Table Of Content,
I
I Black Athena
I
The Afroasiatic Roots
I
of Classical Civilization
I
I
VOLUME I
!
The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785 - 1985
I
Martin Bernal
\
I
l
I
t
I
I Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, New Jersey
First published in the United States by
Rutgers University Press, 1987
Sixth paperback printing, May 1991
First published in Great Britain by
Free Association Books, 1987
© Martin Bernal 1987
Library ofC ongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bernal, Martin
Black Athena.
(The fabrication of ancient Greece, 1785-1985; v. I)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index. To the memory ofm y fother,
I. Greece-Civilization-Egyptian influences. John Desmond Bernal,
2. Greece-Civilization-Phoenician influences. who taught me. that things
3. Greece-Civilization-To 146 B.C. I. Tide.
fit together, interestingly
II. Tide: Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization.
III. Series: Bernal, Martin~ of ancient
Greece, 1785-1985; v. I.
DF78.B398 1987 949.5 87-16408
ISBN 0-8135-1276-x
ISBN 0-8135-1277-8 (pbk.)
Manufactured in the United States of America
All rights reserved
The publication of Black Athena was aided by
the Hull Memorial Publication Fund
of Cornell University.
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgements xii
Transcription and Phonetics xix
Maps and Charts xxiii
Chronological Table xxxi
INTRODUCTION I
Background I I
Proposed historical oudine 17
BlackAthena, Volume I: a summary of the argument 22
Greece European or Levantine? The Egyptian and West Semitic
Components ofG reek Civilization / a summary of Volume 2 38
Solving the Riddle oft he Sphinx and Other Studies in Egypto-Greek
Mythology / a summary of Volume 3 63
Chapter I THE ANCIENT MODEL IN ANTIQUITY 75
Pelasgians 75
Ionians 83
Colonization 84
The colonizations in Greek tragedy 88
Herodotos 98
viii BLACK ATHENA CONTENTS ix
Thucydides 101 Chapter IV HOSTILITIES TO EGYPT IN THE 18TH CENTURY 189
Isokrates and Plato 103
Christian reaction 190
Aristode 108
The 'triangle': Christianity and Greece against Egypt 192
Theories of colonization and later borrowing in the Hellenistic
The alliance between Greece and Christianity 195
world 109
'Progress' against Egypt 196
Plutarch's attack on Herodotos 112
Europe as the 'progressive' continent 198
The triumph of Egyptian religion 114
'Progress' 198
Alexander son of Ammon 115
Racism 201
Romanticism 204
Chapter II EGYPTIAN WISDOM AND GREEK TRANSMISSION
Ossian and Homer 206
FROM THE DARK AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE 121
Romantic Hellenism 209
The murder of Hypatia 121 Winckelmann and Neo-Hellenism in Germany 212
The collapse of Egypto-Pagan religion 122 Gottingen 215
Christianity, stars and fish 124
Chapter V ROMANTIC LINGUISTICS
The relics of Egyptian religion: Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism
and Gnosticism 130 The rise of India and the fall of Egypt, 1740-1880 224
Hermeticism - Greek, Iranian, Chaldaean or Egyptian? 134 The birth of Indo-European 226
Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism under early Christianity, The love affair with Sanskrit 227
Judaism and Islam 145 Schlegelian Romantic linguistics 230
Hermeticism in Byzantium and Christian Western Europe 150 The Oriental Renaissance 233
Egypt in the Renaissance 151 The fall of China 237
Copernicus and Hermeticism 155 Racism in the early 19th century 239
Hermeticism and Egypt in the 16th century 156 What colour were the Ancient Egyptians? 240
The national renaissance of modern Egypt 246
Chapter III THE TRIUMPH OF EGYPT IN THE 17TH AND Dupuis, Jomard and Champollion 250
18TH CENTURIES 161 Egyptian monotheism or Egyptian polytheism 257
