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598

International

ournal

f

theClassical

Tradition

Spring

003

Black

Athena: he

Sequel

(Part1)

Martin

Bemal,

BlackAthenaWrites

Back,

d.

David

Chioni Moore

(Durham,

N.C.:

Duke

University

Press,

2001),

XVI

+

550

pp.

This

book

is

a belated

attempt

to breathe new life into Martin

Bemal's

moribund

BlackAthena

(BA).'

Two more

volumes are

promised: Debating

BlackAthena

DBA),

a

collection of

essays by

scholars who have

received

Bernal's

mprimatur,

nd BA

III:

The

Linguistic

Evidence.2 n

his

introduction,

Bernalstates

that

the

present

volume

(BA

WB)

is

a

"direct

response"

to

Black

AthenaRevisited

BAR),

a

collection of

essays

about

BA

edited

by

my

colleague

Guy

Rogers

and

myself.3

In

fact,

it

offers

both more and

less.

BAWB onsists of reviews

and

commentary,

inked

togetherby

brief

introductions,

on

someof the

essays

in

BAR.4

Added to these are Bernal's

response

to

an article

by

Josine

Blok,

and

brief reviews of the

"recent

broadeningscholarship"

of Sarah

Morris,Walter

Burkert,

and

Martin

West.5

The last

chapter

of

BAWB s a review of

my

book Not

Out

of

Africa

(NOA).6

There

is

also

a

brief

epilogue.

In

it,

Bernal insists

that

the

field

of

Classical Studies has

not

yet

reformed,

and

laments

the

apparent

demise of

Marxist

treatmentsof

history.

At the head of the

epilogue

is a

quotation

rom Max Planck:

A new

scientific truth does not

triumph

by convincing

its

opponents

and

making

them see

the

light

but

rather

because its

opponents

die and a new

generation

grows

up

that is familiarwith

it.

(p.

397)

How

this

quotation

could

be

applied

to

BA

is

unclear,

since his

theories about ancient

history

can

hardly

be characterized

as "scientific

truth."

But

at

least

it

indicates that

Bemal has little hope that the present generationof scholarswill be able to "see the

1.

BA

I: The

Fabrication

f

AncientGreece

New

Brunswick,

J:

Rutgers

University

ress,

1987);

BA

II:

The

Archaeological

nd

Documentary

vidence

New

Brunswick,

NJ:

RutgersUniversity

Press,

1991).

2. In

1987Bernal

lanned

o call

BA

III:

"Solving

heRiddle f the

Sphinx

nd

otherStudiesn

Egypto-Greek

ythology"

BA

:

63).

3.

BAWB:1;

AR

(Chapel

Hill:

University

f North

Carolina

ress,

1996).

4. Bernal

ays

that

he

did not

respond

o

John

Coleman

ecause

"virtually

ll the

points

he

makes

have been

raised

by

otherreviewers"

BAWB:18);

e leaves

Loring

Brace t al.

and

Frank

Snowden o

Shomarka

Keita

n

DBA;

omment

n

Kathryn

ard s

not

neededbe-

cause "her

popular

piece

does not mention

me

[sic]",

or on

Egyptologist

rank

Yurco

becausehe disagreeswith himonlyon technicalmatters f chronology.He doesnotcon-

siderMario

Liverani

ndRichard

enkyns

o

be

"substantial

ritics."

5.

J.

Blok,

"Proof nd

Persuasion

n

Black thena:he

Caseof K.

O.

Mueller,"

n:

Black thena:

TenYears

After

=

Talanta

8/29

(1996/97):

73-208;

.

P.

Morris,

Daedalusnd

he

Origins f

Greek

rt

(Princeton 992);

W.

Burkert,

ie orientalisierende

poche

n der

griechischeeligion

und

Literatur,

Sitzungsberichte

der

Heidelberger

Akademie der

Wissenschaften,

Philosophisch-Historische

lasse,

ahrg.

984,

Bericht

(Heidelberg:

Winter

Verlag,

1984).

M. L.

West,

TheEastFace

of

Helicon:

WestAsiaticElements

n

Greek

Poetry

and

Myth

(Oxford:

Clarendon

ress,

1997).

6.

M. R.

Lefkowitz,

Not Out

of

Affica:

How

Afrocentrism

ecame n Excuseto Teach

Myth

as

History

New

York:Basic

Books,

997).







