentrism implied in the slogan,
which hè therefore refuses to accept as a valid guideline for ancient history today:
'The shift of cultural primacy from the Near East to Greece (the one dealt with in
27
Scholarly studies outside the context of the Black Athena debate yet insisting on Bernal's book) was interpreted in line with two slogans: Ex Oriente Lux (...)
the essential continuity between the civilisations of the Ancient Near East, include e.g., mostly used by Orientalists) and 'The Greek miracle' (mostly used by classicists).
Kramer, S.N., 1958, History begins at Suiner, London; Neugebauer, O., 1969, The These slogans appeared to represent opposing ideas but in fact were one and the
exact sciences in Antiquity, New York: Dover, 2nd édition; first published 1957; same notion: the Western appropriation of ancient Near Eastern culture for the sake
Gordon, C., 1962, Before the Bible: The common background of Greek and Hebrew of its own development' (p. 423).
Civilizations, New York: Harper & Row; Gordon, C.H., 1966, Evidence for the 28
Minoan language, Ventnor (NJ): Ventnor Pubhshers; Saunders, J.B. de C.M., 1963, Bemal, M., in press, 'Review of "Word games: The linguistic évidence in Black
The Transitions from ancient Egyplian to Greek médiane, Lawrence: University of Athena", Jay H. Jasanoff & Alan Nussbaum', forthcormng m Bernal's Black Athena
writes back, o.e.
Kansas Press; Astour, M.C., 1967, Hellenosemitica: An ethnie and cultural study in 2
West Senutic impact on Mycenean Greece, 2d ed., Leiden- Bnll; Fontenrose, J., 1980, ^Leo Frobenius, 1931, Erythraa: Länder und Zeiten des heiligen Konigsmordes,
Berlin/Zürich: Atlantis-Verlag, 1931, p. 347.

22 23
 Sahara, made the principal contributions. What did the interior of Africa implications of Bernal's view for the historical, political and intellectual
thus contribute to Egypt, and via Egypt, to classical Greek, European, images of Africa which Africanists professionally produce today, and
North Atlantic, global, civilisation? Bernai has remained largely silent on which — perhaps more important — circulate incessantly in the hands of
this point. Also one might expect thé argument on Afroasiatic languages to non-Africanists, in the media, public debate, and identity construction by
be traced further inland into thé African continent. These steps Bernai both Whites and Blacks in the context of both local and global issues. The
obviously could not yet take.30 He can hardly be blamed for this, not only reasons for the Africanists' non-response are manifold and largely
in view of the enormity of this additional task and of the scope of nis actual respectable:
accomplishments, but also because Africanists have so far, with few
exceptions, 31 ignored him. They have refrained from exploring the • African pre-colonial history, a rapidly growing field in the 1960s and
early 1970s, has gone out of fashion as an academie topic, and so
30
Cf. J. Baines, 1996, 'On the aims and methods of Black Athena', in: Lefkowitz have, more in général, — at least, until the recent émergence of the
& MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 27-48, p. 32. However, cf. Bernai, 'Responses to Black globalisation perspective — grand schemes claiming extensive
Athena: General and linguistic issues' (this volume). In fact, Bernai explored Afroasiatic interactions and continuities across vast expansés of time and space.
and Semitic language origins in one of his first papers the Black Athena project was to
yield: Bernai, M., 1980, 'Spéculations on the disintegration of Afroasiatic', paper • Linguistic skill among Africanists has dwindled to the extent that they
presented at the 8th Conference of the North American Conference of Afroasiatic are prepared, perhaps even eager, to accept without further proof some
Linguistics, San Francisco, April 1980, and to the Ist international Conference of linguists' dismissive verdict on Black Athena'& linguistics.
Somali Studies, Mogadishu, July 1980. The paper was never published but is currently
attracting revived interest. • Egyptocentric claims were conspicuous in African Studies in the first
31
Africanist discussions of Black Athena are few and far between. Understandably half of the twentieth Century.32 Besides these 'Egyptianising' scholarly
in the light of the emphatically anti-colonial and anti-racialist orientation of Basil
Davidson's work in général, he immediately showed his sympathy in a long if rambling
review: Davidson, B., 'The ancient world and Africa: Whose roots?' [Review of M. issues of art, belief, and societal change suggests that because of the vitriolic tenor
Bernai, Black Athena f\ , Race and Class: A Journal for Black and Third World of the associated debates, Black Athena clearly must deal with a subject of vital
scholarly importance...'
Liberation, 29, 2: 1-15, 1987, reprinted in: Davidson, B., 1994, The search far Africa:
History, culture, politics, New York: Times Books/ London: James Currey, pp. 318- Nor is the harvest much greater from cosmopolitan, non-Afrocentrist African
333. A sympathetic référence also in: Jewsiewicki, B., 1991, 'Le primitivisme, le philosophers. Mudimbe wrote a rather positive review: Mudimbe, V.Y. 1992, 'African
postcoloniahsme, les antiquités "nègres" et la question nationale', Cahiers d'études Athena?', Transition, 58: 114-123. But although appearing five years after Black Athena
africaines, 31, 12l/ 122: 191-213. Jonathan Friedman, a prominent writer on I, K.A. Appiah's influential In my father's house: Africa in the philosophy of culture,
globalisation issues, makes a passing référence to Bernai: Friedman, J., 1992, 'The Past New York & London: Oxford University Press, 1992, devotes only one line in a
in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity', American Anthropologist, 94, 4: footnote to Bernai, merely as a source on the lack of racialism among the ancient
837-59, p. 840. A non-Africanist contribution in an Africanist environment has been: Greeks; later, when expounding the dangers of Afrocentrism, Appiah is more elaborate,
Young, R., 1994, 'The postcolonial construction of Africa', paper read at the conference identifies Bernai as a non-Afrocentrist hero of Afrocentrists, but continues to be only
'African research futures', University of Manchester, April 1994. Also cf. van mildly interested: Appiah, 'Europe Upside Down', o.e.
Binsbergen in Quest, 1996, o.e. The Africanists' aloofness and part of its background is •"Cf. Breuil, H., 1951, 'Further détails of rock-paintings and other discoveries. 1.
well voiced by Preston Blier, S., 1993, 'Truth and seeing: Magic, custom, and fetish in The painted rock 'Chez Tae', Leribe, Basutoland, 2. A new type of rock-painting from
art history', in: Robert H. Bates, V.Y. Mudimbe & Jean O'Barr, eds., Africa and the thé région of Aroab, South-West Africa, 3. Egyptian bronze found in Central Congo',
disciplines: The contributions of research in Africa to the social sciences and South African Archaeological Bulletin, 4: 46-50 (which estabhshes for a fact thé
humanities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 139-166 (the only référence to occasional pénétration of items of ancient Egyptian materia! culture far into sub-Saharan
Bernai in that authoritative Africanist book), p. 161f, n. 23: Africa, Shinnie however believes it to be a récent intrusion: Shinnie, P.L., 1971, 'The
'One can cite an issue of importance to both Africanists and Europeanists. It is legacy to Africa', in J.R. Harris, ed., The legacy of Egypt, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon
already so deeply embroiled in a "homet's nest" of feelings and scholarly discord, Press, pp. 434-55, p. 438); Meyerowitz, E.L.R., 1960, The divine kingship in Ghana
that rational academie interchange is virtually impossible. I am speaking, of and in Ancient Egypt, London: Faber & Faber; Pétrie, W.M.F., 1915, 'Egypt in
course, of Martin Bernal's query into the philosophical links between Egypt and Africa', Ancient Egypt, 1915, 3-4: 115-127, 159-170; Schmidl, M., 1928, 'Ancient
Europe in his controversial book Black Athena. I will not enter into the thick of Egyptian techniques in African spirally-woven baskets', in: Koppers, W., ed.,
the fray by discussing the relative merits or demerits of the work, but suffice it so Festschrift/Publication d'hommage offerte au P.W. Schmidt, Vienna: Mechitaristen-
say that I have heard amply and angrily from both sides. And even if I did have the Congregations-Buchdruckerei, pp 282-302; Seligman, C.G., 1934, Egypt and Negro
expertise in both Egyptian and Classics to be able to give an informed opinion, my Africa' A study in divine kmgslup, London. Routledge; Seligman, G.G., 1913, 'Some
observations would be far more important at this point in time for their assumed aspects of thé Hamitic problem m thé Anglo-Egyptian Sudan', Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Gréât Bntain and Ireland, 43' 593-705, Wamwnght, G.A.,
politica! worth than for their scholarly ment. My past field work expérience with
1949, 'Pharaonic survivais, Lake Chad to the west coast', Journal of Egyptian

24 25
 studies by established Africanist anthropologists and archaeologists,
prevents it from seriously considering such a totally reversed view of
present-day Africanists are particularly concerned not to revive the
intellectual world history as Bernai is offering. Hère lies a tremendous
cruder forms of Egyptocentric diffusionism as in the works by Elliot
critical task for African and African American scholars today. In an earlier
Smith and Perry (the first Manchester School in anthropology, before
génération we have seen how African scholars like Okot p'Bitek and
Max Gluckman founded his), who saw Egypt as the only global
Archie Mafeje have sought to explode the Eurocentric implications of the
civilising force, whose seafarers presumably carried their sun cult
then current work in the anthropology of African religion and ethnicity.38
throughout the Old World and beyond.33 Another spectre to be left
In the study of Asian societies and history, the critical reflection on the
locked up in the cupboard is that of the civilising Egyptians (or
models imposed by North Atlantic scholarship has developed into a major
Phoenicians, for that matter), invoked as the originators of any lasting
industry, ever since the publication of Said's Orientalism.^ But where are
physical sign of civilisation in sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Great
the Black scholars to do the same for Africa? The names of Appiah,
Zimbabwe complex in the country of that name.34 More recently,
Mbembe, Mudimbe, could be cited hère;40 but their most obvious
Egyptocentrism has been so vocally reiterated in Cheikh Anta Diop's
intellectual peers, the exponents of 'African philosophy' today, seem more
work and his Afrocentric followers in Africa and the U.S.A.,35 that
concerned with re-dreaming rural Africa along dated anthropological lines,
excessive care is taken among many Africanists today not to become
entangled in that sort of issue. than waking up to the realities of cultural imperialism and repressive
tolérance in intercontinental academia. It is hère that the anti-Eurocentrism
• Quick to recognise the ideological element in the Africas as
of the Black Athena project could play a most valuable rôle (especially
propounded by others, Africanists — most of which are North Atlantic
Volume I; Bernai's study on thé Phoenician and Egyptian contributions to
Whites — are, with notable exceptions,36 rather less accustomed to
Greek notions of democracy and law;41 and his responses on thé history
consider, self-consciously, the political and identity implications of the
images of Africa they themselves produce.
caught on: Cf. Asad, T., 1973, éd., Anthropology and thé colonial encounter, London:
To put it mildly, one cannot rule out the possibility that, as a fruit of a Ithaca Press; Leclerc, G., 1972, Anthropologie et colonialisme, Paris: Fayard; Copans,
similar inspiration to which Bernai attributes the émergence of the myth of J., 1975, éd., Anthropologie et impérialisme, Paris: Maspero; Fabian, J-, 1983, Time
and the other: How anthropology makes its object, New York: Columbia University
the Greek genius, African Studies too37 have a built-in Eurocentrism that Press; Asad, T., 1986, 'The concept of cultural translation in British social
anthropology', in: Clifford, J., & Marcus, G., eds., 1986, Writing culture: The poetics
Archaeology, 35: 167 -75. Further see my 'Rethinking Africa's contribution' (this and politics ofethnography, Berkeley: University of California Press — and many other
volume). contributions to that important collection; Pels, P. & O. Salemink, 1994,
33
Smith, G.E., 1929, The migrations ofearly culture: A study of the significance 'Introduction: five theses on ethnography as colonial practice', History and
of the geographical distribution of the practice of mummtfication as évidence of the Anthropology, 8, 1-4: 1-34; Mudimbe, V.Y., 1988, The invention of Africa: Gnosis,
migration ofpeoples and the spread of certain customs and beliefs, 2nd ed., Manchester: philosophy, and the order of knowledge, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana
Manchester University Press; first published 1915; Smith, G.E., 1933, The diffusion of University Press/ London: Currey; Mudimbe, V.Y., 1994, The idea of Africa,
culture, London; Perry, W.J., 1918, The megalithic culture of Indonesia, Manchester; Bloomington/ London: Indiana University Press/ James Currey; Appiah, In my father's
house.
Manchester University Press; Perry, W.J., 1923, The children of the sun: A study in the 38
early history of civilization, London; Methuen; Perry, W.J., 1935, The primordial Mafeje, A., 1971, 'The ideology of tribalism', Journal of Modern African
océan, London: Methuen. Studies, 9: 253-61; Okot p'Bitek, 1970, African religion in Western Scholarship,
34 Kampala: East African Literature Bureau.
Caton-Thompson, G., 1931, The Zimbabwe culture: Ruins and reactions,
Oxford: Clarendon Press; facsimile reprint, 1970, New York: Negro Universities Press; 39Said, E.W., 1979, Orientalism, New York: Random House, Vintage Books;
Maclver, D. Randall, 1906, Mediaeval Rhodesia, London: Macmillan; Beach, D.N., Turner, B.S., 1994, Orientalism, postmodernism and globalism, London/ New York:
1980, The Shona and Zimbabwe, 900-1850: An outline of Shona history, Gwelo: Routledge; C. Breckenridge & P. van der Veer, 1993, eds., Orientalism and the
Mambo Press; Bent, J.T., 1969, The ruinedcities of Mashonaland, Buiawayo: Books of postcolonial predicainent: Perspectives from South Asia, Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Rhodesia, Rhodesiana Reprint Library, volume 5, facsimile reproduction of the third 4
édition, ^Appiah, In my father's house; Mudimbe, The invention of Africa', Mudimbe,
1892. Longmans, Green & Co., London/ New York/ Bombay, 1896, first published The idea of Africa; Mbembe, A., 1988, Afriqu.es indociles: Christianisme, pouvoir et
3
->Diop, The cultural unity; Diop, The African origin of civilization, Diop, Etat en société postcoloniale, Paris: Karthala; Mbembe, A., 1992, 'Provisional notes on
Precolomal Black Africa. thé post-colony', Africa, 62, 1. 3-37.
3 41
^See next footnote. Bernal, M., 1993, 'Phoenician politics and Egyptian justice m Ancient Greece',
37
This has been an old discussion in anthropology which however has never really m. Raaflaub, K , ed., Anfange politischen Denkens in der Antike: Die nah-ostlichen
Kulturen und die Griechen, Munich: Oldenbourg, pp. 241-61.

