Product Description

Was Western civilization founded by ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians?
Can the ancient Egyptians usefully be called black?
Did the ancient Greeks borrow religion, science, and philosophy from the Egyptians and Phoenicians?
Have scholars ignored the Afroasiatic roots of Western civilization as a result of racism and anti-Semitism?

In this collection of twenty essays, leading scholars in a broad range of disciplines confront the claims made by Martin Bernal in Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. In that work, Bernal proposed a radical reinterpretation of the roots of classical civilization, contending that ancient Greek culture derived from Egypt and Phoenicia and that European scholars have been biased against the notion of Egyptian and Phoenician influence on Western civilization. The contributors to this volume argue that Bernal's claims are exaggerated and in many cases unjustified.

Topics covered include race and physical anthropology; the question of an Egyptian invasion of Greece; the origins of Greek language, philosophy, and science; and racism and anti-Semitism in classical scholarship. In the conclusion to the volume, the editors propose an entirely new scholarly framework for understanding the relationship between the cultures of the ancient Near East and Greece and the origins of Western civilization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #541194 in Books
• Published on: 1996-04-29
• Released on: 1996-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

From Library Journal
Two classical scholars at Wellesley College have edited a collection of 20 articles, all attacking Martin Bernal's controversial interpretation of classical culture, Black Athena (Vol. 1, LJ 12/87; Vol 2, Rutgers Univ. Pr. 1991). The authors, experts in a variety of disciplines, including archaeology and linguistics as well as history and classics, criticize Bernal's two central contentions?that ancient Greek thought and culture derived largely from Egypt and that 19th-century scholars hid this fact for racist reasons. These arguments, claim Bernal's critics, are based largely on bad scholarship and ideological agendas. Given the technical nature of the essays, this is not appropriate for general readers, but it is essential for scholars in the field.?Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Essential for scholars in this field.

Library Journal

A thorough treatment . . . . Bernal can certainly not claim that his work has been unnoticed by academia.

Jasper Griffin, New York Review of Books

Customer Reviews

Just the facts ma'am
I am more of a medieval history fan, but this little controversy-want-to-be caught my attention. After reading Bernal's fiction, this book gave a refreshing take on scholarship. Various authors - thus various viewpoints- look at the evidence. Politics - or political correctness-is essentially ignored and this is quite refreshing to the reader. I urge you to read this book if only to learn how REAL scholars objectively study their work.

Real Scholarship
It was trully fun to read this book versus Bernal's. You feel Bernal really stretching the truth, unlike here where the research is evidence-based. That is true science. Bernal is pure politics, embraced by a politically-motivated minority.

Enjoy.

A superb, academic refutation of PC drivel
I like how people who did not read this book write in to trash it. This is typical of the hysteria: "We don't like our true history, our people have been suppressed, let's change history to raise our self-esteem."
Please. If you honestly go through each book and compare the same lines of argument/data, you can only conclude that Bernal is a fictional historian. It's that obvious. He surely became semi-famous in the process (coincidence?).
Let's start another conspiracy....