Useful Links:
Books on Ebay-see our specially prebuilt search below
Books on Amazon-see our specially prebuilt banner below

Titles to Look Out For:
[in alphabetical order. Each entry includes later editions]
1987. Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation. Volume 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985
1985. Greek Religion by Walter Burkert
1981. The Legacy of Greece: A New Appraisal. Edited by M. I Finley (also a contributor)

Alternative online retailers to try:
Click here to access our prebuilt search for this title on Abebooks

Click here to access our prebuilt search for this title on Alibris

Click here to access our prebuilt search for this title on Ebay

• Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilisation. Volume 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985 [top]
  Written by Martin Bernal
  First published in 1987 in Great Britain by Free Association Books, 26 Freegrove Road, London, N7 9RQ.
  Reprinted in 1987 and 1988 in paperback by Free Association Books, 575pp, ISBN 0946960569. Cover designed by Caz Hildebrand

About this book/synopsis: What do we mean by 'Classical' when we describe ancient civilisation as 'Classical Civilisation'? In this audacious work, the author challenges the basis of the whole of 'current' thinking about this question.

He argues that classical civilisation had deep roots into Afroasiatic cultures, but that these very fundamental influences on 'Classical Civilisation' have been ignored, glossed over, or denied since the 18th Century; and that this is for largely racist reasons

Most of us, he argues, have been taught that Greek civilisation was the result of a conquest of a weak, but sophisticated native population by vigorous Indo-Europeans (Aryans) from the North. Yet, the Greeks of classical times would not have recognised the way their lives, culture and society are portrayed in modern times, which is within an 'Aryan' model.

They would not have described themselves as being original in their political institutions, science, philosophy or religion, although they would of course have been proud of themselves and recent accomplishments. The Greeks' institutions were derived in general from the East and Egypt in particular.

Black Athena is a 3 volume work. Volume 1, this volume, looks at the rise and fall of the two descriptive models used to look at Ancient Greece. It takes as its crucial focal period, the years between 1785 and 1850, where the Romantic and racist reaction to the Enlightenment and the French revolution took place. This time was also period of consolidation of Northern European expansion into other continents. In these decades was also witnessed the birth of progress and scientific positivism allowing 19th Century academics to dismiss part or all of their predecessors.

The author makes a strong argument out of meaningful links between a wide range of areas and disciplines such as drama, poetry, biography, language, philosophy and the emergence of modern scholarship. But as for a mathematician, the working out of the solution is all-important and the author demonstrates some of the journey he made in accomplishing this work.

Chapters:
Preface and Acknowledgements
Transcription and Phonetics
Maps and Charts
Chronological Table

INTRODUCTION
Background
Proposed historical outline
Black Athena, Volume 1: a summary of the argument
Greece European or Levantine? The Egyptian and West Semitic Components of Greek Civilisation/ a summary of Volume 2
Solving the Riddle of the Sphinx and Other Studies in Egypto-Greek Mythology/ a summary of volume 3

Chapter 1. The Ancient Model in Antiquity
Pelasgians; Ionians;Colonization; The Colonizations in Greek Tragedy; Herodotus; Thucydides; Isokrates and Plato; Aristotle; Theories of colonization and later borrowing in the Hellenistic world; Plutarch's attack on Herodotus; The triumph of Egyptian religion; and Alexander, Son of Ammon

Chapter 2. Egyptian Wisdom and Greek Transmission from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance
The murder of Hypatia; The collapse of Egypto-Pagan religion; Christianity, stars and fish; The relics of Egyptian religion: Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism; Hermeticism-Greek, Iranian, Chaldaean or Egyptian?; Hermeticism and Neo-Platonism under early Christianity, Judaism and Islam; Hermeticism in Byzantium and Christian Western Europe; Egypt in the Renaissance; Copernicus and Hermeticism; Hermeticism and Egypt in the 16th century

Chapter 3. The Triumph of Egypt in the 17th and 18th Centuries
Hermeticism in the 17th century; Rosicrucianism: Ancient Egypt in Protestant Countries; Ancient Egypt in the 18th Century; The 18th century: China and the Physiocrats; The 18th century: England, Egypt and the Freemasons; France, Egypt and 'progress': the quarrel between Ancients and Moderns; Mythology as allegory for Egyptian science; The Expedition to Egypt

Chapter 4. Hostilities to Egypt in the 18th Century
Christian reaction; The 'triangle':Christianity and Greece against Egypt; The alliance between Greece and Christianity; 'Progress' against Egypt; Europe as the 'progressive' continent; 'Progress'; Racism; Romanticism; Ossian and Homer; Romantic Hellenism; Winckelmann and Neo-Hellenism in Germany; Gottingen

Chapter 5. Romantic Linguistics
The rise of India and the fall of Egypt, 1740-1880; The birth of Indo-European; The love affair with Sanskrit; Schlegian Romantic linguistics; The Oriental Renaissance; The fall of China; Racism in the early 19th Century; What colour were the Ancient Egyptians?; The national renaissance of modern Egypt; Dupuis, Jomard and Champollion; Egyptian monotheism or Egyptian polytheism; Popular perceptions of Ancient Egypt in the 19th and 20th centuries; Elliot Smith and 'diffusionism'; Jomard and the Mystery of the Pyramids

Chapter 6. Hellenomania, I
Friedrich August Wolf and Wilhelm von Humboldt
Humboldt's educational reforms; The Philhellenes; Dirty Greeks and the Dorians; Transitional figures, 1: Hegel and Marx; Transitional figures, 2: Heeren; Transitional figures, 3: Barthold Niebuhr; Petit-Radel and the first attack on the Ancient Model; Karl Otfried Muller and the overthrow of the Ancient Model