Popular perceptions of Ancient Egypt in the 19th and
Hermeticism in the 17th century 162
Rosicrucianism: Ancient Egypt in Protestant countries 165 20th centuries 266
Ancient Egypt in the 18th century 169 Elliot Smith and 'diffusionism' 270
The 18th century: China and the Physiocrats 172 Jomard and the Mystery of the Pyramids 272
The 18th century: England, Egypt and the Freemasons 173
Chapter VI HELLEN OMAN lA, I
France, Egypt and 'progress': the quarrel betWeen
The fall of the Ancient Model, 1790-1830 281
Ancients and Moderns 177
Mythology as allegory for Egyptian science 181 Friedrich August Wolf and Wilhelm von Humboldt 283
The Expedition to Egypt 183 Humboldt's educational reforms 285
x BLACK ATHENA CONTENTS xi
The Philhellenes 289 Victor Berard 377
Dirty Greeks and the Dorians 292 Akhenaton and the Egyptian Renaissance 383
Transitional figures, I: Hegel and Marx 294 Arthur Evans and the 'Minoans' 385
Transitional figures, 2: Heeren 297 The peak of anti-Semitism, 1920-39 387
Transitional figures, 3: Barthold Niebuhr 297 20th-century Aryanism 388
Petit-Radel and the first attack on the Ancient Model 307 Taming the alphabet: the final assault on the Phoenicians 393
Karl Otfried Miiller and the overthrow of the Ancient Model 308
Chapter X THE POST-WAR SITUATION
Chapter VII HELLENOMANIA, 2 The return to the Broad Aryan Model, 1945-85 400
Transmission of the new scholarship to England and
the rise of the Aryan Model, 1830-60 317 The post-war situation 402
Developments in Classics, 1945-65 404
The German model and educational reform in England 318 The model of autochthonous origin 407
George Grote 326 East Mediterranean contacts 408
Aryans and Hellenes 330 Mythology 412
Language 413
Chapter VIII THE RISE AND FALL OF THE PHOENICIANS, Ugarit 414
1830- 85 337 Scholarship and the rise of Israel 415
Phoenicians and anti-Semitism 338 Cyrus Gordon 416
What race were the Semites? 340 Astour and Hellenosemitica 419
Astour's successor? - J. C. Billigmeier 422
The linguistic and geographical inferiorities of the Semites 344
The Arnolds 347 An attempt at compromise: Ruth Edwards 423
Phoenicians and English, I: the English view 350 The return of the Iron Age Phoenicians 426
Phoenicians and English, 2: the French view 352 Naveh and the transmission of the alphabet 427
Salammb6 The return of the Egyptians? 433
355
Moloch 358 II , The Revised Ancient Model 437
,I
The Phoenicians in Greece: 1820-80 359
Gobineau's image of Greece 360 CONCLUSION 439
Schliemann and the discovery of the 'Mycenaeans' 362
Babylon 364 Appendix WERE THE PHILISTINES GREEK? 445
Notes 451
Chapter IX THE FINAL SOLUTION OF'THE PHOENICIAN
PROBLEM, 1885-1945 367 Glossary 509
The Greek Renaissance 368 Bibliography 523
Salomon Reinach 370 Index
Julius Beloch 565
373
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiii
Asia but the Eastern Mediterranean. This shift led me to a concern for
Jewish history. The scattered Jewish components of my ancestry would
have given nightmares to assessors trying to apply the Nuremburg
PREFACE AND Laws, and although pleased to have these fractions, I had not previously
given much thoughtto them or to Jewish culture. It was at this stage that
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I became intrigued - in a Romantic way - by this part of my 'roots'. I
started looking into ancientJewish history, and - being on the periphery
myself - into the relationships between the Israelites and the surround
ing peoples, particularly the Canaanites and Phoenicians. I had always
known that the latter spoke Semitic languages, but it came as quite a
shock to discover that Hebrew and Phoenician were mutually intelli
gible and that serious linguists treated both as dialects of a single
Canaanite language.