26 27
 of science and on Afrocentrism, now to be collected m Black Athena
writes back; while his splendid contribution to the early history of the dominance in the Late Modern era: it reduces Western European
civilisation to upstart status.
alphabet42 provides an mspinng model for the complex, multicentred inter-
continental interactions at work in and around the eastern Mediterranean m Even if Europe's great cultural indebtedness to the Ancient Near East
the formative millennia of classical Greek civilisation. (Southwest Asia and Northeast Africa) is no longer the rather carefully
Will Bernal's thesis on the European history of ideas concerning constructed secret it was a hundred years ago, given the hostile réception
this insight received right up to the 1980s (and perhaps even still, as far as
Egypt, and his stress on the rôle of Egypt in the context of actual cultural
exchanges in the eastern Mediterranean in the third and second millennium language and the classics are concerned) Bernai can only be admired for
BCE, stand up to the methodological and factual tests of the various the courage and persistence with which hè emphasised and populansed
disciplines concerned? Before turning to the Black Athena debate I propose this crucial insight, Although his analytical attention is focused on the third
to deal, in the following two sections, with two issues which help to bring and second instead of the first millennium BCE, hè is simply right in
that debate in proper perspective: the ideological component in cultural reminding us of the consistent first millennium record that claims extensive
history; and Martin Bernal's position vis-à-vis the sociology of spells of travelling and studying in Egypt, Mesopotamia, perhaps even
knowledge. India, for such major Greek intellectuals as Plato, Pythagoras, Plutarch,
and many others. Recent research43 is beginning to explore the Greek
intellectual indebtedness to the very Achaemenid civilisation whose proud
4. Ideology and cultural history military confrontation, at Marathon and Salamis, virtually — and largely
4.1. intercontinental interaction through the impact of Herodotus' long-winded interprétation of the Persian
wars in his History — marks the beginning of European geopolitical
Black Athena''s exposure of Eurocentrism is based on his work concerning consciousness as an ideological self-definition against 'the East'.
the ancient cultural and religieus history in the eastern Mediterranean, and
4.2. Afroasiatic roots granted — but must we reduce classical
concerning the perception of the Ancient Near East in the European Greek thought to theflotsam of intercontinental diffusion?
intellectual tradition since Antiquity (more in particular the history of ideas
and sociology of knowledge of North Atlantic classical studies since Spengler boldly states in his Untergang des Abendlandes,^ one of the
Romanticism). earhest and most uncompromising attempts, among European scholars, to
At one level of analysis Bernai restâtes and popularises, with synthetic escape from Eurocentrism:
scholarship, what many archaeologists, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, 'Europe as a concept ought to be struck from the record of history'.
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 and Gnostic texts, of comparative religion and 43
mythology, have begun to realise in the course of the twentieth Century on Cf. Kmgsley, P., 1996, 'Meetings with Magi: Iraman thèmes among the
Greeks, from Xanthus of Lydia to Plato's Academy', Journal of the Royal Asiatic
the basis of increasingly overwhelming and comprehensive évidence. The Society of Great Britam and Ireland (London), Kmgsley, P., 1994, 'Greeks, shamans and
roots of North Atlantic civilisation, including what used to be portrayed as magie', Studio. Iranica, 23: 187-198
44
the classical Greek genius — allegedly incomparable and without historical Spengler, O., 1993, Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Umrisse einer Morphologie
der Weltgeschichte, München: DTV, first pubhshed JjggJMunchen: Beck, p. 22 n. l.
antécédents — have long been shown to lie to a considérable extent outside
Europe, in north-eastern Africa (Egypt) as well as in the rest of the Ancient 'Das Wort Europa sollte aus der Geschichte gestrichen werden '
Near East: Ancient Mesopotamia, Iran, Syria, Anatolia, Palestine, Crète, And he goes on in the same footnote'
the Indus civilisation with which Mesopotamia had such extensive ' "Europa" ist leerer Schall Alles, was die Antike an großen Schöpfungen
contacts. Of course this insight adds a most ironie commentary to North hervorbrachte, entstand unter Negation jeder kontinentalen Grenze zwischen Rom
Atlantic cultural hegemony as enforced by military and economie und Cypern, Byzanz und Alexandna Alles, was europaische Kultur heißt, entstand
zwischen Weichsel, Adna und Guadalquivir [in other words, way outside Greece]
42 Und gesetzt, daß Griechenland zur Zeit des Penkles "in Europa lag", so hegt es
BernaI, Cadmean leners, cf my assessment of this book in 'Alternative modeis' heute [early 1920s, when thé final sections of Greek terntory had only just been
(this volume)
wrestled from thé Ottoman Empire — WvB] nicht mehr dort '

28
29
 His gréât admirer, Toynbee,45 although m his later years more optimistic
than Spengler as to mankind's chances of working out some sort of from lost on Martin Bernai,48 whose self-identification as a 'modified
intercultural compromise, knew thé civilisation of the West to be only one diffusionist' precisely seeks to capture thé différence between the obsolete
among a score of others, waxing and waning at the tide of time. model of mechanical transmission and wholesale adoption of unaltered
'L'Occident est un accident', cultural éléments from distant provenance, and the far more attractive
model that insists on a local, créative transformation of the diffused
thé French Marxist thinker Garaudy46 reminds us half a century later, in a matenal once it has arrived at the destination area:
plea for a dialogue of civilisations. Recently, intercultural philosophy has 'In the early part of this century, scholars like Eduard Meyer, Oscar Montehus, Sir
emerged (around thé work of such authors as Kimmerle and Mail)47 in John Myres and Gordon Childe49 maintamed the two pnnciples of modified
order to explore the theoretical foundations for a post-racial and post- diffusion and ex oriente lux. In the first case, they rejected the behefs of the extreme
diffusiomsts, who maintamed that 'rnaster races' simply transposed their superior
hegemonic cultural exchange at a global scale. Meanwhile, a more civilizations to other places and less developed peuples They argued instead, that
pragmatic axiom of cultural relativism has been the main stock-in-trade of unless there was a rapid genocide, diffusion was a comphcated process of interaction
cultural anthropologists ever since thé 1940s; it has guided individual field- between the outside influences and the indigenous culture and that this process itself
produced something quahtatively new.'^O
workers through long periods of humble accommodation to local cultural
conditions very différent from their own, and on a more abstract level has Here we encounter, once again and not for the last time in this
battled for a theory of cultural equality, emphasis on culture m planned volume,51 the argument of transformative localisation as a necessary
development interventions, etc. Much like ail other civilisations, thé West complement of the argument of diffusion. Despite his occasional
has developed an ideology of chauvinist ethnocentrism, and m récent Egyptocentric lapses into a view of diffusion as automatic and one-way,
centuries it has had the military, ideological, technological and économie Bernai often shows that hè is aware of the tensions between diffusion and
means of practising this ethnocentrism aggressively in almost every corner transformative localisation:
of thé world; unlike many other civilisations, however, thé West has also
produced intellectual movements — I mean: thé science, technology, art, 'While I am convmced that the vast majonty of Greek mythological thèmes came
from Egypt or Phoemcia, it is equally clear that their sélection and treatment was
international law, philosophy, of thé twentieth century CE — thaï in theory charactenstically Greek, and to that extent they did reflect Greek society.'^
critique and surpass Western ethnocentrism, and that m practice observe a
universalisai that hopefully forebodes thé émergence of a global world Even the most implacable critics of Martin Bernai (and I shall discuss them
culture in which individual cultural traditions may meet and partly merge. at length below) can rest assured: despite their indignant allégations to the
Many would agrée that there (besides hunger, disease, infringement of contrary, there is no indication that he tries to reduce Greek culture to the
human rights, war and environmental destruction) lies one of the most flotsam of intercontinental diffusion.
crucial problems of the future of mankind. As far as the development of critical, universalist thought is
In my opinion this universalism owes a spécifie original debt to thé concerning, admittance of thé innovative creativity of the destination area
creativity of classical Greek culture. simply means that thé Greeks, like we ail, did attempt to stand on thé
The problematic of cultural creativity in a context of diffusion is far shoulders of their unmistakable predecessors in thé Ancient Near East.
Admittedly, part of the production Systems, the language, the gods and
shrines, thé myths, thé magie and astrology, thé alphabet, thé
^Toynbee, A , 1988, A studv of history A new édition revissa and abridged by mathematics, thé nautical and trading skills, of the ancient Greeks were
thé
1972author and Jane Caplan, London. Thames & Hudson, this édition ftrst pubhshed scarcely their own invention but had clearly identifiable antécédents among
4c
*Garaudy,
accident, R., 1977, Pour un dialogue des civilisations. L'Occident est un
Pans. Denoel
. Jso see the 'third distortion' of his work as identifïed irr Bernai, 'Responses to
47
Kimmerle, H , 1983, Entwurf einer Philosophie des Wir. Schule des alternativen Black Athena General and hnguistic issues'.
49
Denkens, Bochum Germinal, Kimmerle, H , 1991, ed , Philosophie in Afrika In Black Athena II, p 21, 527, Bernai would also identify Arthur Evans, J D S
Afrikanische Philosophie Annäherungen an einen interkulturellen Philosophiebegriff, Pendlebury, and S Mannatos, as modified diffusiomsts — like himself
5<
Frankfurt am Main- Qumran, Mall, R A, 1995, Philosophie im Vergleich der ^Bernal, 'Phoemcian politics and Egyptian justice', 241 Cf Black Athena II, pp
Kultuien Interkulturelle Philosophie, eine neue Orientierung, Darmstadt 523f
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft
52 Wim van Bmsbergen, 'Alternative models of intercontinental interaction'
Black Athena I, p 489, n 59.