Chapter 7. Hellenomania, 2.
Transmission of the new scholarship to England and the rise of the Aryan Model, 1830-60; The German model and educational reform in England; George Grote; Aryans and Hellenes

Chapter 8. The Rise and Fall of the Phoenicians, 1830-1885
Phoenicians and anti-Semitism; What race were the Semites?; The linguistic and geographical inferiorities of the Semites; The Arnolds; Phoenicians and English, 1: the English view; Phoenicians and English, 2: the French view; Salammbo; Moloch; The Phoenicians in Greece: 1820-1880; Gobineau's image of Greece; Schliemann and the discovery of the 'Mycenaeans'; Babylon

Chapter 9. The Final Solution of the Phoenician Problem, 1885-1945
The Greek Renaissance; Salomon Reinach; Julius Beloch; Victor Bérard; Akhenaton and the Egyptian Renaissance; Arthur Evans and the 'Minoans'; The peak of anti-Semitism, 1920-1939; 20th-century Aryanism; Taming the alphabet: the final assault on the Phoenicians

Chapter 10. The Post-War Situation
The return to the Broad Aryan Model, 1945-1985; The post-war situation; Developments in Classics, 1945-1965; The model of autochthonous origin; East Mediterranean contacts; Mythology; Language; Ugarit; Scholarship and the rise of Israel; Cyrus Gordon; Astour and Hellenosemitica; Astour's successor? - J. C. Billigmeier; An attempt at compromise: Ruth Edwards; The return of the Iron Age Phoenicians; Naveh and the transmission of the alphabet; The return of the Egyptians?; The Revised Ancient Model

Conclusion
Appendix: Were the Philistines Greek?
Notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index

Martin Bernal Classical Greece Books on Amazon:

• The Legacy of Greece: A New Appraisal [top]
  Edited by M. I. Finley
  Published in 1981 in the United States by Clarendon Press in hardback with dustjacket, 479pp, ISBN 0198219156
  Cover illustration shows Metope No. 29. From the Parthenon
  Note OUP also published the following books in the Legacy Series:
  1. The Legacy of Egypt, edited by J. R. Harris
  2. The Legacy of Rome, edited by C. Bailey
  3. The Legacy of Islam, edited by J. Schacht
  4. The Legacy of the Middle Ages, edited by C. G. Crump and E. F. Jacob

About this book/synopsis: This entirely new book replaces the Legacy of Greece edited by Sir Richard Livingstone and published in 1921. This new appraisal, which brings all the information up to date, offers a different approach. Each contributor has had a free hand in selecting his emphases and in determining the structure of his chapter. Sir Richard and his ten distinguished colleagues took 'legacy' in its root sense, a bequest, and after an initial paean by Gilbert Murray to the glory that was Greece, they portrayed ancient Greek culture, field by field, beginning with religion and philosophy and ending with art and architecture. This volume retains that element, on a much-reduced scale, and then proceeds, in each chapter, to examine what later ages, down to our own, have made of the inheritance from the Greeks. the original Legacy was about Greek culture whereas this version is about its meaning in the history of European culture.

CHAPTERS:
Introduction - M.I. Finley, Darwin College, Cambridge
2i. Politics - M.I. Finley, Darwin College, Cambridge
2ii. Political Theory by R. I. Winton, University of Sheffield and Peter Garnsey, Jesus College, Cambridge
3. Homer and the Epic -K.W. Gransden, University of Warwick
4. Lyric and Other Poetry - A. M. Davies, Bedford College, London
5. Drama - T. G. Rosenmeyer, University of California, Berkeley
6. History and Biography - Arnaldo Momigliano, University of Chicago
7. Education and Rhetoric - H.I. Marrou, Sorbonne
8. Philosophy - Bernard Williams, King's College, Cambridge
9. Science and Mathematics - G.E.R. Lloyd, King's College, Cambridge
10. Myth - S. G. Pembroke, Bedford College, London
11. Greek Culture and the Jews - Arnaldo Momigliano
12. Greek Philosophy and Christianity by A. H. Armstrong, Dalhousie University
13. Architecture and City Planning by Peter Kidson, Courtauld Institute of Art
-includes the following plates (black & white):
i. The Hephaestion, Athens (photo)
ii. Reconstruction of Priene by A. Zippelius (illustration)
iii. Restored model of the Acropolis at Athens
iv. The Agora at Athens in the late 5th Century B.C. (plan)
v. The Agora at Athens in the 2nd Century B.C. (plan)
vi. The Maidens' Porch, Erechtheion, Athens (photo)
vii. Parthenon Sculpture at the British Museum, London (photo)
viii. Metope No. 29. From the Parthenon, British Museum, London (photo)
ix. Part of the Parthenon Frieze, British Museum, London (photo)
x. Group from the West Gable of the Parthenon, British Museum, London (photo)
xi. Part of the Parthenon Frieze, British Museum, London
xii. Cleobis, Delphi Museum
xiii. Standing Girl, Acropolis Museum, Athens
xiv. Head of Aphrodite, Petworth House
xv. Head of Athena Lemnia (Roman Copy, after Pheidias), Museo Civico, Bologna
xvi. Aphrodite Anadyomene, National Museum, Syracuse

14. The Figural Arts by Peter Kidson
15. The Greek Legacy by R. R. Bolgar, King's College, Cambridge
Index