Footnotes to 'With Black Athena into the Third Millennium?' Wim van Binsbergen |
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1 This section is based on: van Binsbergen,
W.M.J., 1998, 'With Black Athena into the Third Millennium
C.E.?', paper read at the XVth International Congress of
Classical Archaeology, Amsterdam, July 12-17, 1998, which again
is in part a shortened version of: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997,
'Black Athena Ten Years After: Towards a constructive
re-assessment', in: van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, ed., Black
Athena: Ten Years After, Hoofddorp: Dutch Archaeological and
Historical Society, special issue, Talanta: Proceedings of the
Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society, vols 28-29, 1996-97,
pp. 11-64
2 M.R. Lefkowitz & G. MacLean Rogers, eds., Black Athena
revisited, Chapel Hill & London: University of North Caroline
Press, 1996.
3 Bernal, M., in preparation, Black Athena writes back, Durham:
Duke University Press.
4 Now in press with Duke University Press.
5 Bernal, M., 'Chinese socialism before 1913', Ph.D., Cambridge
University.
6 Cf. Bernal, Black Athena I, p. xiiff.
7 On Egyptian Athena: Hist. II 28, 59, 83 etc., and in general on
the Greeks' religious indebtedness to Egypt: Hist. II 50f. The
identification of Neith with Athena was not limited to Herodotos
but was a generally held view in Graeco-Roman Antiquity.
8 Scholarly studies outside the context of the Black Athena
debate yet insisting on the essential continuity between the
civilisations of the Ancient Near East, include e.g., Kramer,
S.N., 1958, History begins at Sumer, London; Neugebauer, O.,
1969, The exact sciences in Antiquity, New York: Dover, 2nd
edition; first published 1957; Gordon, C., 1962, Before the
Bible: The common background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations,
New York: Harper & Row; Gordon, C.H., 1966, Evidence for the
Minoan language, Ventnor (NJ): Ventnor Publishers; Saunders, J.B.
de C.M., 1963, The Transitions from ancient Egyptian to Greek
medicine, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press; Astour, M.C.,
1967, Hellenosemitica: An ethnic and cultural study in West
Semitic impact on Mycenean Greece, 2nd edition, Leiden: Brill;
Fontenrose, J., 1980, Python: A study of Delphic myth and its
origins, Berkeley etc.: University of California Press; paperback
edition, reprint of the 1959 first edition.
9 Cf. Bernal's rather telling admission of initially overlooking
the significance of this rallying cry: Bernal, Black Athena II,
o.c., p. 66.
10 Liverani, M., 1996, 'The bathwater and the baby', in:
Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.c., pp. 421-427, p. 423.
11 Bernal, M., in press, 'Review of ''Word games: The linguistic
evidence in Black Athena'', Jay H. Jasanoff & Alan Nussbaum',
forthcoming in Bernal's Black Athena writes back, o.c.
12 See for instance what Bernal himself identifies as the 'third
distortion' of his work, which is precisely on this point:
Bernal, 'Responses to Black Athena: General and linguistic
issues'; also cf. Bernal, 'Phoenician politics and Egyptian
justice', 241. Cf. Black Athena II, pp. 523f.
13 Cf. van Binsbergen, W.M.J., 1997, 'Alternative models of
intercontinental interaction towards the earliest Cretan script',
in: van Binsbergen, Black Athena: Ten Years After, o.c., pp.
131-148.
14 Black Athena I, p. 489, n. 59.
15 Palter, R., 1996, 'Black Athena, Afrocentrism, and the history
of science', in: M.R. Lefkowitz & G. MacLean Rogers, eds.,
Black Athena revisited, Chapel Hill & London: University of
North Caroline Press, pp. 209-266; reprint of:Palter, R., 1993,
'Black Athena, Afrocentrismy, and the history of science,'
History of Science, 31 (1993), pp. 227-87; below we shall
reassess Palter's criticism.
16 Trigger, B.C., 1995, Early civilizations: Ancient Egypt in
context, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, first
published 1993; p. 93; Trigger, B.G., 1992, 'Brown Athena: A
Postprocessual Goddess?' Current Anthropology 33, 1: 121-23.
17 Several theme issues of international journals have been
devoted to the Black Athena debate: Myerowitz Levine, M., &
Peradotto, J., eds., The challenge of Black Athena, special
issue, Arethusa, 22 (Fall), 1987; Journal of Mediterranean
Archaeology, 3, 1 (1990); Isis, 83, 4 (1992); Journal of Women's
History, 4, 3 (1993); History of Science, 32, 4 (1994); VEST
Tidskrift for Vetanskapsstudier, 8, 4 (1995).