30
31
 their longer established cultural neighbours. However, citing such eminent
authorities as Cassirer, Cornford, Snell and Frankfort c.s.,53 Peter Gay in well taken as far as Egypt-Greece cultural exchanges are concerned:56
his masterly reassessment of the Enlightenment (which was among other 'That the ancient Egyptians, like the peoples of other early civilizations, did not
things a rekindling of thé ideals of classical civilisation) points out that this distinguish as we do between the natural, supernatural, and social realms renders
improbable Martin Bernal's (...) efforts to trace the origins of classical Greek
indebtedness to the Ancient Near East does not seem to apply for religion and philosophy back to Egyptian sources.'
'sustained critical thinking', in other words philosophy as a deliberately
distinct realm of human symbolic production.54 This particularly includes In his (generally very positive) review of Black Athena I & H, Trigger
syllogistic logic, which could be argued to be one basis of universalism.55 makes a similar point:
The point made by thé Egyptological archaeologist Trigger appears to be '...Bernai, along with a growing number of anthropologists, expresses opposition to
an evolutionary view of human history. He traces the origins of Greek religion and
philosophy to Egyptian sources. It is probable that some schools of Greek
53
Cassirer, E., 1941, 'Logos, Dike, Kosmos in der Entwicklung der griechischen philosophy were influenced by Egyptian ideas much as modern Western philosophy
Philosophie', Göteborgs Högskolas Arsskrift, XLVII, 6, Göteborg; Cassirer, E., 1953- is by Hindu and Buddhist thought. Yet it is impossible to find in the surviving
7, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 3 vols., New Haven: Yale University Press, corpus of ancient Egyptian writings évidence of the divergent basis postulâtes,
English translation by R. Mannheim of Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Berlin, scepticism, materialism, and human-centeredness that characterize post-Ionian Greek
philosophy.^
1923-9; Cornford, F.M., 1957, From religion to philosophy: A study in the origins of
Western spéculation, New York: Harper and Row; first published 1912, London;
Cornford, F. M., 1952, Principium Sapientiae: The origins of Greek philosophical The évidence from the Ancient Near East, however, has also been read to
thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Snell, B., 1955, Die Entdeckung des support the opposite view, and polemics concerning the Afroasiatic roots
Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen, Hamburg: of Greek philosophy and science have gained prominence in the Black
Ciaassen & Goverts; Eng. tr. The discovery ofthe mind: The Greek origins ofEuropean Athena debate.58
thought, New York: Harper & Row; cf. Onians, R.B., 1951, The origins ofEuropean
thought: About the body, the mind, the soul, the world, time, and fate: New Much further research needs to be undertaken before this question can
interprétations of Greek, Roman and kindred évidence also of some basic Jewish and transcend the phase of excited, identity-boosting claims and counterclaims,
Christian beliefs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Frankfort, H., Frankfort, and develop into a valuable branch of historical intercultural philosophy.
H.A., Wilson, J.A., Jacobsen, T., & Irwin, W.A., 1957, Before philosophy: The
intellectual adventure of Ancient Man: An essay on spéculative thought in the Ancient
Meanwhile Bernal's caveat should be born in mind: Dodds' famous study
Near East, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, first published 1946. More recently, of the Greeks and the irrational, as well as more recent work by von
the work of Jean Bottéro has been remarkably penetrating on the point of Ancient Near Staden,59 have called our attention to the massive irrational dimensions of
Eastern rationality, e.g. Bottéro, J., 1974, 'Symptômes, signes, écritures: En ancient Greek civilisation.
Mésopotamie ancienne', in: Divination et rationalité, Paris: Seuil, pp. 70-195; Bottéro,
J., 1992, Mesopotamia: Writing, reasoning, and thé Gods, Chicago & London: 'Mary Lefkowitz's conviction that there is a categorical distinction between a
University of Chicago Press, espec. ch. 8: 'Divination and thé scientifïc spirit', pp. rational Greece and an irrational Egypt only holds if you believe that reason only
125-137. Also cf. Larsen, M.T., 1987, 'The Mesopotamian lukewarm mind: Reflection began with Aristotle's formal binary logic^ and Euclid's axiomatic geometry,
on science, divination and literacy', in: Rochberg-Halton, P., éd., Language, Literature
and history: Philological and historical studies présentée to Erica Reiner, New Haven
(Conn.): American Oriental Society, p. 203-225. These studies do suggest possible 5
continuity between thé Ancient Near East and later Greek rationality such as also been ^Trigger, B.C., 1995, Early civilizations: Ancient Egypt in context, Cairo: The
stressed by G.S Kirk (1960, 'Popper on science and thé Presocratics', Mind, NS, 60: American University in Cairo Press, first published 1993; p. 93.
57
318-39) with regard to thé Presocratics; but they scarcely warrant the claim (as in James, Trigger, 'Brown Athena', p. 123; emphasis added.
58
Stolen legacy, o.e.) that thé highest developments of Greek philosophy (Plato and Cf. Black Athena l, p. 216, 477, n. 95; Preus, A., 1992, Greek Philosophy:
Aristotle) were not a predominantly local and original, Greek achievement. Egyptian origins, Binghamton: Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Research Papers on
54
Gay, p., 1973, The Enlightenment: An interprétation, vol. I. The rise of modem the Humanities and Social Sciences; Lefkowitz, Not out ofAfrica. The claims affïrming
paganism, London: Wildwood House; first published 1964; p. 464. Afroasiatic provenance partly go back to the Afrocentric James, Stolen legacy. Outside
55
It is only one among several bases for universalism. E.g., if thé Gilgamesh épie Afrocentrism, cf. West, M.L., 1971, Early Greek Philosophy and the Oriënt, Oxford,
Clarendon Press.
continues to move us emotionally across a stretch of nearly fïve thousand years, this
59
implies another kind of universalism — one catered for by literary, not logica), Dodds, E.R., 1951, The Greeks and the irrational, Berkeley/Los Angeles:
techniques, evoking not the capability of specialised thought to encompass thé whole of University of California Press; von Staden, H. 1992, 'Affimties and Elisions: Helen and
mankind, but implicitly addressing thé communality of mankind as shanng m thé Hellenocentrism', Isis, 83: 578-95.
expérience of thé human body and its vulnérable and ephemeral nature, of human 6®Sic', the credit for this variety of logic should rathergo to George Boole (1815-
society, and man's capability of language. 1864 CE), which however leaves the status of Aristotle's syllogistic logic unaffected in
this connection.

32
33
 neither of which existed — as far as we know —• in Ancient Egypt '"'
extensive médiation and élaboration of Arabic thinkers (Ibn Rushd and Ibn
The development of philosophy was neither a Greek prérogative, nor a Sina, foremost), with Maimonides and other médiéval Jewish scholars
sufficient condition (although arguably a necessary one) for the acting as intermediaries.
development of modern science as a global concern. Schools of logic have
developed not only in Greece but also in ancient India and China. The 4.3. diffusion, subséquent transformative localisation, and the
examples of medicine, alchemy and engineering, both in the Ancient Near questionable searchfor origins
Eastern/ Hellenic/ Hellenistic / Late Antiquity / Arabic / European tradition,
and in China, make clear that science does not spring just from logic but This brief and inconclusive discussion of the contested origins of Greek
also from the systematic practical, trial-and-error-based knowledge thought should not obscure the fact that in the field of scholarship there are
accumulated for centuries at the interface between artisanal and intellectual limits to the extent to which origins truly matter, truly illuminate the past
pursuits. A radical re-reading of the historical évidence (which inevitably and the present. This is particularly clear from the vantage point of
has an ethnocentric bias) concerning the subtle ramifications of long- anthropology, which Frazer once defined as a science of origins,66 but
distance contacts across the Old World since the Neolithic, will help us which since the structural-functional révolution affecting that young
understand the intercontinental contributions leading to the émergence of discipline in the 1930s and '40s, (until quite recently) had lost all interest
modern science, technology and philosophy in the West and subsequently in origins, geographical distribution patterns, even in causes, instead
on a global scale. One such a radical re-reading has been Joseph largely limiting itself to a contemplation of synchronie interConnectivity of
Needham's Science and civilisation in China.62 Although this most diverse socio-cultural phenomena within typically a narrow geographical
impressive project63 scarcely features on the pages of Black Athena,64 it horizon. And even a more properly historical approach to social and
greatly appealed to young Martin Bernai, in scope, in anti-Eurocentric cultural phenomena and their changes would insist that origin and
orientation, and as an exercise in universal scholarship — and it may even diffusion is not to be equated with subséquent transformative localisation,
leading to performance in maturity.
have tilted the scales for him to read Sinology rather than African Studies
or History of Science. Repeatedly, and to my mind convincingly,65 Let me give one example. Islam at its earliest stage was largely a
Needham stresses thé possible, likely, or certain contributions of China to créative peripheral reformulation of, already mutually interrelated, Jewish,
European intellectual and technological achievements; Yellow Athena? Nor Samaritan, Gnostic and Christian Strands of religieus thought and practice;
was the West Asian and North African contribution to modern world-wide but it soon grew into a world religion in its own right, up to the point
science limited to some initial, pre-Greek formative period: Aristotelian where current anti-Islamist préjudice in the North Atlantic région among
logic, Aristotelianism, thé subséquent Hellenistic philosophy including nominal Christians is scarcely mitigated by the sense of shared historical
roots.
Stoicism and Neo-Plationism, and most of Hellenic and Hellenistic science
(projects, incidentally, to which Egyptian and Levantine scholars made The same reasoning applies to Bernal's central show-piece, the Greek
important contributions at the time) in genera! would never have been goddess Athena herself. Considering the wealth of iconographie and
revived in the West in the early second millennium CE unless through the semantic detail which Bernai adduces (even regardless of the contentieus
Ift Nt-Athena etymology itself, which receives ample discussion in this
6
'Bernai, M., Review of Not out ofAfnca volume), it is quite conceivable that the link between the Greek goddess
62
Especially Needham, J., with Wmg Lmg, 1961, Science and avilization in Athena, patron goddess of the major city of Greek civilisation in its
China, vol. l. Introductoty orientations, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press; first heyday, and her Egyptian counterpart Neith, did go rather further than a
édition 1954; Needham, J., with Wmg Ling, 1956, Science and civdimtion in China,
vol 2. History of scientific thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; many
mere superficial likeness cast in terms of the interpretatio graeca. Bernai
more volumes have been published. urges us once again67 to take the testimony of such ancient writers as
63
Although even more ambitious, profound and scholarly, it was m a way similar, Herodotus seriously, as évidence of the possibility that the Greek Athena
and complementary, to the project to which Martin Bernal's father, origmally a
crystallographer, devoted his later years, cf. J.D Bernal's Science m history, 4 vols , 66
Harmondsworth Pengum, 1969. Frazer, J G , 1922, 'The scope and method of mental anthropology', Science
64 Progress, 64, April 1922 586.
Black Athena II, pp 312, 313
67
6
-*Cf. his magnificent discussion of Taoism, or of the Chinese influence on For a recent réfutation of the 'har' thesis which has haunted the image of
Leibniz's binary mathematics, Needham c s , Science and civihzanon Herodotus in the European classical tradition, cf Pntchett, W K , 1993, The har school
of Herodotus, Amsterdam' Gieben

34
35
 merely represented the grateful adoption, into some Northern legitimately so. The quest for origins however implies that whoever
Mediterranean backwater, of splendid and time-honoured Egyptmn cultural undertakes it, is satisfied as to thé preliminary question of the classification
models — adoption as a resuit of colonisation and military campaigns, of and the unit of study of nis chosen subject; if différent décisions are taken
Hyksos pénétration, or of trade. The extensive arguments back and forth, on thèse points, thé quest will yield totally différent results or will have to
in the Black Athena discussion, over the blackness of 'Black' Athena, the be called off altogether. A case m point is thé quest for thé origin of the
Africanness of blackness, the Afncanness of Egyptians, the blackness or Amazons: as long as thèse were classified as an ethnie group, ail sort of
whiteness of Egyptians and Greeks, form its least inspiring and, frankly, likely candidates for identification were produced, especially in extrême
rather embarrassing part, wholly determined as they are by the ideological south-eastern Europe; once it was realised that perhaps the most likely
and political connotations — so restricted and spécifie in time and space — candidates for thé Amazons are thé females within, imaginarily threatening
of the concept 'black' in North American multicultural discourse of the Greek mâles from inside thé répressive confines of classical Greek society
1980s and 1990s CE, four millennia af ter the point in time when the itself, thé quest could be abandoned.69 Another, even more pertinent
Egyptian/ Greek cultural exchanges in question are to have taken place. example is that in terms of phenotype: much of the meta-scholarly
The important point is both to acknowledge the Egyptian, or in général excitement of thé Black Athena debate is due to an anachronistic
Ancient Near Eastem, essential contributions to Greek classical civilisation classification, smuggling in a late twentieth Century CE folk classification
(the argument of diffusion), and to recognise at the same time that Athena in terms of Black and White, of race, into thé analysis of cultural
outgrew her presumable Egyptian origin, increasingly severing such phenomena among ancient actors who employed very différent
Egyptian ties (in the form of actual cultic and social interaction with classifications.70 Implicit refusai to admit thé essential rôle classification
Egyptian) as she may once have had, integrating in the émergent local plays in defining origins, means that reification and thé quest for origins
culture, and transforming in the process (the argument of subséquent often go hand in hand. Often then thé ostentatious search for origins is not
localisation). She ended up as an important cultic focus and identity truly historical but merely programmatic, and theoretical primordial
symbol of local cultural achievements which were, in the end, distinctively constructs (which because of their lack of empirical grounding are prône to
Greek. For an understanding of Greek Athena we need to know both her ideological one-sidedness anyway) pose as historical 'firsts'. This is one
presumable Egyptian background and her local history in Greece.68 of the reasons why most anthropologists would no longer be enthusiastic
Especially as the goddess of the mind, of mental processes, Athena at best about Frazer's définition of their discipline.
characterises both the indebtedness of Greek and ultimately Western With their ideological overtones and their invitation to conjecture,
civilisation to the Ancient Near East, and, on that basis, the Greeks' quests for origins are particularly cherished in the context of the identity
subséquent own achievements; as the patron of weaving and warfare she is formation of social groups, classes, racial groups, ethnie groups, nations.
particularly appropriate to préside over scholarly arguments ('yarns') The exclusivist, racist variant of Afrocentrism is a good example of how
claiming and contesting both intercultural dependence and subséquent thé very language of identity (as in ethnie and religious attempts at self-
émancipation from such dependence. définition) tends to succumb to thé essentialistic suggestion that it is some
There is something thoroughly disconcerting in the emphasis on primordially established, fixed quality or nature at the beginning of time,
origins, as attends the debate on Black Athena and many other discourses which détermines present-day qualities and performance — instead of
on charters of identifies confronting each other, not so much in the distant seeing thé latter as being realised in a dialectical, contradictory, and largely
past (although that is where the actors project them), but in thé world unpredictable historical process: a process, not of remaining an essence,
today. Origins are almost by définition too humble than that they are but of becoming — usually becoming more than one thing at the same
clearly perceptible to empirical research. At best the question of origin time, fostering multiple identities while constantly switching from one
reduces a given socio-cultural phenomenon to thé transformative identity to thé other, and being conscious of thé arbitrary nature of all
combination of a number of earlier such phenomena, while thé socially upheld identity anyway.
examination of thé latter's own origins is left for a later project. In this Thus thé pursuit of 'origins', however legitimate as an académie
sensé, the scholarly literature abounds with book titles on origins, and 69
Blok, J H., 1995, The early Amazons Modem and ancient perspectives on a
68
Cf. thé final, long footnote in Wim van Bmsbergen, 'Alternative models of persistent rnyth, Leiden. Bnll
70
intercontinental interaction' Cf Snowden, 'Bernal's Blacks', o c