Review rticles 599

light,"

and that he

regards

the scholars

who

disagree

with him not as

colleagues,

but

as

"opponents."

What ever

happened

to the notion that

scholarship

was a

cooperative

venture,

dependent

upon persuasion

based on discussions of documentation and

evi-

dence?

But BAWB s not addressed to these old-fashioned academics. Bernal does not

expect any

of his readers to have read

BAR,

or to be familiarwith the BAR

contribu-

tors' other

writings

or to

know

any

of them

personally,

because

if

they

did,

they

would

realize

that

he

was

characterizing

BAR and

its authors as

tendentiously

and

unfairly

as

the

nineteenth-century

cholars

whose

work

he

discusses

in BA:

Some

of

the

contributors

o

BAR

attack

the

general

project

or

purely

schol-

arly

reasons,

others from

a mixture of

scholarly

and what I

perceive

o be

right-wing

olitical

motives.

(p.

1,

italics

mine)

BAR,

he

claims,

is

"largely

made

up

of

previously

published

reviews,"

"contributed

with littlealterationand with virtuallynoconsiderationo thereplies o them I published

at

the time"

(p.

1).

What

can

Bernal be

talking

about? About half of the

material

in

BAR s new.

I

took

Bernal's

comments into

considerationwhen I

revised the

review

of

BA,

Stolen

Legacy

nd

some

other books that

I

wrote for The

New

Republic

o

serve

as an

introduction to

BAR.

Edith

Hall's

chapter

"When s

a

Myth

Not

a

Myth?"

s

a

revised

version of an article

(which

was not a

"review")

published

in

Arethusa.

ohn

Baines

reviewed BA

II

in The

New York

Times,

but his

chapter

in

BAR

(in

his own

words)

covers

"different

ground"

(BAR:

48).

Robert

Palter's

chapter

on

science was revised

only

slightly

for

publication

in

BAR,

but

Palter added a

concluding summary

that

responds

to

Bernal's

comments

(BAR: 56).

John

Coleman wrote

about

BA in

Archaeol-

ogy,

but

his

chapter

takes

Bernal's

comments into

consideration and

adds new

mate-

rial.

Only

two

chapters

in

the book

consist of

reviews

reprinted

without

much

revi-

sion:

Emily

Vermeule'sreview "TheWorldTurned

Upside

Down"

(from

TheNew York

Review

of

Books)

nd

LawrenceTritle'sreview

"Black

Athena:

Vision or

Dream

of

Greek

Origins"

(from

Liverpool

lassical

Monthly).

Loring

Brace's

"Clines

and

Clusters

versus

'Race"'

and

Kathryn

Bard's

"Ancient

Egyptians

and

the

Issue

of Race"were

reprinted

with

only

minor

revisions,

but neither was a

review of BA. And

none of these

chapters

nor

any

of

the other

essays

had

previously

appeared

in

a

right-wing journal.

Why

does Bernal

claim

that

his

critics had

political

motives

and

insist that

they

had not

paid

sufficient attention to

his

responses

to their

writings?

His

questions

are

more

revealing

than

his

answers.

He

seems to think

that

his

criticswould

approach

the

evidence

in the same

way

that he has

himself,

that

is,

for a

political

purpose,

and

to

achieve

a

particular

nd.

He assumes

that we are

not interested in

discussion,

because

he

himself in

practice

is

not

really

interested in

discussion,

however much in

theory

he

subscribes to the importanceof debate.7 Seeing oneself through Bernal'seyes is a

curious

experience.

As

Socrates

says

after he heard

his

accusers'

speeches:

"I soon

forgot

who I

was,

so

persuasively

did

they

speak"

(P1.,

Apol.

17a).

If I were

really

the

kind of scholar

he

supposes

me to

be,

one

might

easily suppose

that

my

writings

were

7.

"The

scholarly

purpose

of

Solving

he

Riddle

of

the

Sphinx

the

original

title

of

BA

III]

s the

same as that of the other two volumes:

to

open up

new

areas

of

research o

women

and

men

with far

better

qualifications

han have"

BA

:

73).







