The Black Athena Project

The Black Athena Project

The Black Athena is a three volume work by Martin Bernal. It is a highly controversial piece of work and is sometimes even referred to as the Afro-asiatic roots of classical civilization and attempts to discuss the ancient Greece in a completely new beam of light. The Black Athena typically focuses on the various perceptions held about the relations between the ancient Greece, Greece's Asiatic and African neighbors particularly focusing on the Ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians who allegedly has had an enormous impact on the ancient Greece. According to Martin Bernal, the changes in this western perception was held during the 18th century onwards which in turn fostered a subsequent contradiction by Western academic world of any significant African and (western) Asiatic influences that prevailed on the culture of the ancient Greeks. (Berlinerblau, J., 1999)

This paper attempts to embark upon the work of Martin Bernal and its perspective circumstances and environment, defending it against the sweeping criticism and accusations that have been presented against it especially in the works of Lefkowitz and MacLean Rogers in their work Athena revisited. Such serious criticism regarding Martin Bernal's work, his political view of the historic and the academic truth, inconsistent method, predisposition to conflate culture, his obsession with the origins and can indeed not be avoided. (Lefkowitz, Mary R)

Martin Bernal was a British born Cambridge trained sinologist who specialized in the intellectual history of the Chinese and the Western exchanges that took place around the 1900 CE. It was during his mid career when he was exposed to a series of questions that were rather distant and far flung from that of his original academic area of work but were very important as far as the North Atlantic intellectual tradition was concerned. (Berlinerblau, J., 1999)

The probing question of Greek origins has been one that has been mentioned again and again over the course of time and has indeed become a topic of popular discussion, especially after the publication of Martin Bernal's first two volumes namely; Black Athena: the Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization in the year 1987 and then the second one in the year 1991. However, quite unlike most of Martin Bernal's Afrocentric admirers, he can skillfully read Greek, and hieroglyphics thus claims to also have a sound grasp of other ancient languages. Moreover, although his prime field is that of political science, yet through his work he seems to be quite comfortable with both the chronological as well as the geographical complexities of the ancient Mediterranean. Apart from this, Martin Bernal also insists that he reached upon his stated conclusions regarding the Afrocentric and the Greek origins independently of the Afrocentrists and indicates in his first volume that he had been studying these issues since the past eight consecutive years, which was even before he became aware of this type of literature. (Lefkowitz, Mary R)

Martin Bernal's monumental project of the Black Athena was aimed at being so far. Volume I attempts to address an ambitious ...