Book description
Classical civilisation, Martin Bernal argues, has deep roots in
Afro-Asiatic cultures. But these Afro-Asiatic influences have been
systematically ignored, denied, or suppressed since the eighteenth
century - chiefly for racist reasons.
The popular view is that Greek civilisation was the result of the
conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous
Indo-European speakers--or Aryans--from the North. But the Classical
Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this "Aryan model."
They did not see their political institutions, science, philosophy, or
religion as original, but rather as derived from the East in general,
and Egypt in particular.
Black Athena is a three-volume work. Volume 1 concentrates on
the crucial period between 1785 and 1850, which saw the Romantic and
racist reaction to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and
the consolidation of Northern expansion into other continents.
In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal makes meaningful links
between 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."
Martin Bernal is Professor Emeritus of Government Studies at Cornell
University, specialising in ancient African civilisations and origins of
Western civilisations. He was educated at Darrington and King's College,
Cambridge, where he was a research fellow and tutor. He has published
widely on modern Chinese history.
