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Post by Babylon Enigma on Sept 28, 2014 18:18:53 GMT -5
Ni99er Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization is a controversial three-volume scholarly work by Martin Bernal (1937-2013). He discusses ancient Greece in a new light. Bernal's thesis discusses the perception of ancient Greece in relation to Greece's African and Asiatic neighbors, especially the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians who, he believes, colonized ancient Greece.
Bernal proposes that a change in the Western perception of Greece took place from the 18th century onward and that this change fostered a subsequent denial by Western academia of any significant African and Phoenician influence on ancient Greek civilization.
The origins of Ancient Greek civilization
Bernal rejects the theory that Greek civilization was founded by Indo-European settlers from Central Europe; that theory (which Bernal calls the Aryan model) became generally accepted during the 19th century. Bernal defends instead what he calls the Ancient model; the name refers to the fact that both Egyptian and Phoenician influences on the Greek world were widely accepted in Antiquity.
Bernal discusses Aeschylus's play The Suppliants, which describes the arrival in Argos from Egypt of the Danaids, daughters of Danaus. Cadmus was believed to have introduced the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. Herodotus also mentions Eastern influences.[1] Thucydides did not, which Bernal explains with his nationalistic wish to set up a sharp distinction between Greeks and barbarians. Plutarch attacked Herodotus' view that the Greeks had learned from barbarians. Yet Alexander the Great was very interested in Egypt; Plutarch himself wrote a work On Isis and Osiris, part of the Moralia, which is a major source on Egypt. Admiration for Egypt was widespread in the Hellenistic and Roman civilizations, especially in the Neoplatonic school. Hermeticism was based on writings attributed to Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus, the so-called Hermetica or Hermetic corpus. These pro-Egyptian currents influenced Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as Renaissance figures such as Copernicus, Ficino and Giordano Bruno. Demonstrated in 1614 that the Hermetic corpus was not very ancient at all and originated in late antiquity, though more recent scholarship has established that parts of it do probably have a Pharaonic origin. Casaubon's textual analysis partly discredited the Hermetic corpus, but Bernal maintained that respect for Ancient Egypt survived and contributed to the Enlightenment in the 18th century. The Freemasons are particularly relevant.
Bernal traces thus the influence from the Ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians to the Ancient Greeks, and a tradition of acknowledgement of those links from Antiquity to the Enlightenment.
Bernal uses linguistic evidence to support his claim of a link between Ancient Greece and earlier Egyptians and Phoenicians civilizations. It is widely accepted that the Classical Greek language arose from the Proto-Greek language with influences from the Anatolian languages that were spoken nearby, and the culture is assumed to have developed from a comparable amalgamation of elements.
However, Bernal emphasizes African elements in Ancient Near Eastern culture and denounces the alleged Eurocentrism of 19th and 20th century research, including the very slogan "Ex Oriente Lux" of Orientalists which, according to Bernal, betrays "the Western appropriation of ancient Near Eastern culture for the sake of its own development" (p. 423).
Bernal proposes instead that Greek evolved from the contact between an Indo-European language and culturally influential Egyptian and Semitic languages. He cites many examples of Egyptian or Semitic roots for Greek words, including some words with currently accepted Indo-European etymologies.[which?] Bernal places the introduction of the Greek alphabet (unattested before 750 BC) between 1800 and 1400 BC, and the poet Hesiod in the tenth century.
The ideologies of classical scholarship
The first volume of Black Athena describes in detail how the Ancient model acknowledging Egyptian and Phoenician influences on Greece came under attack during the 18th and 19th centuries. Bernal concentrates on four interrelated forces: the Christian reaction, the idea of progress, racism and Romantic Hellenism.[2]
The Christian reaction. Already Martin Luther had fought the Church of Rome with the Greek Testament. Greek was seen as a sacred Christian tongue which Protestants could plausibly claim was more Christian than Latin. Many French students of Ancient Greece in the 17th century were brought up as Huguenots.[3] The study of Ancient Greece especially in Protestant countries created an alliance between Greece and Protestant Christianity which tended to exclude other influences.
The idea of progress. The antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia had previously made those civilizations particularly worthy of respect and admiration, but the emergence of the idea of progress portrayed later civilizations as more advanced and therefore better. Earlier cultures came to be seen as based on superstition and dogmatism.