600 International

ournal

f

theClassical

radition

/Spring

003

simply

blusteror mindless

propaganda

aboutthe

"glory

that

was

Greece."8One

might

even be

prepared

to

suspect

that

I

was

motivated not

only by

territorial

hostility

to

outsiders

to the

profession,

but

by

an unconscious racism.As

Bernal

himself

puts

it,

what

Lefkowitz finds intolerable

[sic]

is

the

proposal

that

an

African

Egypt

had a central

and

formative

influence

on

Greek

civilization.

This

was what

George

G.M.

James

claimed

in

the

1950s

[in

Stolen

Legacy]

and

I

have

ar-

gued

since

the 1980s.

(BA

WB,

372)9

Never mind

that I have

repeatedly

said

how

important

t

is to

acknowledge

the debts

of ancient Greece

to other

ancient

civilizations,

including

that of

Egypt,

or that

I

have

suggested

that

more needs to be said

about

Egypt's

connection

with

the rest of

Af-

rica.10

n

Bernal's

world,

perceptions

or

"competitiveplausibilities"

matter

more than

reality,

and

Bernal is

eager

to

perceive

me

as

an

evil

antipode

of

himself.

Just

substi-

tute

Bernal's

name for

mine

in

the

quotation

above,

replace

"African

Egypt"

with

"EuropeanGreece" and you will have a reasonablelikeness of the author of Black

Athena.

The main

purpose

of

BAWB,

whatever

its stated

intentions,

is

to

reaffirm

the

competitive

plausibilities

he

created

in BA

I

and

II,

and to

turn

his

recent

criticsinto

the kind of straw

men

(and

women)

that

he

can

attack

with

impunity.

The

strategy

worked

well

in

BA

I:

many people,

most

of

whom should

have known

better,

were

prepared

to

accept

Bernal's

characterization

f

classicists,

both

in

the

presentday

and

in the nineteenth

century.11

n

BA

I

Bernal

made

the

discipline

seem even more sus-

pect

by

talking

about

an

"Aryan"

rather

han

Indo-European)

model of

Greek

origins,

as

if

to

imply

that classical

philology

was somehow connected

with

the

racist

policies

of

the

Nazis.12

Of

course,

it

isn't,

and in fact no

linguist

I

know

of

believes

that

language

is

always

an

indication

of

what

people

now call

"race."

But

since such

plausibilities

and innuendos served Bernalwell in BAI, he is readyto recycle them in

BAWB.

In addition

to

guilt by (alleged)

association,

Bernal

n his

reviews and

commentar-

ies

relies

heavily

on

the

old

rhetorical

echnique

alsum

in

uno,

alsum

in omnibus.

f

he

can

show

that

something

a

particular

scholar has

said and written

is

questionable

or

8.

Readers

f BA

I will

remember

hat

Bernal

elieves hat

classical

tudies

have been cor-

rupted

by pervasive

nti-Semitism

nd

racism,

nd

that

raining

n

classical

hilology

eads

to

"intellectual

assivity"

BA

:

3).

9. Cf.

Bernal'sstatement "What s

anathemafor

Mary

Lefkowitzis the claim made in Black

Athena hat the

'Glory

that

was Greece'

was

the

result of intercontinental

ybridity."

Times

Literaryupplement,May 11, 2001,10.

10.

See,

e.g.,

Times

Literaryupplement,

une

20,

1997,

15-16.On connectionsbetween

Egypt

and

Africa,

cf.

NOA: 135.

11.

E.g.,

Wilson

J.

Moses

speaks

of me as

"an

obscure

drudge

in the

academic

backwatersof a

classics

department":Afrotopia:

he Roots

of African

American

Popular

History

New

York:

CambridgeUniversity

Press,

1998),

8.

12.

On

Bemrnal's

se of

Aryan

(where

everyone

else

speaks

of

Indo-European),

ee

John

Coleman,

"Did

Egypt Shape

the

Glory

that was Greece?"

n BAR:290-1. The

designation

has caused

considerable confusion

among

critics who

do not

specialize

in ancient studies: one Greek

journalist

absurdly supposed

that in NOA

I

was

trying

to

argue

that the

ancient Greeks

came

from

Germany

).