36 37
 activity under certain conditions, ultimately even risks to be co-opted into knowledge is claimed to enable us to understand why scholars
'

the camp of Blut und Boden — not necessarily with Nazist overtones, but propounding wrong, obsolete or ethically undesirable (e.g. racialist)
at least of a frame of mind brooding on tangible essences about which one théories should do so, by revealing the interest groups to which these
does not argue lest one is forced to admit the historically constructed and scholars belong in terms of class, gender, race, éducation, génération,
optional nature, of an identity one hoped could pas for primordial, academie discipline, academie establishment versus academie periphery,
unalterable, God-given, uncompromising. It is ultimately the frame of spécifie institutions and academie schools at rivalry with each othejr in the
mind in which people feel justified to kill over ideas. national and international scène, etc. The notion of the succession of
One of the ironies of Black Athena is that Martin Bernai, seeking to paradigms, on the other hand, is invoked — reticently in Black Athena I,
explode the Eurocentrist myth of origin ('the Greek miracle'), was tempted more confidently in Black Athena II — in order to highlight the
to extend his analysis beyond a mère critique of classicist scholarship since revolutionary and irreversible nature of the breakthrough produced by the
the 18th Century CE, and feit compelled to produce his own account of the Black Athena thesis, as well as to justify that such a breakthrough could or
origins of Greek/ European civilisation — with the obvious danger of should come from someone like Bernai, by professional training an
producing merely another myth of origin. What enables him to construct outsider to the ancient history of the eastern Mediterranean. Below, when
for himself an analytical meta-plane from which to observe and interpret discussing the Black Athena debate, I shall come back to Bernal's claims
the historical actors that fill his historiography? How does hè descend from concerning paradigms.
that meta-plane in order to become himself a producer of historical The one-sidedness of Bernal's position with regard to any sociology of
knowledge, launching his 'Revised Ancient Model' stipulating massive knowledge becomes clear once we realise that, with all the personal detail
Afroasiatic, or more specifically Egyptian, cultural and linguistic influence concerning the circumstances of the author's embarking on the Black
upon the genesis of classical Greek civilisation — in addition for Athena project,73 the two Black Athena volumes are silent as to whatever
allowance (hence 'Revised') for immigration of Indo-European speakers systematic 'sociology of knowledge' their own author might find himself
from the north? How does hè avoid (or does hè?) the methodological and to be determined by — and what (in the face of the oppressive influence
ideological pitfalls into which hè claims his historical actors have fallen? such a sociology of knowledge is claimed to have had on thé authors he
These are crucial questions in any assessment of Black Athena, and they faults) he has done himself to transcend that détermination.
lead us to consider, in the following sections, Bernal's sociology of Significantly, Martin Bernai présents his autobiographical détails as 'a
knowledge, the debate his books have generaled, and his epistemology. study in thé sociology of knowledge' but he fails to raise them above thé
anecdotal level. Clearly he is under thé impression that with thé anecdotal
account he gives of himself and his Werdegang, against the setting of the
5. Martin Bemal and the sociology of knowledge 1970s and '80s in the introductions to both Black Athena I and //, he has
given us all we need in this respect. However, a proper sociology of
In order to contrast between rival théories and between their producers, knowledge is of course more than a programme, and more than a scenario
Martin Bernai frequently deploys two conceptual tools forged in the 20th of good guys and bad guys. It should investigate the contradictions
Century CE: Kuhn's notion of the succession of scientific paradigms;71 inherent in the production of academie knowledge under relevant social
and what Bernai insists on calling 'the sociology of knowledge' as if there conditions. For contemporary knmyJe^e^pj^^MSi^JSiSLfiSHliliHPf
were only one — in his case essentially Mannheim's72 perceptive include: state patronage; oj^pilalJSJ^sttuctures and institutio^aljrvajryj
élaboration of Marx's awareness of the class déterminants in the përsonaTc^reëTinslecurity; a partly immaterial andfin genera! clisintegrating
production of scientific and other knowledge. ^nTHecÏmmg rewrïstfucture in terms of income and social prestige; class
Bernai uses these tools with enviable economy. 'The' sociology of aspirations; the problems of recruitment and socialisation involved in
perpetuating an academie discipline which (contrary to an ethnie group, a
7
'Kühn, T.S., 1970, The structure of scientific révolutions, International class, a village etc.) is not demographically a self-reproducing unit; intra-
Encyclopaedta of Vmfied Science, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2nd ed first ed generational and inter-generational control over resources and rewards;
1962.
72
Mannheim, K., 1936, Ideology and Utopia, trans. L. Wirth and E. Shils,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. A similar trend is also manifest m the work J.D
Bernai produced m the field of the history of science. J, p. xilff.

38 39
pressures towards conformity; yet scope for individual freedom, Sociology, also sociology of knowledge, consists in thé subsuming of
transgression, and innovation; thé leverage offered by new idéologies and individual actors under broader social catégories, their dynamics and
social movements from outside thé discipline (e.g. feminism, anti- interactions. As such a sociology of knowledge of the individual Martin
imperialism, anti-racism); and patterns of 'dropping out' through Bernai would be a contradiction in terms. Yet one might pursue a number
routinisation, absenteeism, career shifts etc. Bernai lias a sharp intuition of directions towards thé sociological framing of Bernai as an académie
for such thèmes, and interesting material towards the sociology of actor. I can see a number of strands which I shall identify by italicised
knowledge of ancien! history and related disciplines in thé twentieth paragraph headings.
Century CE is presented throughout Black Athena I, thé préface to Black The upper-class symbolic veiling and subjective transcendence of
Athena II, and in his contributions to thé présent volume. Yet thé exploitation. While material appropriation and exploitation (both domestic
sociological analysis itself remains to be written. Unfortunately, thé more and in a North-South, colonial context) constituted the économie base for
thé Black Athena project has allowed thé Sinologist Bernai to insert thé British upper classes, thé symbolic veiling and subjective
himself in thé scholarly circles where ancient history is being produced, transcendence of such material relations under a cloak of indirectness,
rapidly74 shedding thé outsidership that characterised his initial position in expertise, respectability and sublimation has been a major incentive in thé
the late 1970s, thé less likely he becomes as thé future author of such an production of culture including scholarship. Of course, such a project can
analysis. only work if its class nature and psychological strategy remains hidden
Bernai is obviously unique as an intellectual producer. This is borne from the consciousness of the actors involved. lts scope can only be
out by his successful expansion, after his initial training in Sinology and understood on the basis of an assumption of thèse actors' integrity as
modem, intercontinental intellectual history, into a totally new set of cultural, including intellectual, producers taking on extraordinary
disciplines in mid-career, and by thé phénoménal if often conflictive responsibility for thé production of emphatically disinterested knowledge,
response he gained as a resuit. Likewise, BernaPs ancestry is rather more on behalf not just of their own class but of society as a whole. Thus Black
unique even than that of other social actors in that it contains several Athena I stresses how familiarity with the classics became the mainstay in
intellectual giants and was rather more than average conducive to the gentleman's éducation — although its author himself, in the mid-20th
marginality: Century and only marginally upper-class, went to a progressive
coeducational school. But in the same way, colonial expansion and its
Martin Bernai grew up as thé son of J.D. Bernai, a famous British crystallographer attending class interests become translated in the study of exotic languages
cum Marxist historian of science. His maternai grandfather was Sir Alan Gardiner,
millionaire and thé greatest British Egyptologist of his génération. Growing up in and cultures, remote in place and/ or time — as throughout Bernal's family
thé Bohemian fringe of thé British upper-class, his father's Irish background, his and social circle. When directed not to dead civilisations but to living
maternai grandmother's half-Jewish background, and his milieu's gênera) colonial subjects, such a study is likely to result in the appréciation of, and
préoccupation with intellectual excellence left their traces in Martin Bernal's identification with, the people concerned; although initially ineffectuai from
biography. So did anthropology and Africa: before marrying J.D. Bernai, Margaret
Gardiner had a relationship with thé anthropologist Bernard Deacon, who however a political and economie point of view, this may ultimately erode the
died during fïeld-work in Melanesia; much later young Martin as a freshman lived premises of North-South domination — a development of which the
for a year at the house of Meyer Fortes, thé leading Africanist anthropologist of his production of anti-Eurocentric Black Athena is the final conséquence.
génération. The family's tea plantation in Malawi earned young Martin an extensive
stay in Africa and introduction to an African language, Chi-Nyanja, in 1957. His
The bürden of empire. Ha ving built part of their security on territorial
father was a close friend of thé biologist and historian of Chinese science Joseph expansion and productive exploitation of the African and Asian continent
Needham, and took his son to visit this universal scholar.75 in the course of the 19th Century, in the next générations — with the
redéfinition and subséquent loss of empire, though not necessarily of the
74
Cf. his adjunct professorship in NearEastern studies as early as 1984, three years
wealth it had afforded them —• the British upper classes were forced to
before even Black Athena I had been published. redefine their identity; after dumping the Malawian tea plantation that
75
Cf. Gardiner, A. H., 1986, My early years, éd. J. Gardiner, reprint, Isle of Man:
Andreas, originally published 1945-55; Gardiner, A. H., n.d., My working years,
Africa's contribution to global Systems of knowledge, African Studies Centre, Leiden,
London: Coronet Press; M. Gardiner, Footprmts on Malekula' A metnoir of Bernard
The Netherlands, 28 June, 1996; the author's extensive conversations with Martin
Deacon, M. Gardiner, 1988, A scatter of memories, London: Free Association Books;
Bernai, 29/7/96 (Haarlem, The Netherlands) and 26/10/96 (Binghamton, N.Y., U.S.A.);
relevant passages in M Bernai, Black Athena 1 and //, and Cadmean letters; M. Bernai,
Arno Egberts, 'Consonants m collision: Neith and Athena reconsidered' (this volume).
'Afroasiatic loan words in Greek', oral présentation, conférence on Black Athena:

40 41
 academie vantage point, one of the striking features of the Black Athena
featured as a major asset in his maternai family's wealth, Afrocentrist-
debate is that it is unmistakably American, despite its British-born
inclined Black Athena is the final stage in such a process, also in Martin
protagonist.78 Although Martin Bernai continued to frequent Cambridge
Bernal's own perception.76
academie circles during the preparatory stages of Black Athena,'19 his first
A sensé of inter-generational continuity and obligation. Martin Bernai
papers on his newly chosen thème were virtually all situated within a
grew up among thé giants of British intellectual life. He was early on
U.S.A. context,80 — where hè was working at Cornell, where the after-
socialised to thé highest standards of intellectual prominence and heroism,
math of the Vietnam war dominated intellectual life, and where Blacks, i.e.
of world-wide responsibility, of scholarship as a family obligation. The
African Americans, were becoming increasingly vocal — insisting on a
British upper classes shared this concern with academie professional
university curriculum that would represent them and their intercontinental
circles with which, despite massive différences in wealth and birth, they
antécédents truthfully or at least: positively. Racialism, African roots,
entertained a Wahlverwantschaft, as expressed in close friendships and
Black curricula, were already becoming established concerns of
marriages — including presumably that of J.D. Bernai and M. Gardiner.
institutional and academie politics in the U.S.A. when, in the 1970s,
The exalted family standards as regards scholarship were scarcely met by
European countries, utterly unprepared, were only going through the first
marginal Martin Bernal's inconspicuous Cornell professorship, outside thé
waves of immigration from Africa and the Africanised Americas.
world's few gréât centres of Asian studies. This réalisation may have been
Subsequently, after the end ofthe Cold War, the U.S.A. Black population
at least one ingrédient in the mid-life crisis leading to Black Athena. The
and their socio-cultural aspirations were pressed into service by the
dedication of Volume I to thé memory of J.D. Bernai, and that of Cadmean
dominant right-wing white Community in order to constitute one of their
Letters to thé memory of Alan Gardiner, would then appear to be a
much needed enemies within, now that the major external enemy,
triumphant déclaration: to thé world, that Martin Bernai was coming into
communism, had dissolved. The fact that North American white classicists
his own; and to the ancestors, that the son was discharging his obligation,
dominate the Black Athena debate suggests that a major, if implied,
even if this meant invading several disciplines totally new to him.77
concern for them has been préservation of the purity of their imported
The stimulating effect ofthe transatlantic brain drain. From a European
European culture, referring to a distant homeland far to the east (!) across
the Atlantic; their Ex oriente lux simply has different mythical and
76
In his oral présentation at the Leiden 1996 conference on which thé présent geopolitical parameters than for British-born Martin Bernai. It is in the
volume is based, Martin Bernai revealed that one of the main driving forces behind North American context that hè hit on the one ideological issue, race; that
writing Black Athena was simply: embarrassment at having benefited, as a member of
his mother's family, from thé capitalist exploitation of thé African people in the context
allowed him to make the transition from Sinologist to ancient historian of
of this Malawian tea plantation, which he not only visited as a boy but for which later the eastern Mediterranean; to discharge, in the process, the accumulated
he also bore corporate responsibility before getting rid of it as, in the political views of obligations which his nationality, class and family history have structurally
his mature years, an ethically unacceptable asset: imposed upon him; and to turn his own marginality into a positive force by
'First I should indicate another motive to my taking up this topic. It is guilt. My passionately and creatively fighting the ideological exclusion of Africa and
mother's family owned a tea plantation in Malawi, where, over the years, I spent a Asia, and of their diasporic descendants in the West.
number of months. The first non Indo-European language I attempted to learn was
actually what was then called Chinyanja and what is now called Chichewa in Even from the vantage point of an increasingly 'multicultural' (i.e.
Malawi. Since the nineteen fifties I have always had an interest in Sub-Saharan phenotypically diverse) continental Europe with mounting racial tensions,
Africa. Indeed if there had been African Studies available in Cambridge at the time I it is difficult to appreciate the way in which race — a concept so utterly
went to study there I would have chosen these rather than Chinese, although I was compromised by modern history, and dismantled by modern science — is
very positively attracted to China and Chinese studies. I think there was something
profoundly Eurocentric in my choosing these two topics, in that one of the things I
78
wanted to find out what was the nature of European culture and identity by looking Cf. Levine, M. Myerowitz, 1992, 'The use and abuse of Black Athena',
at others, in order to filter out what was common to humanity. Anyhow, at the age American Histoncal Review, 97, 2: 440-64.
of nineteen I was thinking in terms of Africa very clearly.' f^Black Athena /, p. xv.
8
77 ^Bernal, M., 'Spéculations on the disintegration of Afroasiatic', paper presented at
Cf. Black Athena H, p. xx:
the 8th conference of the North American Conference of Afroasiatic Linguistics, San
'I have been heaviiy influenced by my father. Ho we ver, this has been more by the Francisco, April 1980; Bernai, M., 1983, 'On the westward transmission of the
genera! features of his thought, his broadness of histoncal vision and sympathy for Canaamte alphabet before 1500 BC', paper presented to the American Oriental Society,
the underdog, than by the spécifies of his Marxism.' Baltimore (April); Bernai, M., 1985, 'Black Athena', in: Van Sertima, African présence.