During this time, I was beginning to study Hebrew and I found what
seemed to me a large number of striking similarities between it and
Greek. Two factors disinclined me to accept these as random coinci
T HE STORY BEHIND Black Athena is long, complicated and, I
dences. First, having studied Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese as well
believe, sufficiently interesting as a study in the sociology of
as a little Chichewa - a Bantu language spoken in Zambia and Malawi -
knowledge to deserve extended treatment; thus I can give only
I realized that this number of parallels is not normal for languages with
a brief outline of it here. I was trained in Chinese studies; for almost
out contacts with each other. Secondly, I now realized that Hebrew/
twenty years I taught about China and carried out research on both
Canaanite was not merely the language of a small tribe, isolated
intellectual relations between China and the West at the tum oft he 20th
inland in the mountains of Palestine, but that it had been spoken all
century and contemporary Chinese politics. After 1962, I became
over the Mediterranean - wherever the Phoenicians sailed and settled.
increasingly concerned with the war in Indo-China, and in the virtual
Thus there seemed to me no reason why the large number of important
absence of any serious scholarship on Vietnamese culture in Britain, I
words with similar sounds and similar meanings in Greek and Hebrew
felt obliged to study it. This was both to contribute to the movement
or at least the vast majority of those which had no Indo-European
against the American repression there, and for its own sake as a
roots - should not be loans from Canaanite/Phoenician into Greek.
fascinating and extremely attractive civilization that was at the same
At this stage, led by my friend David Owen, I became heavily
time both thoroughly mixed and entirely distinctive. Thus in many ways
influenced by the works of Cyrus Gordon and Michael Astour on
Vietnam and Japan - whose history I had also studied - have served as
general contacts between Semitic and Greek civilizations. Further
my models for Greece.
more, I was convinced by Astour that the legends concerning the
In 1975 I came to a mid-life crisis. The personal reasons for this are
foundation of Thebes by the Phoenician Kadmos contained a kernel of
not particularly interesting. Politically, however, it was related to the
truth. Like him, however, I dismissed the legends of Egyptian settle
end of the American intervention in Indo-China and the awareness that
ment either as complete fantasy or as cases of mistaken identity,
the Maoist era in China was coming to an end. It now seemed to me that
believing that - whatever the Greeks had written - the colonists had
the central focus of danger and interest in the world was no longer East
really been Semitic speakers.
xiv BLACK ATHENA PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xv
I worked along these lines for four years, and became convinced that At this point I began to investigate the historiography of the origins of
anything up to a quarter of the Greek vocabulary could be traced to Greece, to make sure that the Greeks had really believed they had been
Semitic origins. This, together with 40-50 per cent that seem to be colonized by Egyptians and Phoenicians and had taken most of their
Indo-European, still left a quarter to a third of the Greek vocabulary culture from these colonies, as well as from later study in the Levant.
unexplained. I hesitated between seeing this irreducible fraction con Once again, I had a big surprise. I was staggered to discover that what
ventionally as 'Pre-Hellenic' or of postulating a third outside language, I began to call the 'Ancient Model' had not been overthrown until the
either, from Anatolian or - as I preferred - Hurrian. When I looked into early 19th century, and that the version of Greek history which I had
these languages, however, they provided virtually no promising mat been taught - far from being as old as the Greeks themselves - had been
\
erial. It was only in 1979, when I was glancing through a copy of Cerny's \ developed only in the 1840S and 50S. Astour had taught me that
Coptic Etymological Didionary, that I was able to get some sense of Late attitudes towards the Phoenicians in historiography were profoundly
Ancient Egyptian. Almost immediately, I realized that this was the third affected by anti-Semitism; it was therefore easy for me to make a
outside language. Within a few months I became convinced that one connection between the dismissal of the Egyptians and the explosion of
could find plausible etymologies for a further 20-25 per cent of the Northern European racism in the 19th century. The connections with
Greek vocabulary from Egyptian, as well as the names for most Greek Romanticism and the tensions between Egyptian religion and Chris
gods and many place names. Putting the Indo-European, Semitic and tianity took rather longer to unravel.