Racism. European colonialism gradually increased the self-awareness of Europeans as whites. Egyptians were black and Phoenicians came to be seen as Semitic people, and therefore akin to Jews. Ancient Greeks could be perceived as whites and Europeans.
Romanticism. Romantics saw humans as essentially divided in national or ethnic groups. The German philosopher Herder encouraged Germans to be proud of their origins, their language and their national characteristics or national genius. Romantics longed for small, virtuous and "pure" communities in remote and cold places: Switzerland, North Germany and Scotland. When considering the past, their natural choice was Greece. The Philhellenic movement led to new archaeological discoveries as well contributing to the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman empire. Most Philhellenes were Romantics and Protestants.
Reception
The book also ignited a debate in the academic community. While some reviewers contend that studies of the origin of Greek civilization were tainted by a foundation of 19th century racism, many have criticized Bernal for what they perceive to be the speculative nature of his hypothesis, unsystematic and linguistically incompetent handling of etymologies and a naive handling of ancient myth and historiography. The claims made in Black Athena were heavily questioned inter alia in Black Athena Revisited (1996), a collection of essays edited by Mary Lefkowitz and her colleague Guy MacLean Rogers.[4][5]
Critics voice their strongest doubts over Bernal's approach to language and word derivations (etymologies). Cambridge Egyptologist John D. Ray has accused Bernal's work of having a confirmation bias.[6] Edith Hall compares Bernal's thesis to the myth of the Olympian gods overwhelming the Titans and Giants, which was once thought of as a historical recollection of Homo sapiens taking over from Neanderthal man. She asserts that this historical approach to myth firmly belongs in the nineteenth century.[7]
Others have challenged the lack of archaeological evidence for Bernal's thesis. Egyptologist James Weinstein points out that there is very little evidence that the ancient Egyptians were a colonizing people in the third millennium and second millennium BC.[8] Furthermore, there is no evidence for Egyptian colonies of any sort in the Aegean world. Weinstein accuses Bernal of relying primarily on his interpretations of Greek myths as well as distorted interpretations of the archaeological and historical data.[8]
In 2001 Bernal published "Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to Critics" as a response to criticism of his earlier works.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Athena
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Post by Babylon Enigma on Sept 28, 2014 18:21:16 GMT -5
Martin Bernal
Martin Gardiner Bernal ( March 10, 1937[1] – June 9, 2013[2]) was a Professor Emeritus of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He was a scholar of modern Chinese political history. He is best known for his work Black Athena, a controversial[3][4] work which re-examines the origins of Ancient Greek culture and language.
Life and work
Martin Bernal was born in London, the son of the physicist John Desmond Bernal and artist Margaret Gardiner. He was educated at Dartington Hall School, then at King's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a degree in 1961 with first-class Honours in the Oriental Tripos.[5] At that time he specialised in the language and history of China, and spent some time at the Peking University. He carried on as a graduate student at Cambridge, and with the assistance of the Harkness Commonwealth Fellowship also at University of California, Berkeley and Harvard University, finishing his PhD in Cambridge in 1965 with thesis titled Chinese Socialism to 1913 when he was elected a fellow at King's.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bernal
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Post by Babylon Enigma on Sept 28, 2014 18:26:17 GMT -5
Margaret Gardiner
Margaret Gardiner OBE (22 April 1904 – 2 January 2005)[1] was a radical modern British artist and resident of Hampstead, London, from 1932, where she was also a left wing political activist. She was also for a time the partner of Professor John Desmond Bernal, the eminent scientist and political activist. She was known as "Mrs Bernal" for most of her life, but they were never married.[2] In the 1980 Birthday Honours she was awarded an OBE for services to the Pier Arts Centre Trust, Stromness. She was referred to as Margaret Emilia Gardiner Bernal on the list.
Education
She was educated at the Fröbel School in Hammersmith, then at Bedales, the liberally-minded school, followed by Newnham College, Cambridge. There she read Modern Languages, but transferred to Moral Sciences, the Cambridge term for Philosophy. Her family was wealthy and she had no need to work, devoting her life instead to politics and the arts.
Personal life
She was born in Berlin where her father, the Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner, was working at the time. In 1923 he assisted Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon with the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb. Her mother was Hedwig, Lady Gardiner, whose father was an Hungarian Jew and mother a Swedish Finn.[1] Her brother was Henry Rolf Gardiner.
At Cambridge she fell in love with Bernard Deacon, a scholar at Trinity but was shattered when he died from blackwater fever whilst working in the New Hebrides in 1927 at the age of 24. She visited his grave there 56 years later.