42 43
an issue in U.S.A. public culture today. Outside specialist circles, the are involved on all sides. Understandably so, considering the scope of
sheer existence of Afrocentrism as an established ideological option has Bernal's project. The publication of Volume II in 1991 meant not only a
even scarcely registered with thé continental European intellectual public further increase of the number of disciplines involved in the debate, but
— another reason why e.g. the Dutch response to Black Athena has been also a marked change of tone. As long as thé Black Athena project
so slow to gain momentum. remained (as in Volume I) essentially a review of thé image of Egypt in
And this does not even exhaust the extent to which thé Black Athena European intellectual history, with — as was the author's stated intention
debate reflects an American académie culture which, despite thé obvious — mère truncated and only lightly referenced previews of the expected
American académie hegemony in many fields, still has not become fully findings of the next volumes, the project was by and large welcomed for
standard in Europe. Further features include the stress on corporate action, its solid foundation in scholarship, and critical sense of Eurocentric and
corporate responsibilities, explicit professionalisation, formai labelling racialist préjudices informing previous générations of classicists now long
practices through public debate and mass gatherings, on thé part of dead. Glen Bowersock, the leading American classicist, proved far from
académie disciplines and of academia at large — in other words thé visual blind to the oddities even of Volume I, yet hè could déclare:
and group-wise, organisational articulation of the académie forum. This 'This is an astonishing work, breathtakingly bold in conception and passionately
pattern is rather different from the cherished model of public aloofness and written. It is the first of three projected volumes that are designed to undermme
nothing less than the whole consensus of classical scholarship, built up over two
small-scale, informai intra-academic exchanges, which is more or less hundred years, on the origins of ancient Greek civilization. (...) Bernai shows
standard in many European countries. The fact that France is rather an conclusively that our present perception of the Greeks was artificially pieced
exception to this pattern suggests that we are not just talking hère of together between the late eighteenth Century and the present. (...) Bernal's treatment
subcultural free variation on both sides of the Atlantic, but about the way of this thème is both excellent and important.'81
in which a national culture' s sensé of self-imposed mission, in other However, when Volume II was published four years later, it addressed the
words a state's hegemonie cultural aspirations (which are massive in the spécifies of eastern Mediterranean ancient history — a topic constituting
case of both the U.S.A. and France today) are reflected in academie the life's work of hundreds of living researchers. And it did so in a truly
production patterns. If the European academie producer often aims at alarming fashion, less well written than Volume I, invoking yet more
sheltered production to be assessed among selected peers, the American contentious Egyptian etymologies for ancient Greek proper names and
(or in général, hegemonie) pattern instigates the rôle model of the academie lexical items, insisting on the cultic pénétration not only of Neith but of
producer as the heiligeren! hero who seeks, and finds, public exposure and spécifie minor Egyptian gods to the Aegean, relying on mythological
récognition, and who in the process satisfies the collective demand for material as if whatever kernels of historical fact this might contain could
new, topical intellectual issues to be initiated, used up, and replaced. readily be identified, claiming physical Egyptian présence in the Aegean by
While these Americanisms may have offended some of Martin Bernai' s référence to irrigation works, a monumental tumulus, and traditions of a
ïritish upper-class values, they must also have appealed to his family- Black pharaoh's military campaign into South Eastern Europe and adjacent
instilled sense of social obligation as discharged through scholarly Asia, playing havoc with the established chronologies of the Ancient Near
excellence and famé. He has utilised these characteristics of the American East, attributing the Mycenaean shaft graves to Levantine invaders
academie scène with the same capacity for absorption and mastery as is identified as early Hyksos yet bringing Egyptian culture, and reiterating a
demonstrated in his polyglot language skills and his stunning display of sympathy for Afrocentrist ideas which meanwhile had become rather more
érudition, which show him to be the scion of an intellectual dynasty hè is. vocal and politicised in the U.S.A. It was at this stage that many scholars
parted Company with Bernai and that genuine and justified scholarly
critique was combined with right-wing political contestation against the
6. The Black Athena debate
unwelcome, anti-Eurocentric, intercultural and intercontinental message of
The above goes a long way to explain the scope of the Black Athena debate the Black Athena project as a whole — a development formalised and
and the peculiarly insistent stance of its protagonist. In addition there may meant to be finalised by the publication of Black Athena revisited in 1996
be something of a band- wagon effect producing a 'Black Athena industry'
81
(including the present collection...), but the véhémence of the debate Bowersock, G., 1989, [Review of Black Athena ƒ], Journal of Interdisciphnary
reveals that, instead of opportunism, profound émotions and convictions History, 19' 490-91

44 45
 Egyptologists to address the truth without abuse, and Bernal's arguments have only
under the editorship of Mary Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers. contributed to an avalanche of radical propaganda without basis in fact'.85
Moreover, a peculiar feature of the debate has been that Martin Bernai
has remained the single main producer in the Black Athena industry, not Mary Lefkowitz says she does not doubt Bernal's good intentions yet
only with his two fat tomes and a modest number of independent articles, finds him criminally guilty of what must be, especially in her eyes, the
but particularly as the author of a large number of often quite lengthy greatest crime: providing apparently serious, scholarly fuel to what
responses,82 which take up major and minor challenges of his stated otherwise might have remained the Afrocentrist straw fire:
views. Two more such responses were specifically written for the present 'To the extent that Bernai has contributed to the provision of an apparently
volume,83 and an entire volume of them is now underway as the answer to respectable underpinning for Afrocentric fantasies, hè must be held culpable, even if
his intentions are honorable and his motives are sincère.'8"
Black Athena revisited.
One thing which the editors of Black Athena revisited have certainly Yet all this cannot be the entire story, and it is probably only a one-
managed to bring about, is a state of alarm and embarrassment among all sided version of whatever story. How else to account, for instance, for the
scholars and lay people seriously interested in pursuing the perspectives praise which the prominent Egyptologist and archaeotogist B.G. Trigger
which Martin Bernai has sought to open in the Black Athena volumes. piles on Black Athena! He sees Martin Bernal's project certainly not as a
How could one honestly and publicly continue to dérive inspiration from mère exercise in consciousness-raising meant for Blacks in search of
an author whose work has been characterised in the following terms by a identity,87 but as a serious contribution to the history of archaeology —
well-informed critic like Robert Falter: one of his own specialisms88 — and as a stimulating pointer at the
'...those today who are seriously concernée! with formulating a radical political possibilities of innovation in that discipline, which hè considers to be
critique of contemporary scholarship (...) might wish to think twice before bogged down by processual scientism.89
associating themselves with the methods and claims of Bernal's work; (...) for his Yet even Trigger stresses Bernal's methodological inadequacies, rejects
lapses in the most rudimentary requirements of sound historical study — traditional,
critical, any kind of historical study — should make one wary of his grandiose
his contentieus chronology particularly with regard to the Hyksos, and
histonographical pronouncements. (...) In the absence of adequate controls on criticises the way in which hè tends to take ancient myth as a statement of
évidence and argument, the view of history presented in Black Athena is continually fact. And given the large numbers of both Egyptian and Greek myths, hè
on the verge of collapsing into sheer ideology.'84 argues, it is easy for any scholar to take his piek and claim historical
Sarah Morris praises the critical self-reflection Black Athena has brought connections between sélections from both sets. Moreover, as an
about among classicists, but finds this too dearly paid for: Egyptologist Trigger appears unconvinced by Bernal's argument in favour
of the possibility of extensive Asian and European campaigns by
'On the other hand, it has bolstered, in ways not anticipated by the author, an Senwosret I or III.
Afrocentrist agenda which returns many debates to ground zero and demolishes
decades of scrupulous research by excellent scholars such as Frank Snowden. An The Black Athena debate can be seen to operate at two levels:
ugly cauldron of racism, récrimination, and verbal abuse has boiled up in different • that of the political agenda of the editors of Black Athena revisited,
departments and disciplines; it has become impossible for professional which revolves on the grossly irresponsible déniai90 of the
multicultural, intercontinental and multicentred origins, both of
82
Bernal, M., 1989, 'Response to Professor Turner' In: Myerowitz Levine &
Peradotto, pp. 26-30; Bernai, M., 1989, 'Response to Professor Snowden' In: 85
Morris, S.P., 1996, 'The legacy of Black Athena', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean
Myerowitz Levine & Peradotto, pp. 30-32; Bernai, M., 1990, 'Responses to Critical Rogers, o.e., p. 167-175.
Reviews of Black Athena, Volume I'', Journal of 'Méditerranéen Archaeology, 3, 1: 111- ^Lefkowitz, M.R., 1996, 'Ancient history, modern myths', in: Lefkowitz &
37; Bernai, M., 1992, 'Response to Edith Hall', Arethusa, 25: 203-14; Bernai, M„ MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 3-23, p. 20.
1992, 'Response to Mary Lefkowitz, "Not Out of Africa" ', New Republic, 9 Maren, ^Pace Cartledge, P., 1991, 'Out of Africa?', New Statesman and Society, 4 (164):
4-5; Bernai, M., 1992, 'A Response to John Coleman (Part II)', The Bookpress, 2, 2: 35-36.
2, 13; Bernai, M., 1993, 'Response to S. O. Y. Keita', Arethusa, 26: 315-19; Bernai, 88
Cf. Trigger, B.G., 1980, Gordon Childe: Révolutions m archaeology, London:
M., 1993, 'Response, The Debate over Black Athena', Journal of Women's History, 4, Thames & Hudson; Trigger, B.G., 1989, A history of archaeological thought,
no. 3: 119-35; Bernai, M., 1994, 'Response to Robert Falter', History of Science, 32, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
no. 4: 445-64. Trigger, 'Brown Athena', o.e.
8
^Bernal, 'Response to Josine Blok' and 'Response to Arno Egberts'. 90
E.g. MacLean Rogers, G., 1996, 'Multiculturahsm and the foundations of
84
Palter, R., 1996, 'Eighteenth-century histonography m Black Athena', in: Western civihzation', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 428-445, p. 429.
Lefkowitz, & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 349-401, p. 350f.