Egyptian roots together, I now believed that - with further research Thus, one way and another, the scheme set out in Black Athena has
one could provide plausible explanations for 80-90 per cent of the taken me more than ten years to develop. During this time I have been a
qreek vocabulary, which is as high a proportion as one can hope for in public nuisance in both Cambridge and Cornell. Like the Ancient
any language. Thus there was now no need for the 'Pre-Hellenic' Mariner, I have waylaid innocent passers-by to pour my latest half
element at all. baked ideas over them. lowe these 'wedding guests' a tremendous debt,
At the beginning of my research I had had to face this question: Why, if only for their patient listening. I am even more grateful for the
if everything is as simple and obvious as you maintain, has nobody seen extremely valuable suggestions they made, which - although I have
it before? This was answered when I read Gordon and Astour. They been able to acknowledge only a few of them - have been ofincalculable
had seen the East Mediterranean as a cultural whole, and Astour had help to my work. Most important of all, I want to thank them for their
demonstrated that anti-Semitism provided an explanation for the excitement about the subject and for the confidence they gave me that it
denial of the role of the Phoenicians in the formation of Greece. After was not madness to challenge the authority of so many academic
hitting upon the Egyptian component, I soon became even more acutely disciplines. They appeared to believe in what I was saying and they
involved in the problem of ,w hy hadn't I thought of Egypt before?' It was convinced me that although some of my ideas were probably wrong in
so obvious! Egypt had by far the greatest civilization in the East particular, I was on the right track.
Mediterranean during the millennia in which Greece was formed. lowe the experts a different kind of gratitude. They were not simply
in my way. I pursued them into their lairs and pestered them with
Greek writers had written at length about their debts to Egyptian
religion, and other aspects of culture. Furthermore, I found my failure requests for rudimentary information and explanations of the reasons
still more puzzling because my grandfather was an Egyptologist, and as behind their ideas or conventional wisdom. Despite the fact that I took
a child I had been extremely interested in Ancient Egypt. Clearly there up much of their valuable time and sometimes upset their most
were very profound cultural inhibitions against associating Egypt with cherished beliefs, they were uniformly courteous and helpful, often
Greece. going to considerable efforts on my behalf. The help of the 'wedding
xvi BLACK ATHENA PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xvii
guests' and the experts has been central and essential to the project. In Lloyd, Bruce Long, Lili McCormack, John McCoy, Lauris Mckee,
many ways I see the whole thing as a collective rather than an individual Edmund Meltzer, Laurie Milroie, Livia Morgan, John Pairma~ Brown,
effort. One person could not possibly have covered all the many fields Giovanni Pettinato, Joe Pia, Max Prausnitz, Jamil Ragep, Andrew
involved. Even with this massive outside help, however, I have inevit Ramage, John Ray, David Resnick, Joan Robinson, Edward Said,
ably fallen short of the thoroughness one would righdy expect of a Susan Sandman, Jack Sasson, Elinor Shaffer, Michael Shub, Quentin
monographic study. Furthermore, I am fully aware that I have not Skinner, Tom Smith, Anthony Snodgrass, Rachel Steinberg, Barry
understood or properly assimilated much of the best advice given to me. Strauss, Marilyn Strathern, Karen Swann, Haim Tadmore, Romila
Thus none of the people mentioned below is in any way responsible for Thapar,James Turner, Steven Turner, Robert Tannenbaum, Ivan van
many errors of fact and interpretation the reader will find. Neverthe Sertima, Cornelius Vermeule, Emily Vermeule, Gail Warhaft, Linda
less, the credit for this work belongs to them. Waugh, Gail Weinstein, James Weinstein, and Heinz Wismann. I
First, I should like to thank the men and women without anyone of should particularly like to thank the few among them who objected
whom I could never have completed this work: Frederic Ahl, Gregory strongly to what I was trying to do but still knowingly and willingly
Blue, the late and very much lamented Robert Bolgar, Edward Fox, provided very useful aid.
