What Is Black Athena?
Have you ever thought that the ancient Greek civilization was just a replica of the ancient Egyptian civilization that proceeded it, with a plethora of technological advancements? What race were the ancient Egyptians? Were they white, black, or neither? These are questions that have been plaguing classics scholarship for approximately the last 60 years. Scholars such as Martin Bernal and George James have published books on this relationship between ancient Greece and ancient Egypt with Martin Bernal coming to the forefront of this discussion with the publication of his series of books, Black Athena. The title alone caught the eye of millions of readers and scholars, but Bernal’s series asks the same questions and is determined to find the answers.
Black Athena consists of three volumes published in 1987, 1991, and 2006 respectively with the first volume being- Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 1, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985. This volume is focused on Greek cultural borrowings from Egypt and Levant civilizations in the 2nd millennium BC (2100 to 1100 BC) where Bernal lays out his central argument- that the true origins of Greek civilization lie in a fruitful mix with the Mediterranean and European peoples. Through this Bernal explains to readers two models, the Ancient and Aryan Models, that have been at the epicenter of the discussion. To compare these models against one another, Bernal uses the term “competitive plausibility”. Bernal states that it is difficult to achieve or find circumstantial proof, especially in the field of classics, but that the closest thing is to find a model that is more or less plausible.1Martin. Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, n.d. The Revised Ancient Model is one that Martin Bernal created himself in order to combat the issues the Ancient and Aryan Models face. His work on and around Black Athena is driven by his idea of a “more fruitful framework for future research”.2Bernal, “Black Athena” Pg. 9
The Ancient and Aryan Models
The Ancient Model is the conventional view amongst Greeks in the Classical and Hellenistic Ages. It was understood that Greek culture was the result of colonization of Greece, around 1500 BC, by the Egyptians and Phoenicians (West Semitic speaking) peoples, who had civilized the native inhabitants.3Bernal, “Black Athena” Pg. 1 Scholars, such as Bernal, came to the conclusion that the Greeks were borrowing heavily, in all aspects, from the Near Eastern cultures. The model states the Greek culture was a synthesis of Pelasgian (Indo-European), Phoenician, and Egyptians elements. One of the major historians that supported this model was Herodotus, whose central focus was on the relationship of Europe to specifically Greece, Asia, and Africa and how they had been instrumental in introducing Egyptian and Phoenician civilization to Greece.
“The names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt. I know from the enquires I have made that they came from abroad, and it seems most likely that it was from Egypt, for the names of all the gods have been known in Egypt from the beginning of time… These practices, then, and others which I shall speak of later, were borrowed by the Greeks from Egypt.”4Ibid. Pg.99
Herodotus provides insight to the discussion on whether or not the ancient Greeks borrowed elements from the ancient Egyptians, which is the foundation of the Ancient Model. There were many qualms about this model though, with the biggest one being that this model had placed a barrier in the way of faiths that Greek culture was essentially European in origin.5Ibid. Pg. 31 The overall deconstruction of the Ancient Model was that there were historians and scholars who did everything in their power to debunk the Ancient Model to try and show how Greek culture was fundamentally European. When in Herodotus was a driving force that thoroughly believed that Greek culture was a byproduct of Egyptian culture was not always supported by other historians of his time. This is due to the lack of evidence and Herodotus had the stigma surrounding his character about whether or not he can be trusted in telling the truth about events or what he had to say.
The Ancient Model illuminated multiple invasions, frequent cultural borrowings and the implicit consequences of racial and linguistic mixture that became increasingly intolerable to scholars, such as Karl Otfried Müller. Müller was a historian during the 19th century that broke down the Ancient Model to a point where it was not reputable in order to connect Greece and Egypt. The Aryan Model came out of the fall of the Ancient Model which ultimately fell to the new social and political pressures placed on the educational system. The Aryan Model can be broken down into two different elements with the first being the ‘Broad Aryan Model’. This was developed in the first half of the nineteenth century where the model denied the truth of the Egyptian settlements and questioned those of the Phoenicians. It was held that the early Greeks, emerged as the result of Indo-European conquest of pre-Hellenes, and had been conquered again by Anatolians and Phoenicians, with the latter leaving significant cultural traces behind.6Ibid. Pg. 331 The second element is the ‘Extreme Aryan Model’ that flourished during the 1890s through the 1930s, which went even further to deny the Phoenician influence.7 Ibid. Pg. 2 Overall the Aryan Model was formed to suggest that the Greek civilization was a mixture of the Indo-European speaking Hellenes and their indigenous subjects, denying any sort of fundamental role that Egypt played in creating Greek society. Many of the supporters of the Aryan Model have been more concerned with the racial hierarchy and racial purity of the Greeks, having strong ideas of the Egyptian and Phoenician colonization being distasteful.8 Ibid. Pg. 331
The Ancient and Aryan models are two that Bernal does not believe they are competitively plausible with each other; meaning that these models do not have significant evidence to prove that these events happened. Instead, Bernal has developed a different model called the Revised Ancient Model, which he believes is more plausible. This model identifies Greek as an Indo-European language and its implications of northern influence on Greece, which means that the ancient Greek language is not from the same language family as the Egyptian or Phoenician languages.9Bernal, “Black Athena” Pg. 20 Another major change is that this model accepts the ancient stories of Egyptian and Phoenician settlements which led to a massive Afroasiatic cultural influence on Greece.