47
46
 classical Greek civilisation, and ultimately of Western European and physical displacements of people through migration and conquest as prime
modern global civilisation; character defamation is among their lines of explanatory factors in cultural change. They blâme him for an unsystematic
attack.91 and linguistically incompétent handling of etymologies. While Bernai
• and that of the majority of contributors, who — whatever their political positively prides himself (to the extent of claiming to have authored a
convictions — are merely doing their jobs as scholars, justifiably Kuhnian paradigm shift) in championing modes of interprétation which
defining and defending, not so much the political and economie were far more favoured in the beginning of the twentieth Century than
resources, but the methodological and theoretical principles, of their towards ils end, many critics do not so much find fault with his spécifie
respective disciplines. points but simply — and clearly for disciplinary, internai, rather than
The factual, chronological and methodological chords struck by Trigger political and external reasons — refuse to recognise his approach as
as a thoroughly sympathetic reviewer reverberate, with dissonants and legitimate, up-to-date ancient history.94 As John Baines has pointed out,95
fortissimi, throughout Black Athena revisited and the other venues of the the notion of paradigms may be scarcely applicable in the field of ancient
Black Athena debate. Many complain of the defects and even of the history:
absence of methodology in Bernai's writings.92 Many are appalled by 'Despite thé extended applications of Kuhn's term that have appeared since the
what they consider to be Bernai's confusion of culture, ethnicity and publication of his book [Kuhn's, i.e. The structure of scientific révolutions, o.e.],
ancient Near Eastern studies are not a 'science' or a discipline in thé Kuhnian sensé.
race.93 They suspect him of a nineteenth-century, lapidary belief in
Rather, they are thé sum of a range of methods and approaches applied to a gréât
variety of materials from a particular geographical région and period; even
91 définitions of thé area and period are open to revision. So far as thé ancient Near
Cf. MacLean Rogers, 'Multiculturalism', p. 441:
East relates to 'paradigms', thèse are, for example, théories of social complexity and
'it is hard in retrospect not to see the entire enterprise of Black Athena as a change, or in other cases théories of literary form and discourse. This point is where
massive, fundamentally misguided projection upon the second millennium B.C.E. Bernal's aims départ farthest from those ofmany specialists in ancient Near Eastern
of Martin Bernai's personal struggle to establish an identity during the later studies.'
twentieth Century',
Specialists in eighteenth and nineteenth Century CE intellectual history hâve
as if an author and his work are to be disqualified by the very fact that hè is sensitive and
responsable enough for the crucial dilemma's and contradictions of his social situation little difficulty showing that some of Bernai's allegedly racist villains were
and historical period to make themselves feit in his personal life. With the same futile in fact heroes of intercultural learning and tolérance.96 His Afrocentrist-
argument one might disqualify Freud's genius on the grounds of having shared the inspired views of Ancient Egyptian science have been severely attacked by
neurosis of fin-de-siècle Vienna, and Nietzsche and Wittgenstein for having lived, in
their personal lives, the philosophical struggles their works expound. It is in the nature
Falter. 97 Several find his treatment of what hè alleges to be the
of prophets to personally suffer and express the ills of their âge; cf. van Binsbergen,
W.M.J., 1981, Religions Change in Zambia: Exploratory studies, London/ Boston: 94
Baines, o.e., p. 39; Thus also Muhly, J.D., 1990, 'Black Athena versus
Kegan Paul International, ch. 4. For this very reason I have been careful, in my above
traditional scholarship', Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 3, 1: 83-110, who
discussion of the sociology of knowledge, to insist on structural contradiction, not
summarises his methodological objections in Bernal's own words:
individual motives.
92
Yet such criticism often turns out to be difficult to substantiate, e.g. the utterly 'it is difficult for the scholar without a discipline "going it alone", to know where
unconvincing two methodological case studies by Falter ('Eighteenth Century to stop' (cf. Black Athena I, p. 381).
historiography', o.e., pp. 388f). However, E. Hall (1996, 'When is a myth not a myth: 95
Bernal's "Ancient Model" ', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 333-348) con- Baines, o.e., p. 42.
96
vincingly shows the methodological naïvety of Bernal's handling of mythical material. Palter, o.e., on Kant, Goethe and Lessing; Jenkyns, R., 1996, 'Bernai and thé
Meanwhile, Bernai prides himself, and not entirely without justification, precisely on nineteenth Century', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 411-419; and on
the exphcitly theoretical nature of his approach and his attention for factors relating to Herder: Norton, R.E., 1996, 'The tyranny of Germany over Greece? Bernai, Herder, and
the sociology of knowledge, which, hè argues (Black Athena I, pp. 433f) constitutes the thé German appropriation of Greece', m: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 403-
main différence between his work and e.g.: Morenz, S., 1969, Die Begegnung Europas 409. For a penetrating discussion of this dimension of Bernal's work, cf. Blok (this
met Ägypten, Zürich & Stuttgart: Artemis. volume).
97
9
*MacLean Rogers, G., 1996, "Quo vadis?" , in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, Palter, R., 1996, 'Black Athena, Afrocentnsm, and thé history of science', in:
o.e., pp. 444-454; Snowden, 'Bernal's "Blacks" '; Brace, C. L., D. P. Tracer, L. A. Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 209-266. However, see thé short but
Yaroch, J. Robb, K. Brandt, and A. R. Nelson, 1996, 'Clines and Clusters versus convincing argument for Egyptian/Greek scientific continuity by thé gréât histonan of
"Race": A Test m Ancient Egypt and the Case of a Death on thé Nile', m: Lefkowitz science and magie W. Hartner (1963, 'W. Hartner' [ Discussion of G. de Santillana's
& MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 129-164; Baines, J., 1996, 'On thé aims and methods of 'On forgotten sources m thé history of science' ], m: Crombie, A.C., éd., Scienlific
Black Athena', m: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.e., pp. 27-48. change, New York: Basic Books, pp. 868-75): e.g , Hellenist Greek astronomers teil us

48 49
 continue the unending struggle...'.'0'
undercurrent of Egyptian knowledge in European culture since Late
Antiquity incompetent.98 Many critics question whether Bernai' s stated Although longue in cheek, Manning does apparently not intend to be
intention of trying to understand Greek civilisation is sincère: all they can dismissive of Black Athena, but merely to define the spécifie
see is an obsession with provenance, with intercontinental cultural epistemological settings within which Bernai's project can or cannot make
displacement, and with late 20th Century CE identity politics, but certainly sense. Manning's escape clause lies in what we can call the relativity of
no cohérent and empathie appréciation of the inner structure, thé moral and relativism:
aesthetic orientations, religious expérience and life world of the Ancient 'The acceptance of a realist mode of thought within a wider acceptance of a
Egyptians, Levantines and Greeks." relativist, or socially constructed, framework both allows for Black Athena, and for a
Thèse are very serious points, although not necessarily destructive for satisfactory discussion of it. Uncritical positivism, or relativism, does not'.'02
thé Black Athena thesis as a whole. An examination of Bernai's As an assessment of the epistemological options this conclusion is
epistemology may help put them in perspective. adequate but it scarcely offers a solution; for as Manning has stated at the
outset of his argument, against the background of recent advances in the
critique of objective knowledge by such philosophers as Rorty and
7. Martin Bernai's epistemology
Bernstein,103
7.1. a reality out there
'the historian créâtes [original emphasis] the past, and what Bemal considers to be
the objective reality is his [original emphasis] reality (largely set within a paradigm
Trigger's impression that Bernai points to thé way ahead rather than to of race)...'104
outdated methods of the past, is evidently not shared by most other critics.
Thus Manning,100 who contemptuously calls Trigger a 'pseudo-realist' (p. But even though hè has only led us to realise that the problem behind
264), in a full-length exploration of the epistemological context of Black Black Athena is an insurmountable epistemological contradiction, Manning
Athena, states: is correct in claiming that^reansmjsjjne of the underlying assumptions of
'Black Athena is in many ways set within thé pre-processual, empirical, culture- Bernai's project and of his political stance. E.g., speaking on Said Bernai
historical framework of traditional archaeology (...), and forms a radical critique of déclares that he is aware of the parallels between his and Said's work,
several of the trends in the subséquent (...) 'new' or 'processual' modes of however:
archaeology. This is both a requirement for the book's approach (with its concern
for 'origins') and ironie, as thé object-typology-culture-identity approach leads (via 'his work is literary and allusive, mine historical and pedestrian. More importantly,
its study of spécifie peoples) inexorably to non-holistic, extreme and often racist or I do not accept his view that Orientalism — or for that matter ancient history — are
race-centred interprétations.' almost entirely self referential.'10-"

For Manning thé central dilemma of Black Athena revolves on thé issue of In other words, for Bernai, there is a^^past realitv i.e. a-"- real
«^i f f ia^^^^ ^^ ^'''^~
es l r >
Kü! fS:!fipast out there,
1
«"-f "~- JC--w«= <v«^'JSw*>iS ^* ^;
A ï ti>J

realism: which we can at least partially capture even if we are largely determined by
set paradigms and the sociology of knowledge (while for Said,
'If thèse relativist-orientated, or post-processual, modes of thought became dominant
in thé discipline, then the debate over Black Athena is not about facts or évidence at orientalism's 'conception in sin' — European expansion and racialism —
ail, but should only be a critique of thé ideology in which its author is enmeshed could never produce valid knowledge of Asian and Islamic cultures and
along with everyone else. In thèse paradigms, thé value of Black Athena would be their history).
political and social; it would probably be seen as another worthwhile attack on thé
imperialist, late capitalist, male chauvinist, and racist forces against which the Good
But hère precisely lies, for Jenkyns, the pitfall of Bernai's approach:

101
Manning, p. 260.
m
lbid. p. 269.
that Egyptian astronomers (whom we can demonstrate to have been pre-Hellenist) have 103
Cf. Rorty, R., 1979, Philosophy and the mirror of nature, Princeton: Princeton
calculated the lunation to a figure which, as we know now, is within 13 seconds of the University Press; Rorty, R., 1982, Conséquences of pragmatism, Princeton: Princeton
correct astronomical value! University Press; Bernstein, R.J., 1983, Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science,
98jenkyns, o.e., p. 412; Baines, o.e., p. 44; also: Lefkowitz, Not out o/Africa. hermeneutics, andpraxis, Oxford: Blackwell.
"jenkyns, o.e., p. 413; Baines, o.e., p. 39. lM
ibid. p. 256f.
'°°Manning, S.W., 1990, "Frames of référence for the past: Some thoughts on 'O-'Bernal, M., in press , 'Response to John Baines'.
Bernai, truth, and reality', Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 3, 2: 255-74.

50 51
 would we know?
'A problem with any strongly externahst argument » that you hâve to «Icawa Let us take one example of such plausibility, Bernal's refusai to give up
srruü band of the elect from ongmal sm: if objectivity is a mirage and almost ail
Slars are d.storters, why should Bernai and the few people who have wntten m
the Ht Nt-Athena etymology in the face of Egberts' démonstration, in the
present volume, 110 of its untenable nature on the basis of established
similar terms before him be exceptions?'lu
historical linguistics.
It is hère that we begin to discern a fundamental contradiction, between
realism and politically-inspired idealism, in Bernai's epistemology. Let us 'I repeat, the phonetic fit, the lack of Indo-European alternatives and the tight
semantic connections between Neith and ihn 'faïence,' divine eyes, the Thnw people
try to explore this point somewhat further. and olive oil and those between Athena as parthénos with grey-blue, ternfymg eyes,
Libya and olives do not make the etymology certain but merely very plausible [my
7.2. dogged responses italics, WvB] , especially since they are mutually remforcing The etymologies of
both Athena from Ht Nt and parthénos from Pr ihn should be seen in the light of
Bernal's long séries of responses may be interpreted as sign of a scholar's the close cultural contacts between speakers of Ancient Egyptian and Greek for more
consistency, sticking to his earlier published arguments since thèse, far than two millennia.' ' l '
from being gratuitous, opportunistic or market-orientated, were based on
solid research m the first place, including conscientious assessment of the In other words, from Martin Bernal's point of view it is primarily the
available views and interprétations. In Berna/'s case his awareness that attractiveness and persuasiveness of the scholar's discourse, the mutual
outsiders aiming at questioning a discipline's conventionaJ wisdom are reinforcement and co-reflexivity of the images which hè conjures up,
often considered cranks,'0? perhaps also justifies a certain responsive which produce plausibility as the closest possible approximation of truth
overkill. Yet it is as if hè prefers to situate his project sôrnewjkf öütside the — whereas such plausibility is not so much produced by the demonstrable
realm where rules of the academie game reign supremffSïa^îefe tfte best fit with empirical généralisations, even laws, such as historical linguistics
hing that can happen to a theory (and ils author) is its methodical has formulated; even if it is demonstrated that such fit is absent, the
•efutation since this (neo-positivists would say: thjs alom) produces discursive plausibility continues to be upheld unabated!
genuine knowledge, notably Paradoxically, this example has far greater négative implications for
:ase. What is at stake is not so Martin Bernal's method than for the Black Athena thesis as a whole. He
ntricacies of Europe's histp« does not seem to réalise that explanation is simply a fprnvof généralisation,
ibout the details of East subsuming ^J^rticularjghenomenpn Jin^ejjnOTe_general categories^and
sthnicity, religion and illuminating that phenomenon in the light of the relationships demonstrated
and agreed to exist between these more général catégories. An appeal to the
American academie exceptional nature of the explanandum, and to the inapplicabiüty of genera!
Martin Bernal's st rules (on the grounds that the sound laws of historical linguistics do not
undamental disagreement work between languages belonging to different language families, do not
'ften unpleasant tone the work with proper names, or have been made into fetishes anyway), is the
It is significant that same as refusing to admit that (for lack of évidence, method, and/ or
f knowledge and the circul„atiól[ theory) that no explanation can be given as yet. Contrary however to what
ocial group dynamics of Bernai seems to fear, such an admission is a sign, not of weakness but of
ontents), and relatively littjjj strength in a researcher. The Black Athena thesis certainly does not depend
upposedly the*véryTîé1
on the identity between the Greek goddess Athena and the Egyptian
ä it that validates^jiijga^
goddess Neith. It was Bernai, nobody else, who chose to make this
Compétitive plausibility-, identity into a showpiece for the thesis as a whole. He did this presumably
n the light of what
because enormous support for the central, and eminently plausible, thesis
I06
Jenkyns, o c , p. 413
107
Cf Black Athena I, p. 6. "^Egberts, 'Consonants m collision'.
108
Cf the assessment by Preston B!Ïèr<,?aix|ööWe "'Bernai, 'Response to Arno Egberts', cf the relevant passage m Bernai,
1m
Black Athena I, p. 8f; Black Afftettaü, '" ' 'Responses to Black Athena. General and lingmsttc issues '

