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Abstract.
Black Athena is easily the most controversial book on Greek history published in decades. In it Martin Bernal argues that nationalism and racism led Greek historians to reject the ancient view that cultural diffusion from Egypt and the Levant in the second millennium BC played a key role in the development of Greek civilization. While Professor Bernal's critique of modern Greek historiography has merit, conceptual and methodological flaws limit the value of his revisionist interpretation of Greek history.
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Debates among ancient historians do not usually engage the interest of the general public in the United States.1 The public notoriety that followed the publication in 1987 of the first volume of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, a revisionist study of the origins of Greek civilization, is a dramatic exception to that rule.2 Indeed, Black Athena is unquestionably the most controversial work on Greek history to be published in America in decades. Sessions at the annual meetings of the American Philological Association, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the American Historical Association have been devoted to consideration of the work.3 Major scholarly journals have published what amount to 'round-table' discussions of Black Athena and the issues raised by it.4 Nor has the controversy remained confined to classicists and Egyptologists. Numerous articles and reviews in newspapers and magazines-some of them bearing emotionally charged titles such as 'Out of Egypt, Greece,' "The African Origins of "Western Civ,'" and 'Not Out of Africa'!5-and even several television programs have dealt with the work and its implications. Its author, Martin Bemal, grandson of the famous Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner and a Sinologist by training, has become a celebrity and a much sought-after public speaker.
Although only two of a projected four volumes have been published, the reasons for the exceptional interest and controversy provoked by Black Athena are clear. Simply stated, Black Athena represents both a fundamental indictment of and a challenge to Greek historians past and present. The stakes, it is claimed, are high, nothing less, in the author's words, than 'to lessen European cultural arrogance.'6 Such a goal has particular resonance in the United States.
Prejudice against people of African descent and their culture is one of the...