In the introduction to this volume, Bernal also responds to some reviews and criticism of Volume I of Black Athena. The author concludes that contact between the two regions was far more extensive and influential than is generally believed. These approaches are supplemented by information from later Greek myths, legends, religious cults, and language. 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. This volume is the second in a three-part series concerned with the competition between two historical models for the origins of Greek civilization. Producing a shock wave of reaction from scholars, Black Athena argued that the development of Greek civilization was heavily influenced by Afroasiatic civilizations. 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.' In Black Athena Writes Back Martin Bernal responds to the passionate debates set off by the 1987 publication of his book Black Athena. 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. 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 these Afroasiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied or suppressed since the eighteenth century-chiefly for racist reasons. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic cultures.

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.

Black athena by martin bernal