53
of ' Afroasiatic roots of classical cj| itVe from the - systematic, productive and therefore predictable, generalisable and
scientific status of a firm which are explicatory, the claim in other words of it being an etymology, one that
closer to natural science exactitude^ anities. allows us at least this one solid proof for the Black Athena thesis - a
To try and cling to the Athena-$t is only unique opportunity of scientifically underpinning so many conjectures
logical,113 considering the exfenSt (graphie which m themselves we know we shall never be able to raise to the status
and documentary évidence. Sut ïp >îogy as of certamty because of the nature of évidence throughout ancient history
such, amounts to an attempt ti> for the Ut Nt-Athena has now returned to the Company of these conjectures In
manifestation of generalised feg» estions of view of Martin Bernal's repeated claim that not proof, but merely
epistemology. compétitive plausibility is attainable in ancient history, hè cannot even
Indeed, if Gublum can ',pck, why complain. But far more important, hè has shown, once more his
should not fit Nt become Àthç, not the epistemological and methodological feathers.
dérivation as such, but the fact ttó pose as
7.3. empiricist realism cumpolitical idealism
112
Except statistics, which despite for Underlying Bernal's processing of two extremely volumineus, complex
archaeological, anthropométrie and i; \*8 horizon. and heterogeneous data sets ('the European intellectual perception of Egypt
This may well be because his main J I, who as
a prominent physicist working iri the ^,, shared through the centuries'; 'the ancient history of the eastern Mediterranean') I
physicists' genera! abhorrence of statnstelt ||f|cetf beauty of detect the implicit déniai of the contradiction between two very different
physical law. This is what made quälte * tical) such a epistemological stances: em£iriçJM_imlisj^^ihe_or^Jiand1 political
difficult breakthrough. Statistics was- with the ISêahsrn.ûnJhejQthecL •———L-r __
distributional messmess typical forjhé-h logy and
Re iSm the Pattem
anthropology. Provided one can agr|e0tt i| 'jffsystematic * ï : °f reality (includin§cult"ral, man-made reality as
vanations and correspondences witï sis, cluster studied by the humanities and social sciences), is held to have a unique
analysis would be the ideal tooi to J >etic sénés and objective existence independent from human actors their
as make up the bulk of the argument int isthat thèse
relationships would then be visualised in the least perceptions and mterests; and that pattern is transparent, open to direct
genetic nor necessanly dyadic relation! ia! (o.e., p. human knowledge. In rather typical British intellectual fashion such
l f) abhors excessively, but merely cïi number of realism is even empiricist in the sense that knowledge concerning the
items, waiting to be explained. pattern of reality (which realism has declared to be unique and
113
Even Arno Egberts'-point
PrThn or 'House of Glitter' temple knowable m the first place) is supposed to be acquired in a self-evident
Athena's Maiden Chamber (Parth& ir.«If female and matter-of-fact way, through simple inspection of reality illuminated
Athena in her capacity of parthen&s! rôle in by common sense not to say intuition. In the empiricist's mind there is
sexuality and reproduction would Osiris'
masculinity was accentuated; and fhis4| \points out on no need to complicate matters or to give ourselves airs by the
the authority of specialists of Greek ginjnpt in the formulation of explicit and consensual, cumbersome méthodologies
sense that she was inchoately, di Ctha|Ï!he was stipulatmg complex procedures supposed to détermine the conditions
implicitly masculine. Neither Greek aè£ ïse irivoked on under which an image of reality can be accepted to be true by the
this point. It is the composite naturô%f | gs, wisdom and
weaving' among her specialisms, wh| " too familiär contemporary Community of researchers.
m the domain of comparative religions te the question • Political idealism: reality (including the temporal succession of realities
of Egyptian-Greek connections. ,* which we capture in historiography) is not blind, neutral, a-moral but
''4As far as Gublum/a-Byblos ÎS. :ause in
this case there is appeal to a S; ty«akdown of
ultimately speaks to man's moral qualifies such as we seek to realise
labiovelars', which took place in a whole through our deliberate, productive, collective action in the world- and
range of attestée linguistic phem Oriental the truest statement is the one that most serves such réalisation.
glosses on the Homenc problem% v34; 160-76; p.
165, also. Bemal, Cadmean leitet to the proposed
etymology Ht N t-Athena, Egberts aj tools at Empiricist realism behttles, even ignores, the immense difficultés
our disposai do not warrant the iéjêct it. attendmg the formulation of any meaningful, permanent and collectively

55
 Egypt. 1 1 6 If rather inevitably myth 117 is the ultimate product of
shared image of reality that is not a mere figment of our imagination.
Political idealism on the other hand amounts to a position according to scholarship, and if reality's structure is both transparent and knowable and
which myth, if inspiring, empowering and mobilising, is the only ultimately mythical at the same time, then it cannot make much différence if
worthwhile image of reality, and perhaps even the ultimate product of in the academie process we start out from the tangible marks of
scholarly inquiry. The strained combination of these two orientations archaeology, the shaky language data of an exotic script, or a canonised
myth enshrined in traditional mythology.
produces an epistemology which rejects any rigid, unitary discourse
stipulating that ascertainable truth must be anchored — by means of In fact, my own failure, in my book Tears of /tam,118 to rigorously
explicit and consensual procedures argued before a scientific forum — sort out myth (the réminiscence of a primai matriarchy) from historical
outside individual or collective myth. On the contrary, if myth is the truth regarding the exclusively female kingship in western Zambia in the
ultimate, inévitable and therefore even justifiable product of scholarship, seventeenth and eighteenth Century CE, betrays an epistemology
then the pattern of reality can and must be read backwards, projecting the disarmingly similar to the one here imputed to Bernai. But then, the
most revealing, most attractive, most politically advisable, most problem at hand was equally similar: reconstructing ideological history for
empowering, myth onto the fragmented and endless set of potential data. If a région and a period for which contemporary documentary sources are
methodological procedures are not held to détermine truth value, then virtually absent. And the same similarity attended our shared reliance on
common sensé and intuitive, myth-guided processing of reality may be Marxist-inspired models of socio-political organisation and of scholarly
expected to reveal an underlying pattern of reality which corresponds with, praxis. It is not the use of myth as a historical source which is dangerous
in fact is just another version of, the myth with which the researcher set from a methodological point of view, but the failure to apply such
out in the first place. Research becomes wishful thinking, and may even sophisticated methodology as has been developed for doing so.119
claim the right to be just that. The social group dynamics of academie 116
Hall, 'When is a myth not a myth; cf. Bernai, M., 1992, 'Response to Edith
production (the 'sociology of knowledge', in other words) become all Hall,' Arethusa, 25: 203-14.
117
there is to it, for essentially truth as a product of scholarship has been I.e. myth posing as scholarly truth, whose mythical nature can only be
declared an empty shell. It is the spécifie group with its particularist demonstrated by scholarly reassessment, usually in a future génération. Of course the
entire thrust and passion of Martin Bernal's scholarship (and anyone else's) hinges on
interests that détermines which myth it will pursue, in an endless scholarly myth not revealing its mythical nature to the author's consciousness. If it
circulation of essentially arbitrary paradigms, and scholarship is nothing does, and thus becomes clearly détectable as myth, serious problems of consciousness
but the pretext of providing a particular myth with scientific trappings — arise, e.g., in Bernal's case (Black Athena II, p. 41 and passim) when his own analysis
as in the case of the radical, racialist Eurocentrist and Afrocentrist myths of the Hyksos évidence left him, as hè saw it, no alternative but to appeal (albeit not for
Greece but for the Levant) to the 'Aryanist' image of a militant barbarous invasion from
supposed to genuinely and permanently empower Whites or Blacks, and the north — however distasteful such an image was to him, since it seemed to mean
of the myth of a primordial matriarchy supposed to do the same for reverting to a mode of historical explanation whose eradication had been the very
women, etc.115 purpose of Black Athena.
118
Van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1992, Tears of Rain: Ethnicity and history in central
western Zambia, London/ Boston: Kegan Paul International.
7.4. steering awayfrom, and back to, myth 119
Cf. van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1985, 'The historical interprétation of myth in
the context of populär Islam' in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., & Schoffeleers, J.M., 1985,
The internally contradictory epistemology as outlined above also helps us Theoretical explorations in African religion, London/ Boston: Kegan Paul, pp. 189-224;
to understand why Martin Bemal has such obvious difficulty in detachedly van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1987, 'Likota lya Bankoya: Memory, myth and history', in:
and convincingly handling mythological material from Greece and Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 27, 3-4: 359-392, numéro spécial sur Modes populaires
d'histoire en Afrique, sous la direction de B. Jewsiewicki & C. Moniot; Vansina, J.,
1985, Oral tradition as history, London/ Nairobi: Currey/ Heinemann Kenya. The
problem is understandably central to thé study of African precolonial history, and has
115
Cf. Bamberger, J., 1974, 'The myth of matriarchy: Why men rule in primitive received much attention since thé heyday of this sub-discipline in thé 1960-70s. This did
not lead to consensus. While scholars like Vansina, Schoffeleers, and myself are
societies', In: Woman, culture, and society, edited by M. Z. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere,
pp. 263-80, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press; Wagner-Hasel, B., ed., 1992, convinced of thé usefulness of myth as évidence (however little, and however difficult to
handle) for history, others argue that it is impossible, by whatever method, to thresh
Matriarchatstheorien der Altertumswissenschaft, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch-
gesellschaft; inevitably, thé principal Afrocentrist Diop played with a combination of truth out of myth. Cf. Feicrman, S., 1993, 'African histories and the dissolution of
the Afrocentrist and thé matriarchal myths, cf. Diop, The Cultural Unity of Black world history', in: Bâtes étal., Africa and thé disciplines, pp. 167-212, p. 182f;
Africa: The Domains ofPatriarchy and Matriarchy in ClassicalAntiquity. Gilsenan, M., 1972, 'Myth and thé history of African religion', in: Ranger, T.O. & I.

56 57
 By the same token, under Bernai's epistemology as reconstructed hère etc. The décision whether a statement is admissible as scientific, in other
words has a low myth content and a high truth content, is neither
it would no longer be necessary to distinguish between
• scientific statements (which are capable of, and intended to be, faulted individual nor idiosyncratic, but dépends on the examination of the
by progressive research employing progressively consensual and statement and the accompanying procedures by a collectivity of scholars,
the forum. Such décisions are invariably meant to be provisional. For thé
improved methodological procedures), and
• pre-scientific statements (such as the pronouncements of 'the Ancients' growth of science consists in the continuous recycling of past truths and
on the historical relations between Egypt and Greece), whose mythical faulting them for being myths. To thé extent that disciplines are established
component is admittedly large (e.g. they reflect not so much past facts and professionalised, they are routinised structures for thé réduction of
mythical éléments in their members' scholarly statements. So much for thé
but current interests).
However, by any other epistemology these two types of statement cannot outsider going it alone. To thé extent to which disciplines undergo
paradigmatic shifts (i.e. become aware of their own paradigms as hâve
be simply juxtaposed in terms of contrasting Models, an Ancient Model as
against an Aryan Model. While Bernai successfully and properly faults the hitherto informed their analysis on thé unconscious plane), earlier science
Aryan Model (and such faulting is what it was intended for and capable of, and paradigms are revealed to be mythical, and new science is stipulated
by new procédures.
although its authors did not realise that), he fails to appreciate that it exists
at a different epistemological plane from the Ancient Model, which is not a This recycling of older truths in order to show them to be myths is of
scientific model and cannot, and should not, be faulted, or even 'Revised' course what Martin Bernai himself has donc when deconstructing thé
(by allowing for Northern, Indo-European migration into ancient Greece, Eurocentrist myth underlying thé classicist science of the last few
centuries. However, when hè is tempted to turn around and produce — as
in addition to cultural indebtedness to Egypt and the Levant).
3 The continuity with my own fairly recent work will, I hope, make it if that were his true calling, and thé brilliant Black Athena 1 merely a
clear that this attempt to reconstruct and make explicit Martin Bernai's stepping stone, Prolegomena once more — thé 'correct' image of
epistemology is meant neither as a caricature, nor as an attack - although it intercultural exchanges in thé eastern Mediterranean in thé third and second
may well be misread to be both. Nor is this epistemology peculiar to us: millennium BCE, his own Marxist-inspired 'sociology of knowledge'
there are signs that it is becoming a somewhat accepted mode of academie takes revenge. The fundamental and lasting insight that pure knowledge
f _ _ •"-"•—»-^„.^ „„„„ _„,, „ — —A™™ •^è^f^ff^vf- "«--w « .(.„^o."*1""" *" **1™'-•"•<• '•