Edmund Leach, Saul Levin, Joseph Naveh, Joseph Needham, David I should like to express my deep gratitude to everybody at the
Owen, and Barbara Reeves. In different proportions, they gave me the Department of Government at Cornell who not only tolerated but
information, advice, constructive criticism, backing and encourage encouraged my involvement in a project so far from the usual concerns
ment that have been crucial for these volumes. All of them are of a government department. Equally, I should like to thank all at
exceptionally busy people and working on extremely important and Telluride House for many years of hospitality and for the intellectual
fascinating projects of their own. I am more moved than I can say at the stimulus that led me to tum to my new field. I am also very grateful to
great amounts of time they spent on my work, which was often everybody at the Society for the Humanities at Cornell, where I spent a
presented to them when it was at a very primitive level. very productive and happy year in 1977/8.
I also want to thank the following men and women - and record my lowe a deep debt to my publisher, Robert Young, for his confidence
gratitude to those who are now dead - for the time and trouble they in the project and the constant help and encouragement he has given
took to help me: Anouar Abdel-Malek, Lyn Abel, Yoel Arbeitman, me. At the same time, I want to thank my editor, Ann Scott, for the huge
Michael Astour, Shlomo Avineri, Wilfred Barner, Alvin Bernstein, amount of work she has put into this volume, her patience, and the
Ruth Blair, Alan Bornhard, Jim Boon, Malcolm Bowie, Susan Buck sympathetic way in which she has vasdy improved the quality of the text
Morse, Anthony Bullough, Carol Caskey, Alan Clugston, John without bruising my amour propre. I am deeply indebted to the two
Coleman, Mary Collins, Jerrold Cooper, Dorothy Crawford, Tom scholarly readers, Neil Flanagan and Dr Holford-Strevens, and the
Cristina, Jonathan Culler, Anna Davies, Frederick de Graf, Ruth copy-editor, Gillian Beaumont. I can assure the readers that the many
Edwards, Yehuda Elkana, Moses Finley, Meyer Fortes, Henry Gates, errors, inconsistencies and infelicities still lurking in this book are
Sander Gilman, Joe Gladstone, Jocelyn Godwin, Jack Goody, Cyrus nothing to those abounding in the text before it came under their expert
Gordon, Jonas Greenfield, Margot Heinemann, Robert Hoberman, scrutiny. Despite the frustrations of their Augean task, they have been
Carleton Hodge, Paul Hoch, Leonard Hochberg, Susan Hollis, Clive extraordinarily patient and charming in all their dealings with me. I
Holmes, Nicholas Jardine, Jay Jasanoff, AlexJoffe, Peter Kahn, Richard should like, too, to thank Kate Grillet for her first draft of the maps and
Kahn, Joel Kupperman, Woody Kelly, Peter Khoroche, Richard charts and her extraordinary skill in interpreting my rushed and impre
Kline, Diane Koester, Isaac Kramnick, Peter Kuniholm, Annemarie cise directions. I am also very grateful to my daughter, Sophie Bernal,
Kunzl, Kenneth Larsen, Leroi Ladurie, Philip Lomas, Geoffrey for help with the bibliography and for her cheerful and patient gofering.
xviii BLACK ATHENA
lowe an incalculable debt to my mother, Margaret Gardiner, who
gave me my basic education and self-confidence. More specifically, she
has provided the means for me to complete this volume and has given
valuable editorial help with the introduction. I should like to thank my
TRANSCRIPTION
wife, Leslie Miller-Bernal, for her useful judgement and criticism, but
above all for providing the warm emotional base upon which so large an AND PHONETICS
intellectual undertaking is utterly dependent. Finally, I should like to
thank Sophie, William, Paul, Adam and Patrick for their love and for
keeping me so firmly rooted in the things that really matter.
EGYPTIAN
T HE ORTHOGRAPHY USED in Egyptian words is the standard
one accepted by modem Egyptologists, the only exception
being the 3 used to represent the 'vulture or double )aleph',
which is often printed as two commas on top of each other.