After Cambridge she spent a brief, but unsuccessful, time as an elementary school teacher in Gamlingay.[1] Afterwards she devoted her time and energy to supporting her friends: Barbara Hepworth, Hepworth's second husband, Ben Nicholson, W. H. Auden, Berthold Lubetkin, Solly Zuckerman, Naum Gabo and others.[1][3]
She made her home at 35 Downshire Hill, Hampstead, close to the Heath where she swam in the ponds into her 90s.
Her son with Bernal was Martin Bernal (1937-2013), author of Black Athena,[1][4] born 1937.[5] Despite never marrying, Gardiner referred to herself as "Mrs Bernal". Bernal had married Agnes Eileen Sprague, a secretary, on 21 June 1922, the day after being awarded his BA degree when he was aged 21. As well as his son with Gardiner, he had two children with Sprague and one with Margot Heinemann.[6]
Politics
With Bernal, who was a Communist(LOL), she was part of the 1930s and 40s group campaigning "For Intellectual Liberty". Gardiner was however not pressed to join the party.[1] She spent a winter with Bernal in Moscow but had reservations about Joseph Stalin. In the 1960s she organised full-page advertisements in The Times signed by well-known people opposed to the Vietnam War. She was also a supporter of CND.
In the 1970 general election Ben Whitaker, Labour MP for Hampstead, lost his seat as a result of a far-left candidate standing whom Gardiner had financed.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Gardiner_(artist)
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Post by Babylon Enigma on Sept 28, 2014 18:36:34 GMT -5
John Desmond Bernal
John Desmond Bernal FRS[3] (/bərˈnɑːl/; 10 May 1901 – 15 September 1971) was one of the United Kingdom's best-known and most controversial scientists. Known as "Sage" to friends, Bernal is considered a pioneer in X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. He published extensively on the history of science.''
Origin and education
His family was Irish, of mixed Italian and Spanish/Portuguese[4] Sephardic Jewish origin on his father's side (his grandfather Jacob Genese, properly Ginesi, had adopted the family name Bernal of his paternal grandmother around 1837).[3] His father Samuel Bernal had been raised as a Catholic in Limerick and after graduating from Albert Agricultural College spent 14 years in Australia before returning to Tipperary to buy a farm Brookwatson near Nenagh where Bernal was brought up. His American mother, née Elizabeth Miller, whose mother was from Antrim, was a graduate of Stanford University and a journalist and had converted to Catholicism.[5][6]
Bernal was educated in England first, for one term, at Stonyhurst College which he hated. Because of this he was moved to Bedford School at the age of thirteen. There, according to Goldsmith, for five years from 1914 to 1919 he found it 'extremely unpleasant' and most of his fellow students 'bored him' though his younger brother Kevin who was also there was 'some consolation'[7] and Brown claims "he seemed to adjust easily to life" there.[8] In 1919, he went to Emmanuel College, Cambridge University with a scholarship.[9][10]
At Cambridge, Bernal read both mathematics and science for a B.A. degree in 1922, which he followed by another year of natural sciences. He taught himself the theory of space groups, including the quaternion method; this became the mathematical basis of a lengthy paper on crystal structure for which he won a joint prize with Ronald G.W. Norrish in his third year. Whilst at Cambridge, he also became known as "Sage", a nickname given to him about 1920 by a young woman working in C. K. Ogden's Bookshop at the corner of Bridge Street.
Political activism
Although a devout Catholic in his childhood, Bernal became a socialist in Cambridge as a result of a long night arguing with a friend. He also became an atheist.[29] According to one reviewer, "This conversion, as complete as St. Paul’s on the road to Damascus, goes some way to account for, but not excuse, Bernal's blind allegiance for the rest of his life, to the Soviet Union."[30][31] He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1923.[32] His membership evidently lapsed when he returned to Cambridge in 1927 and was not renewed until 1933,[33] and he may have lost his card again shortly after this.[32]
Bernal became a prominent intellectual in political life, particularly in the 1930s. He attended the famous 1931 meeting on the history of science, where he met the Soviets Nikolai Bukharin, and Boris Hessen who gave an influential Marxist account of the work of Isaac Newton. This meeting fundamentally changed his world-view and he maintained sympathy for the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. In 1939, Bernal published The Social Function of Science, probably the earliest text on the sociology of science.
