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. The contributors are: John Baines, professor of Egyptology, University of Oxford Kathryn A. Bard, assistant professor of archaeology, Boston University C. Loring Brace, professor of anthropology and curator of biological anthropology in the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan John E. Coleman, professor of classics, Cornell University Edith Hall, lecturer in classics, University of Reading, England Jay H. Jasanoff, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Linguistics, Cornell University Richard Jenkyns, fellow and tutor, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and university lecturer in classics, University of Oxford Mary R. Lefkowitz, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Wellesley College Mario Liverani, professor of ancient near eastern history, Universita di Roma, 'La Sapienza' Sarah P. Morris, professor of classics, University of California at Los Angeles Robert E. Norton, associate professor of German, Vassar College Alan Nussbaum, associate professor of classics, Cornell University David O'Connor, professor of Egyptology and curator in charge of the Egyptian section of the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania Robert Palter, Dana Professor Emeritus of the History of Science, Trinity College, Connecticut Guy MacLean Rogers, associate professor of Greek and Latin and history, Wellesley College Frank M. Snowden, Jr., professor of classics emeritus, Howard University Lawrence A. Tritle, associate professor of history, Loyola Marymount University Emily T. Vermeule, Samuel E. Zemurray, Jr., and Doris Zemurray Stone-Radcliffe Professor Emerita, Harvard University Frank J. Yurco, Egyptologist, Field Museum of Natural History and the University of Chicago

Winner of the 1990 American Book Award What is classical about Classical civilization? In one of the most audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the foundation of our thinking about this question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. But these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied or suppressed since the eighteenth century—chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers—Aryans—from the North. But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this “Aryan model.” They did not see their institutions as original, but as derived from the East and from Egypt in particular. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal links a wide range of areas and disciplines—drama, poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of “modern scholarship.”

Berlinerblau (Judaic studies, Hofstra U.) explores the reactions--widely divergent but mostly intense--to Martin Bernal's 1987 publication of the first volume of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. In light of classicist reacting to an outsider's intrusion into their field and Afrocentrist accusation of stealing the material from black scholars, he considers the question of intellectual responsibility during an age of cultural warfare. He also elucidates the contents of the book itself. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Winner of the 1990 American Book Award What is classical about Classical civilization? In one of the most audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the foundation of our thinking about this question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures. But these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied or suppressed since the eighteenth century—chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers—Aryans—from the North. But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this “Aryan model.” They did not see their institutions as original, but as derived from the East and from Egypt in particular. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal links a wide range of areas and disciplines—drama, poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of “modern scholarship.” This volume is the second in a three-part series concerned with the competition between two historical models for the origins of Greek civilization. Volume II is concerned with the archaeological and documentary evidence for contacts between Egypt and the Levant on the one hand, and the Aegean on the other, during the Bronze Age from c. 34000 BC to c. 1100 BC. These approaches are supplemented by information from later Greek myths, legends, religious cults, and language. The author concludes that contact between the two regions was far more extensive and influential than is generally believed. In the introduction to this volume, Bernal also responds to some reviews and criticism of Volume I of Black Athena.

Progressive Black Masculinities brings together leading black cultural critics including Michael Eric Dyson, Mark Anthony Neal, and Patricia Hill Collins to examine an alternatively demonized and mythologized black masculinity.

Not Out of Africa has sparked widespread debate over the teaching of revisionist history in schools and colleges. Was Socrates black? Did Aristotle steal his ideas from the library in Alexandria? Do we owe the underlying tenets of our democratic civilizaiton to the Africans? Mary Lefkowitz explains why politically motivated histories of the ancient world are being written and shows how Afrocentrist claims blatantly contradict the historical evidence. Not Out of Africa is an important book that protects and argues for the necessity of historical truths and standards in cultural education.For this new paperback edition, Mary Lefkowitz has written an epilogue in which she responds to her critics and offers topics for further discussion. She has also added supplementary notes, a bibliography with suggestions for further reading, and a glossary of names.

African Athena examines the history of intellectuals and literary writers who contested the white, dominant Euro-American constructions of the classical past and its influence on the present.

How do different cultures think about race? In the modern era, racial distinctiveness has been assessed primarily in terms of a person's physical appearance. But it was not always so. As Denise McCoskey shows, the ancient Greeks and Romans did not use skin colour as the basis for categorising ethnic disparity. The colour of one's skin lies at the foundation of racial variability today because it was used during the heyday of European exploration and colonialism to construct a hierarchy of civilizations and then justify slavery and other forms of economic exploitation. Assumptions about race thus have to take into account factors other than mere physiognomy. This is particularly true in relation to the classical world. In fifth century Athens, racial theory during the Persian Wars produced the categories 'Greek' and 'Barbarian', and set them in brutal opposition to one another: a process that could be as intense and destructive as 'black and 'white' in our own age. Ideas about race in antiquity were therefore completely distinct but as closely bound to political and historical contexts as those that came later. This provocative book boldly explores the complex matrices of race - and the differing interpretations of ancient and modern - across epic, tragedy and the novel. Ranging from Theocritus to Toni Morrison, and from Tacitus and Pliny to Bernal's seminal study Black Athena, this is a powerful and original new assessment.

Drawing on a range of philosophical, anthropological and political theories, Athena Athanasiou offers a new way of thinking about agonistic performativity with its critical connections to national and gender politics and alongside the political intricacies of affectivity, courage and justice. Through an ethnographic account of the urban feminist and antinationalist movement Women in Black of Belgrade during the Yugoslav wars, she shows that we might understand their dissident politics of mourning as a means to refigure political life beyond sovereign accounts of subjectivity and agency.