Review rticles

601

even

wrong,

he

hopes

that will

give

the

impression

that

everything

he or she has said

or written is to

be distrusted. The

technique

allows him

to

debate his

critics not on the

major

theories of BA

(which

they

have

long

since

systematically

refuted),

but what is

for him a stronger ground, interpretationof specific details about which he has a

chance

of

being

right,

even

if

they

have little or no

importance

in

the debate as a

whole. As

a

result,

the individual sections

of BAWB ake the form of a

series of

specific

commentson

specific

statements,

phrases

or words. Almost

always,

these are cited in

partial

quotation

or are taken out

of the context

of the

critic's

original

argument,

so

that the reader

has

only

a

partial

sense of the

larger

argument

that the

critic was

trying

to

make.

This

procedure

often makes

Bernal's

argument

hard to

follow,

and

even

more

difficult to

evaluate,

unless one

is

prepared

to read

the whole of the

critique

that

Bernal

is

attacking

seriatim.An

example:

in NOA

(p.

253)

I

described Democritus

fr.

B156

DK mallon

to

den

e to

meden

einai

("aught

is

no more real than

naught")

as

a

"simple concept

of

nothingness,"

because

the

statement is

relatively straightforward.

Bernalclaimsthat I was saying somethingdisrespectfulaboutDemocritus'mind:

No one has

previously suggested

that

Demokritos was

simple-minded;

the

trouble his statement

has

caused

later

commentators

strongly

indicates the

difficulty

and

subtlety

of his

thinking

here.

(p.

391)

This

digression

diverts the reader's attention

from

the main

point

that

Bernal

s

trying

to

make,

which

was that

Greek atomoshas

a

direct

connection to the

name

of

the

Egyptian sun-god

Atum

(whose

name is

actually

itm).

The

etymology

(which

was

originally suggested

by

G.

G.

M.

James

in

Stolen

Legacy)

s

of course

absurd;

atomos

comes

from the

Indo-European

oots

ne-

"un"

+

tem-

"cut.13

But Bernal

does

not

hesitate to use such tendentious

critiques

as

"evidence"of

his

opponents'

weaknesses, inaccuracies,and

"sloppiness,"

or to make their comments

seem more

disputatious

and

unpleasant

than

they

were. Lawrence

Tritle

"continues

with

passionate hyperbole"

(p.

61),

Emily

Vermeule

"is shocked"

(p.

87),

Jasanoff

and

Nussbaum are "scornful"

(p.

126).

Bernal

has no

qualms

about

resorting

to ad

hominem

attack:

"Why

did

Vermeule make

so

many

mistakes?"

(p.

85);

"Lefkowitz's

claim

reveals

not

merely

a

profound

ignorance

of

the Mediterranean

n

the

Bronze

Age

but

also the

strength

of

her

desire

to

give

Greeks

(or

at least

peoples

of

the

Aegean)

a

greater

dynamism

than Southwest

Asians or

Egyptians"

(p.

378);14Jasanoff

and

Nussbaum are

"Indo-Europeanists

with no

knowledge

of Ancient

Egyptian

and

little

interest

in,

or

understanding

of,

language

contact"

(p.

13);

"[Lefkowitz]

does

not know

much about

linguistics

and she has

virtually

no

understanding

of

language

contact,

which is the relevant field when

looking

at the

relations

between Ancient

Egyptian

and Greek"(p. 381). Bernal does not say exactlyhow language contacttheory could

13.

Stolen

Legacy:

2.

See

esp. Jay

Jasanoff,

Stolen

Legacy?

TheEvidence rom

Language,"

n:

Were heAchievements

f

Ancient

Greece

Borrowedrom

Africa?,

d.

Andrea Ross and

Anna Lea

(Washington: ociety

for the Preservationof Hellenic

Studies,

1997),

65-66.

14. Cf.

NOA,

22-23. Of course

I

was not

trying

to make

any comparison

between

the Greeks

and

any

other Mediterranean

people;

my

discussion

of the Minoan frescoes at Avaris was

simply

meant to show that

archaeological

vidence could also be used to

support

the notion

of a movement of

peoples

from the

Aegean

world into

Egypt.







602

International

ournal

f

theClassical

radition

Spring

003

verify

his

etymologies

(or

refute

conventional

ones).

In

fact,

it

is

hard to

see

how

language

contact

theory

could

help

his

argument,

since

any

theory

he

proposes

would

need

to

be

supported

by

reference

o historical

examples.15

But

Bernal

seems

prepared

to make use of any argumentor authoritythatsupportshis particular laims,even if it

means

accepting

ideas that he is elsewhere

eager

to

reject.