The revised model that Bernal proposed can be seen within the spectrum of black scholarship, meaning that the way Bernal formatted Black Athena has brought to light the race discussion within Egyptian culture. This is due to thought-provoking discussion on the ancient Egyptians resemblance to today’s West Africans, while at the same time, not seeing Egypt as an essentially African country. With the creation of the Revised Ancient Model, Bernal is trying to blend various features of the Ancient and the Aryan Models together to find a perfect balance between the two models, but what he is really trying to do is find a model that can fit within the modern day political and intellectual scholarship. “I am convinced the Revised Ancient Model will succeed in the relatively near future is simply that within liberal academic circles the political and intellectual underpinnings of the Aryan Model have largely disappeared.”10Ibid. Pg. 437
Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. 1. was where Bernal was trying to show how the Ancient and Aryan Models are not competitive plausible, where these two models have not shown that they can be argued in a way that is sufficient to explaining the connection between the ancient Greeks and ancient Egyptians. Volumes 2 and 3 are where Bernal goes into deeper context about the Revised Ancient Model and the evidence he has found to support his theory.
The Discussion on Race
The discussion of race has been a constant issue within history, all over the world, and Bernal has brought it to the forefront of the discussion between the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. The provocative question- would the ancient Egyptians have thought of themselves as “black”? Was skin color a criterion by which they divided up humanity? And would they have recognized themselves by the meaning of the term “African”? Bernal deems that the Egyptian civilization was fundamentally African, and that the African element was a lot stronger during the old and middle kingdoms. There has not been enough evidence to show that this was not thought of for the New Kingdom, but there has been research done that can connect the Pharaohs of the Old and Middle Kingdoms to African elements of the time. Europeans have a long history of being involved with racism and slavery so there are multiple ways that this question has been thought through. History has repeatedly shown that Europeans have the underlying feeling that they are superior and more dominate than any other race of people in the world, through the way they conquer other lands and treat those people, such as Africans. If the ancient Egyptians were African and Europeans thought that African people needed to be conquered and treated like animals, then how could it be that these same ancient Egyptians were able to form a civilization?11Bernal, “Black Athena” Pg. 241
Racism was one of the biggest driving factors of the Aryan Model which ended up having three aspects when it came to the ancient Greeks and ancient Egyptians. The three ways to deny that the ancient Egyptians were able to form a civilization was deny that ancient Egyptians were in fact black, deny that they had developed a “true” civilization, or deny both aspects. During the classical times, it was understood that the Egyptians were classified along the spectrum of black, white and yellow but during the 19th century pictorial representations of Egyptians to European populations showed them to have been a thoroughly mixed population- with the representation leaning towards more black or African. 12Bernal, “Black Athena” Pg. 245
There were two compromises that were developed. The first compromise was that the original pure Egyptians had been white, but that later in history there had been considerable mixture from other races with the diffusion of races being the major cause of the Egyptian descendance. The second compromise was developed by W.C. Wells and was the total opposite opinion of the first compromise. It said that civilization was the factor that determined race, not the other way around, “…Ancient Egyptian art showed people who were clearly Negroid, yet the modern Egyptians were not Negroes…it was possible that their skins had become lighter with the advance of civilization.”13 Ibid. Pg. 245 It was and still is hard for European scholars to believe that people with dark skin are able to create a great and legendary civilization like the ancient Egyptians did. One of the lingering possibilities that Bernal comes across in his book is that the color of the ancient Egyptian skins had become lighter with the increased advancement of civilization. Some of the possibilities that have come out of Black Athena, have been classified as racist and have definitely not sit well with scholars in classics, or even readers in the United States.
When reading scholarship like Black Athena, there is a very clear connection to American politics, which can be seen through the issues African Americans face. The United States has struggled with racism issues for as long as time can tell. Black Athena can be linked to the idea of diffusionism, “Who gave what to whom? Who took what from whom? Who stole what from whom?”14Levine, “The Use and Abuse of Black Athena” Pg. 11 This is what much of the discourse on race and ethnicity in the United States were on during the 1990’s. The matters of race and ethnicity were surrounded by the idea of “blackness”. Were the ancient Egyptians black or not? With the focus on “blackness” it feeds into the disruption of historical traditions, omission, and distortion of African American history within the American and European historiography. It is difficult enough for African Americans today to trace back their lineage, but to have an academic book like Black Athena to be published and widely popular in the United States brings about cultural and academic backlash.
Bernal’s readership has hit the core of African Americans due to the statement that Egyptians were racially black and connections that these readers have “long denied knowledge of their own origins in Africa and enslavement in America.”15 Bernal, “Black Athena” Pg. 451. This is significant because much of the issue with race is due to extreme racism in the United States, especially in the South with slavery, but also with the ongoing and persistent degrading of Black people. John Coleman, a scholar in archeology, discussed Bernal’s obsession with race has created problems not only for the classics department, but for academia in general, “There is a fundamental discomfort with the ideas that a respectable academic discipline could have the racist roots and that racism has permeated liberal thought as well as that of obvious bigots.”16Coleman, “The Case Against Martin Bernal’s Black Athena.” Pg. 80 Part of Bernal’s readership are college students, whether it be African American or White. A central fear is does Black Athena fuel the “new racism” that can be seen on college campuses? The answer is not black and white. Every college campus is different, but this is aspect that scholars are trying to discern as it is pertinent issue. It can also complete the raging discourse against Bernal.
It has become important to look at Black Athena for scholarship on classics because it not only investigates the effect of earlier ideologies on classical scholarship but itself embodies the ideological context of the past 25 years, brought face to face with the classics, and demanding a response.17[1] Levine, “The Challenge of ‘Black Athena’ to Classics Today.” Pg. 10 There may be some qualms about Black Athena, but it brought the topic of ancient Greece and ancient Egypt back to the spotlight of discourse, but has revamped it to connect to different political ideas that society can relate to. There may never be a set answer, but as long as scholars are talking about it there will be new evidence to discern from.