After the second world war, although Bernal had been involved in evaluating the effects of atomic attacks against the Soviet Union,[33] he supported the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace organised in communist Poland in 1948. Afterwards, he wrote a letter to the New Statesman warning that the US was preparing "a war for complete world domination".[34] Consequently, when Bernal was invited to a world peace conference in New York in February 1949, his visa was refused. But he was allowed into France in April for the World Congress of the Partisans of Peace, with Frédéric Joliot-Curie as president and Bernal as vice-president. The following year the organisation changed its name to the World Peace Council.
On 20 September 1949, after his return from giving a speech strongly critical of western countries at a peace conference in Moscow, the Evening Star newspaper of Ipswich published an interview with Bernal in which he endorsed Soviet agriculture, the "proletarian science" of Trofim Lysenko.[21] The Lysenko affair had erupted in August 1948 when Stalin authorised Lysenko's theory of plant genetics as official Soviet orthodoxy, and refused any deviation. Bernal and the whole British scientific left were damaged by his support for Lysenko's theory, even after many scientists abandoned their sympathy for the Soviet Union.
Under pressure from the burgeoning Cold War, the president of British Royal Society had resigned from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in November 1948.[35] In November 1949, the British Association for the Advancement of Science removed Bernal from membership of its council.[36] Membership in UK radical science groups quickly declined. Unlike some of his socialist colleagues, Bernal persisted in defending the Soviet position on Lysenko. He publicly refused to accept the gaping fissures that the dispute revealed between the study of natural science and dialectical materialism.[37]
In November 1950, Pablo Picasso(a hero modern degenerate art), a fellow communist, en route to a Soviet-sponsored[38] World Peace Congress in Sheffield created a mural in Bernal's flat at the top of No. 22 Torrington Square.[39] In 2007 this became part of the Wellcome Trust's collection[40][41] for £250,000.
Throughout the 1950s, Bernal maintained a faith in the Soviet Union as a vehicle for the creation of a socialist scientific utopia. In 1953 he was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize.[42] From 1959 to 1965 he was president of the World Peace Council.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solly_Zuckerman,_Baron_Zuckerman
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Post by Babylon Enigma on Sept 28, 2014 18:38:56 GMT -5
The author of Black Athena is a jew. Who could have guessed, it's usually German farmers from the Midwest that stir up this kind of cultural attack in the west. His parents were rich jews, who did nothing of worth but are treated as such having their own wiki pages, and all communists. LOL
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Post by kapedan on Sept 30, 2014 13:58:15 GMT -5
In the Pre-Greek era they were two major ethnos living around the area of Peloponnese: Dorians and Ionians.
Dorians had a Pelasgian origin and they came to Sparta descending from Epir during Dorian Invasion.
Ionians were Semitics that came in Athens from Asia Minor (Miletus). There is a debate going on about the origin of the Ionains, but I think they were Semitics for these reasons:
1. They had the same way of behavior the Phoenicians did when it came at colonizing ports at sea.
2. Ionians borrowed from the Semitic-Phoenicians the first alphabet they used.
3. Homer does not mention Ionians neither in Iliad, nor in Odissey; meaning that they were not present at the war of Troy. (Did they came into Minor Asia after the War of Troy as a result of a power vacuum at the region? - Maybe yes, maybe not)
4. The first translation of the Semitic-Hebrew book named Torah was done by using the Semitic?-Ionain language and the Semitic-Phoenician alphabet. That book was later called as Old Testament.
5. Persians called Greece as Yaunā, Armenians call them as Hunastan, Semitic-Arabaic call them as al-Yūnān, in Armaic called as Yawnānā, Indians call them as Yavana.
6. Jewish antiquity (and the Bible) gives this analogy of the Greek lineage. Japhet - Javan - Ionia- Grecians. (not that I believe it 100% but there is some truth to it)
7. The first time the word Graeci was used by Aristotle to call the Dorians of Epir.
8. The Pelponessian Wars between Athens (Ionians) and Sparta (Dorians) were not only for power, but also for cultural supremacy, and racial differences.
9. Ionians and Dorians had different deities. Dorian-Pelasgians had Zeus and Dodona, while Ionians had others forms of believes.
10. During Byzantium the book of Torah translated into the Old Testament by using the Semitic?-Ionian language and the Semitic-Phoenician alphabet fought everything that was Doric. (Zeus, Dodona...all other Dorian deities were all banned)
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