Whatever the exact sound of the 3 in Old Egyptian it was transcribed
into Semitic scripts as r, 1, or even n. This consonantal value was
retained at least until the 2nd Intermediate Period in the 17th century
Be. In Late Egyptian it appears to have become an >aleph and later, like
the Southern English r, it merely modified adjacent vowels. The 3 is the
first sign of the alphabetical order used by Egyptologists, and I shall
continue with other letters with obscure or difficult sound values.
The Egyptian i corresponds to both the Semitic >aleph and yod.
>A leph is found in many languages, and nearly all Afroasiatic ones. It is
a glottal stop before vowels, as in the Cockney 'bo>le' or 'bu>e' ('bottle'
and 'butter').
The Egyptian <ayin, which also occurs in most Semitic languages, is a
voiced or spoken >aleph. The Egyptian form seems to have been
associated with the 'back' vowels 0 and u.
xx BLACK ATHENA TRANSCRIPTION AND PHONETICS xxi
In early Egyptian the sign w, written as a quail chick, may have had SEMITIC
purely consonantal value. In Late Egyptian, the form of the language
The Semitic consonants are transcribed relatively conventionally.
which had the most impact on Greek, it seems to have been frequently
Several of the complications have been mentioned above in connection
pronounced as a vowel, either 0 or u. with Egyptian. Apart from these, one encounters the following:
The Egyptian sign written as r was more usually transcribed as I in
Semitic and Greek. In later Egyptian it seems, as with the to have In Canaanite the sound b merged with I}.. Transcriptions here
3,
sometimes reflect the etymological b rather than the later I}.. t is an
weakened into becoming merely a modifier of vowels.
The Egyptian and Semitic letters Romanized as I}. appear to have emphatict.
been pronounced as an emphatic h. The Arabic sound usually transcribed as th is written here as tY• The
The Egyptian and Semitic b represents a sound similar to the ch in same is true of the dh/d Y•
s. The letter found in Ugaritic which corresponds to the Arabic Chain
'loch'. In later times it became thoroughly confused with the letter
The Egyptian letter h appears to have represented the sound by. It is transcribed g.
too became confused with s. The Semitic emphatic k is written q, rather than ~ as in Egyptian.
The letter written here as s was transcribed as either s or z. The Semitic letter Tsade, almost certainly pronounced ts, is written~.
s.
s was pronounced as sh or skh. In later times it became very confused In Hebrew from the I st millennium BC the letter Shin is written as
s,
Elsewhere, however, it is transcribed simply as s, not as because I
with bandh·
question the antiquity and the range of the latter pronunciation
~ represents an emphatic k. Inconsistently, I have followed the
common practice of Semitists and have employed q to represent the (Bernal, forthcoming, 1988). This, however, causes confusion with
s.
same sound in Semitic. Samekh, which is also transcribed as s. Sin is transcribed as
The letter twas probably originally pronounced as tY• However, even Neither dagesh nor begadkepatis indicated in the transcription. This is for
in Middle Egyptian it was being confused with t.
reasons of simplicity as well as doubts about their range and occurrence
Similarly, the g was frequently alternated with d.
in Antiquity.
EGYPTIAN NAMES
VOCALIZATION
Egyptian divine names are vocalized according to the commonest
The Masoretic vocalization of the Bible, completed in the 9th and lOth
Greek transcription - for example, Amon for )1mn.
centuries AD but reflecting much older pronunciation, is transcribed as
Royal names generally follow Gardiner's (196 I) version oft he Greek
follows:
names for well-known pharaohs, for instance, Ramesses.
Name of sign Plain with' y with,w with iT h
COPTIC Pata~ ~ ba
Qdmq ~ ba '~ bft i1~ bah
Most of the letters in the Coptic alphabet come from Greek and the
/fireq :;1 bi ':;1 bi
same transcriptions are used. Six extra letters derived from Demotic are
:;} be ':;} be iT:;} beh
~ere
transcribed as follows:
segol i) be '~ b~ i1~ beh
lY s /folem ~ bo t:l bo i1~ boh
q f QjbU!j ~ bu ~::l btl
