Product Description

In this volume Bernal's objective is to demonstrate the extent of Egyptian and Phoenician influences on the Aegean during the period in which Greek cultural and national identity was being formed. He reviews the archaeological and documentary evidence supported by research into the linguistic, mythological and religious cultures of the period.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #157478 in Books
• Published on: 1991-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 814 pages

Customer Reviews

pedestrian propaganda
Although all avenues of historical research should be investigated (where reasonable leads exist), this is truely an endeavor in historical revisionism, hence unmatched except by the late Soviet scholasticship of claiming every invention from flight to democracy.

Fight Bias with Bias
Martin Bernal had an opportunity to write a book which would change our view of the classical world. Two of his premises, today, are unarguable: academics in the 19th century and before created a canonical Ancient Greece which never existed to justify their beliefs in European cultural superiority; the real Hellas was part of a larger world, the Greeks borrowed a lot from Babylon, Phonecia, Egypt, Persia, and so on. Ancient writers never hid this. One can read Herodotus and discover how he credits these "barbarians" with important ideas and innovations.

Bernal, it seems, succombed to political correctness and wrote a silly book instead. Why "black" Athena? Why emphasize Africa over Asia when Egypt, by this time, had become a province of larger empires? The readers of Bernal's book might be surprised to discover that he's not the father of "afrocentrism" some portray. The intelligent Bernal wants to win credit for the cultures in Asia and Africa which were part of this large Ancient world.

Bernal the polemicist, sadly, never leaves the kooky world of the late 20th century. There was no such thing as "Africa" in the ancient world in the way we currently understand it. The politicization of race is a modern phenomenon (even if most Eygptians were "black", which is dubious, they weren't racially conscience and didn't have ties to central Africa). Lastly the Greeks did not "steal" everything. It's impossible to write an intelligent history of this period without examining how the Greeks invented some ideas, borrowed some others, and out of this synthesis created something new.

The library of Alexandria was a Greek library. There was no Egyptian library in Athens. Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle and conquored the known world. The Byzantines spoke Greek. When Arab culture experienced its golden age they worked with Greek texts. Bernal seems so intent upon discrediting the originality of the ancient Greeks he creates another world which never existed.

This book can be used as a primary source for the "culture wars" of the 1990s. A promising thesis was compromised by ideological overreach. Still worth reading but dated and, in places, inane.

Boy, this is weak.
If you want to pass yourself off as a scholar, at least use some evidence. I'm sorry, but everyone in the academic community is well aware of the political drive behind this publication. Other than militants, no one else supports this drivel.