production. Some might wish to call it post-modern. Underlying it is a far uncontaminated by class interests is illusory — in other words, that ail
more disconcerting claim, which goes to the heart of scholarship in the knciwledge is to a considérable extent, and inevitably, mythical — makes
hira reject ail methodological rigour and ail insistence on procédure as
humanities and social sciences today.
Persuasively produced in words which also have an extra-scientific, merely an illusory devise meant to ban thé essentially mythical i.e.
common-sense meaning, scholarship invariably yields statements which arbitrary nature of académie knowledge from consciousness.
have the outside appearance both of myth and of truth. We cannot see from There is enough hère that I recognise from my own work to feed thé
the outside, at first glance, which applies. Statements of research findings, hope that I may be forgiven for spilling the beans.120 We have to admit
as products of scholarship, therefore remain merely 'potential myths/ that Bernai's stance as reconstructed hère at least implies a certain humility,
potential truths', unless they are accounted for by elaborate descriptions of in implicitly (but never explicitly) admitting to thé mythical nature of his or
the procedures defining the data set, its collection and sélection, the her knowledge just like anybody else's. Or, as Jan Vansina, today's
transformations it has undergone, the théories guiding its interprétation,
thé 1970s and 1980s much of my work explored thé potential of neo-
Marxism for anthropology, specifically in the field of religieus and ethnie studies. Cf.
Kimambo, eds., 1972, The historical study o/African religion, London: Heinemann,
my Religlous change in Zambia: and Tears of Rain, as well as: van Binsbergen,
pp. 50-69; Henige, D., 1982, Oral historiography, London/ New York/ Lagos:
W.M.J., 1984, 'Kann die Ethnologie zur Theorie des Klassenkampfes in der Peripherie
Longman; Ki-Zerbo, G., 1981, éd., UNESCO General History of Africa, I:
werden?', Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 9, 4: 138-48; van Binsbergen,
Methodology and prehistory, Heinemann/ California University Press/ UNESCO;
W.M.J., & P.L. Geschiere, 1985, eds., Old modes of production and capitalist
Schoffeleers, J.M., 1985, 'Oral history and the retneval of the distant past: On the use
encroachment, London/ Boston: Kegan Paul International. I am not identifying Martin
of legendary chronicles as sources of historical information', m: van Binsbergen &
Bernal äs a Marxist let alone denouncing him for being one; I simply dctect somewhat
Schoffeleers, Theoretical explorations, pp. 164-188; Vansina, J,, 1986, 'Knowledge and
loose but unmistakable, and valuable, Marxist Strands and dilemmas in his position —
perceptions of the African past', in: Jewsiewiecki, B., & Newbury, D., 1986, eds.,
like in my own.
Afncan historiographies: What history for which Africa?, Beverly Hills: Sage.

58 59
 SfiïillLuc de as scholars ourselves, thé idea that myth might be ail what our work as
leading historian of Africa, intellectual producers amounts to, is often unbearable. What sustains our
Heusch's personal version intellectual efforts and enables us to keep up with thé frustrations of an
'All history as reconstruction of institutional career (or even, for an increasing number of us, thé lack of
such a career) is a belief in the liberating and validating powers of
académie knowledge — through thé production and enactment, not of
7.5. a way out? arbitrary myth but of valid, reliable models of reality, of truth.
Nor is such a belief totally unfounded, since we know from practical
Yet, while such an epistemology^^B^ expérience that some varieties of human knowledge are not merely
modern times, and perhaps mythical, arbitrary and self-referential, but amount to eminently practical
untenable assumptions about truths, allowing us to hâve an impact on reality through which we
limitations, it poses immense manifestly produce and reproduce ourselves and our life world. Whether
mythical orientation tends to be we base such an insight on the Marxist thesis of the primacy of work,
the rather crude realism which production, praxis, in shaping both the world, our society, and our
epistemological abode of the Black \ catégories of thought and logic; on the philosophy of pragmatism; on the
'compétitive plausibility' implies* widespread (though not universally) Christian view as to the redemptive
consciousness, hè insists that nature of good works; on a Taoist or Zen Buddhist rehance on concrete-
and less mythical than others, ness over theory; or on the practical wisdom of primary producers
have no doubt that it is not the wherever in the world — an appeal to cotnmon sensé (Bernai's main
interplay with the implied stock-in-trade as far as methodology is concerned) is not ipso facto to be
subconscious, deeply émotive, dismissed. But for precisely the many reasons that make empiricist realism
mythical fulfilment, which — an unpopulär epistemological option, such an appeal is simply not enough
understand — constitutes the true * for the production of good science — of scientific truth, which is not only
anybody else's quest for knowledge, S true (again, how would we know?), but which can also be seen and
It is here that the problem lies. accepted to be true by the community of scholars — even if for what in a
state, or an economie elite, is next génération will turn out to have been the wrong reasons.
precisely if this were a mere Can we at all produce non-mythical knowledge in scholarship, and
routinisation of scholarly distinguish it from the spurious recirculation of myth? Or does the
patronage, at a scale totally exclusively verbal and disembodied nature of academie production
, . .
suggests that the mam purpose of preclude such grounding? If there were an obvious answer to this central
state-supportive myth — question the problem would not arise. The best we can do is to propose,
least because such scholarship keeps jfflj critique and progressively agrée on methodological procedures which have
meaningfulness, rationality, planning^ to be argued out in the collectivity of scholarship, thus deliberately
the modern democratie state and it designing a practice which — in émulation of the practices that support us
materially — may keep myth at bay.
121
Vansma, J , 1983, 'Is élégance But this forces us to think deeply about what the aim of our production
History m Africa, 10. 307-348; cf. my discuA of knowledge is. If the fateful cycle of today's scientific truth shown to be
Heusch, L , 1982, Rois nés d'un coeur d'&
Gallimard. lijjj
tomorrow's myth cannot be broken, — if the moment of truth is so very
122preud, s., Jenseits des Lustprmztps^S short, then perhaps, after all, the only value of the ephemeral knowledge
a/M.. Fischer, 1968-1977; Freud, S , New we produce is that, hke myth, it inspires and empowers us for that short
The standard édition of the complète moment. Bernal's epistemology, precisely in its idealist contradictions,
London Hogarth/ Institute of
Life agamst death The psychoanalytical may be more reahstic than we would be inclined to give him credit for.
first published 1959, pp 208f ~

60 61
 'Bernai has thé alarmmg habit of bemg nght for the wrong reasons.'126

Yet I tend to agrée, provided one acknowledges that the wrong reasons at
8. Towards a re-assessmem best lead to not-yet-truth; and provided that one defines 'being right' at a
AU this leads on to a re-i sufficiently abstract, high level of generality ('right in calling attention to
Volume I was an emi the ideological, including Eurocentric, context of scholarly production';
myth of the autonomous orî; 'right in insisting on an intricate, multicentred pattern of intercontinental
deconstruction of previous interaction in contributing towards classical Greek civilisation') so äs to
(and, incidentally, one in accommodate the many corrections on major and minor points which the
historian employing an impl: Black Athena debate over the past ten years has adduced, and which it
an argument largely123 away would be absurd to ignore or deny, whatever the political agendas of these
Volume II, lacking such critics or their editors.
where thé production, recirci If Martin Bernai produces truth inextricably mixed with myth; if his
tempting, has not yet producedttç epistemology (or perhaps, as I argued above, if the nature of historical
debate it has generated is esserttMly knowledge production, to which we are all subjected) is conducive to this;
and thé procédures under whi if he has not adopted more widely acceptable méthodologies for mythical
Statements that can supersede thé: and etymological analysis; if his reconstruction of the modern history of
their myth content can be kept lop ideas may be too schematic and partly wrong; if he shows himself more
dismissive, even the most critîcàï adept at the tracing of the trajectories of isolated cultural and religious items
constructive, and Bernai's responses than at the understanding of the complexity of localising cultural and
palatable than his original published religious transformations; if his lack of detailed knowledge of African
fact that scientific truth is the product cultures means that the Black Athena debate so far has said much less
What is needed is that his sheer on! about Africa's place in global cultural history than should be said and
now shared with others, working could be said; if there are a hundred other things more or less wrong with
recognised as suitable to tell myth Black Athena, — then these are merely so many items for a research
vision of interculturality and multicei agenda that ought to keep as many ofus as possible occupled well into the
our âge, and of his standards of intérêt twenty-first Century CE.
imagination. We owe Martin Bernai a great deal. First on the level of concrete,
For even after subtracting thé ï; spécifie contributions to the study of the ancient eastern Mediterranean. On
dimensions of Black Athena, thé Oft; this point the testimony especially of what was meant as a dismissive
impressive. Of course, one can hardty-àîtj critique, Black Athena revisited, is eloquent. If we made a list of all the
Bernai himself déclares: positive points of spécifie scholarship which the twenty contributors —
deliberately selected by the editors of that collection for their negative
'It is now simply too late to crush the u»*».^«»
become an established académie discourse.' 124*" X^j assessment— concède to Martin Bernai, the sum total would be enough to
mark any specialist career in this field as eminently prominent and créative
And even more telling, when he himself qa'(^ — as if that fat critical tome were in essence a Festschrift written for
as saying that Bernai's 59th birthday. But his principal significance lies elsewhere. H£
.has Ql£ârMjhe.Biîh by. axposing, the rple of classics in constructing the
myth of Eurocentrism and white superiority. He has thus reminded us that
the global processes of intercultural exchange today and tomorrow require
123
Though far from entirely, cf. the critici responsible and politically sophisticated disciplinary and epistemological
'Eighteenth Century', Jenkyns, o.e., Norton, o.e.
124
ß/ac£ Athena II, p. xxn. n6
125
Bernal, 'Réponse to Josme Blok'. Antiquity, 12/1991. 981.

62 63
 TALANTA XXVIII-XXIX (1996-1997)
reflection — an insight unaffected by his own ambiguous relation to myth.
He has set a standard, not so much of methodological rigour and
theoretical consistency but at least of visionary interdisciplinary scope and
depth, of language skill and bibliographical exhaustiveness, of inspired
imagination in the formulation of exciting, testable hypotheses, and
RESPONSES TO BLACK ATHENA
perhaps most important, of cosmopolitan, global anti-Eurocentrism. général and linguistic issues1
In mid-life and without the required specialist academie training in
classical and Ancient Near Eastern languages, archaeology, and ancient
Martin Bernal
history, Martin Bernai has set himself a truly Herculean task. A
fundamental dilemma has attended the Black Athena project from the Department of Government/ Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University
beginning: its scope is far too comprehensive for one person, its political,
ideological and moral implications are far too complex than that one person
could possibly be trusted to thresh thetn all out. Whatever error has crept l. Introduction
in is more than compensated by his scope of vision, which made him
realise that, inside as well as outside scholarship, creating a viable and I had hoped by this time to have really worked much more on what is to be
acceptable alternative to Eurocentrism is the most important intellectual the substance of Black Athena UI: the linguistic dimension of the Black
challenge ofour time. Athena project, including Egyptian and West Semitic influences on
One obvious strategy for reducing the state of alarm which Black classical Greek, the origins of the Egyptian language, the place of Egyptian
Athena has brought about among specialists on Ancient Greece and thé in Afroasiatic as a whole as well as possible Kongo-Saharan influences on
Ancient Near East, has been to try and réfute the details of its scholarship, Ancient Egyptian. However, various other things, including the build up
and to subsequently, smugly, withdraw from thé debate. The other way of a major attack on Black Athena,2 have distracted me from this project.
out, and one which I — an outsider myself to the study of at least the The linguistic dimension has emerged as an important element in this new
ancient, eastern Mediterranean, but an insider in thé identity issues raised offensive. My contribution to this volume, therefore, will deal with three
by Black Athena — passionately advocate, is to continue in the spirit of interrelated topics:
Martin Bernal's project, with vastly increased personal, disciplinary, « An outline of my view of the responses to Black Athena so far (vols. I
and II)
financial and temporal resources, and see where this will lead us. Vocal
participation of scholars from Egypt, from Africa in général, from thé Near « Language contact and the formation of the Greek language, in
East, and the critical involvement of African American researchers be they typological and genera! terms
Afrocentrists or not, must counteract such Eurocentrism as may yet sneak • Some spécifie cases of what I see as loans from Semitic and Egyptian
in. into Greek, including the central etymology which gave Black Athena
The research programme initiated by Black Athena continues to be its name.
viable, exciting, and of global significance, but it has far outgrown the
© 1997 Martin Bernal
capabilities of a single person, even if that person is Martin Bernal. The
'Much expanded version of an oral présentation at the conference on 'Black Athena;
greatest reward that could be bestowed upon him is that others, with Africa's contribution to global Systems of knowledge', African Studies Centre, Leiden,
specialist knowledge of the many relevant spécifie domains of scholarship 28 June, 1996; the author acknowledges Wim van Binsbergen's editorship as well as the
involved, and representing a more diverse ränge of seasoned secretarial assistance of Henriette van Leeuwen and Kora Bentvelsen, African Studies
Centre, Leiden.
epistemological and political options, join forces with him. With all its 2
Bemal, M., 1987, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization, I,
critical overtones, to work towards such a constructive outcome has been The fabrication of Ancient Greece 1787-1987, London: Free Association Books; New
the only aim of this collection. Brunswick: Rutgers University Press; Bernal, M., 1991, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic
roots of classical civilization, H, The archaeological and documentary évidence, New
Brunswick (N.J.): Rutgers University Press. Foi the attack in question, cf. Lefkowitz,
M.R., & MacLean Rogers, G., eds, 1996, Black Athena revisited, Chapel Hill &
London: University of North Carolina Press.

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