He

criticizes

Jasanoff

and

Nussbaum

for

accepting

"the conventional

wisdom

of

the

nineteenth and twentieth

centuries"

(p.

126)

but

scolds

me for

my

"defianceof nineteenth

and

twentieth

century

classical

scholarship"

on

a

point

of

translation

rom

the Greek

(p.

380).

Similarly,

he is

critical

of

my

use

of

explanatory

analogies

to the

history

of

the

English

language (p.

382),

even

though

he

himself

often

relies

on

analogies

from Chinese and

Japanese.

The

back cover

blurb

claims

that

in BAWB

"Bernal

provides

additionaldocumen-

tation to back

up

his

thesis..."

This

documentation onsists of some new

etymologies,

which are

set out

in his

commentary

on

Jasanoff

and Nussbaum. Bernal

suggests

that

Egyptian

ntr

(Greek

nitron

=

natron)

provides

an

etymology

for Greek

anthos,

"flower."16

Even

though

flowers

and

the

dry

sodium carbonate

salts used

in

the

desiccation of

mummies

might

seem to have little in common,Bernalclaims that the derivationhas

an

"excellent" it,

since

ntr

can

mean

creative

power (p.

129).17

The

constructionof this

etymology

requires

considerable

sleight-of-hand.

Bernal

claims

that

the r in

ntr

is

"unstable"

n the case of

anthos,

though

he

fails

to

explain why

the r came

through

unscathed

in

the

recognized

Greek

derivative,

nitron. Bernal

goes

on

from there

to

suggest

that other

words

ending

in

-nthos

which

have

conventionally

been

thought

to

derive

from some

lost

Aegean language)

ultimately

derive

from

Egyptian.

Another

new

etymology,

even

more

important

for

his central

thesis,

concerns

Athena,

but confutes

the

title

'Black'

Athena,

since

it

connects

the

Parthenon

with

Egyptian

pr

thn,

"the house of

crystal,"

which

by

association

might

be

supposed

to

have some connection

with her

epithet

glaukopis,

"blue-eyed."

Bernal

readily

admits

that

the idea

of

Athena's

blue

eyes

does

not

accord well

with her

supposed

African

origin,

"but it

strengthens my

overall case and that of the

preferred

title,

African

Athena"

159-160).

Unfortunately

for

the

reader,

Bernal fails

to

explain

exactly

how

Athena's blue

eyes

support

his

theories.

If

Athena's

appearance

could be

thought

to

reflect

(for

example)

Berber

origins,

how

does

that

fit in with

Bernal's

Egyptian

ety-

mology

for

her

name

(supposedly

from

Ht

Neit,

"house

of

Neith")?

But

here,

as else-

where

in

BAWB,

Bernal

is concerned

with

making

particular

arguments,

not with

constructing

a coherent

hypothesis.

Apparently

Bernal

s

like

one

of those

condemned

men who

are

willing

(as

Plato

has Socrates

put

it)

"to do

anything

and

say

anything

in

order

to

avoid

paying

the

penalty"

(Apol.

38d3).

The

only juries

such defendants are

likely

to

persuade

are those

who

want to believe

in

them,

even

in the face of

overwhelming

evidence. So

Bemrnal

avoids

offending

the audience that

has

in the

past responded enthusiastically

to

his

arguments.

He

separates

himself from what he calls "extremeAfrocentrism,"but he is

careful not

to attack

the

basic

premises

of fundamental works like G. G. M.

James'

15. Sarah

Grey

Thomason ndTerrence

Kaufman,

anguage

ontact, reolization,

nd Genetic

Linguistics

Berkeley:

niversity

f

California

ress,

988),

14

16.

Pace

Bernal,

nitron

s

not what

is

now called niter

(potassium

nitrate,

KNO3),

but natron or

soda ash

(sodium

carbonate,

Na2CO3).

17. Ontheuse of natron

n

desiccation,

ee

Eugen

Strouhal,

ife f

the

Ancient

gyptians

Norman:

University

f

Oklahoma

ress,1992),

61-262.





bemal, martin_black athena writes back_2001 [lefkowitz, mary r._ijct, 9, 4_2003_598-603]

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