18 Bowersock, G., 1989, [Review of Black Athena I], Journal of
Interdisciplinary History, 19: 490-91.
19 Palter, R., 1996, 'Eighteenth-century historiography in Black
Athena', in: Lefkowitz, & MacLean Rogers, o.c., pp. 349-401,
p. 350f.
20 Morris, S.P., 1996, 'The legacy of Black Athena', in:
Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.c., p. 167-175.
21 Lefkowitz, M.R., 1996, 'Ancient history, modern myths', in:
Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.c., pp. 3-23, p. 20.
22 Pace Cartledge, P., 1991, 'Out of Africa?', New Statesman and
Society, 4 (164): 35-36.
23 Cf. Trigger, B.G., 1980, Gordon Childe: Revolutions in
archaeology, London: Thames & Hudson; Trigger, B.G., 1989, A
history of archaeological thought, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
24 Trigger, 'Brown Athena', o.c.
25 Palter, 'Eighteenth century historiography', o.c., pp. 388f.
26 Hall, E., 1996, 'When is a myth not a myth: Bernal's ''Ancient
Model'' ', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.c., pp. 333-348.
27 Bernal, Black Athena I, o.c., pp. 433f.
28 Morenz, S., 1969, Die Begegnung Europas met Ägypten, Zürich
& Stuttgart: Artemis.
29 MacLean Rogers, G., 1996, ''Quo vadis?'', in: Lefkowitz &
MacLean Rogers, o.c., pp. 444-454; Snowden, 'Bernal's ''Blacks''
'; Brace, C. L., D. P. Tracer, L. A. Yaroch, J. Robb, K. Brandt,
and A. R. Nelson, 1996, 'Clines and Clusters versus ''Race'': A
test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile', in:
Lefkowitz & MacLean Rogers, o.c., pp. 129-164; Baines, J.,
1996, 'On the aims and methods of Black Athena', in: Lefkowitz
& MacLean Rogers, o.c., pp. 27-48.
30 Baines, o.c., p. 39.
31 Muhly, J.D., 1990, 'Black Athena versus traditional
scholarship', Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 3, 1: 83-110.
32 Cf. Bernal, Black Athena I, o.c., p. 381.
33 Baines, o.c., p. 42.
34 Jenkyns, o.c., p. 413; Baines, o.c., p. 39.
35 Jenkyns, o.c., p. 412; Baines, o.c., p. 44; also: Lefkowitz,
M., 1996, Not out of Africa: How Afrocentrism became an excuse to
teach myth as history, New York: Basic Books.
36 Palter, o.c., on Kant, Goethe and Lessing; Jenkyns, R., 1996,
'Bernal and the nineteenth century', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean
Rogers, o.c., pp. 411-419; and on Herder: Norton, R.E., 1996,
'The tyranny of Germany over Greece? Bernal, Herder, and the
German appropriation of Greece', in: Lefkowitz & MacLean
Rogers, o.c., pp. 403-409.
37 Blok, J.H., 1997, 'Proof and persuasion in Black Athena I: The
case of K.O. Müller', in: van Binsbergen, Black Athena: Ten
Years After, o.c., pp. 173-208; shortened version published as:
Blok, J.H., 1996, Proof and persuasion in Black Athena: The case
of K.O. Müller, Journal of the History of Ideas, 57: 705-724.
38 Cf. Fauth, W., 1977, 'Athena', in: K. Ziegler and W.
Sontheimer, eds., Der kleine Pauly: Lexikon der Antike. Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, cols. [ add cols ]
39 Egberts, A., 1997, 'Consonants in collision: Neith and Athena
reconsidered', in: van Binsbergen, Black Athena: Ten Years After,
o.c., pp. 149-163.
40 It is not as if the record is completely blank, cf. Brown,
R.B., 1975, 'A provisional catalogue of and commentary on
Egyptian and Egyptianizing artifacts found on Greek sites', Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Minnesota; Cline, E., 1990, 'An
unpublished Egyptian faience plaque from Mycenae: a key to a new
reconstruction', Journal of the American Oriental Society, 110:
200-12.
41 Cf. Evans, A., 1909, Scripta Minoa, I, Oxford: Clarendon
Press; Best, J.G.P., 1997, 'The ancient toponyms of Mallia: A
post-Eurocentric reading of Egyptianising Bronze Age documents',
in: van Binsbergen, Black Athena: Ten Years After, o.c., pp.
99-129; Woudhuizen, F.C., in press, 'The bee sign (Evans no. 86):
An instance of Egyptian influence on Cretan hieroglyphic', in:
Talanta: Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical
Society; van Binsbergen, 'Alternative models', o.c. Also cf.
Teissier, B. In press. Egyptian Iconography on Syro-Levantine
Cylinder Seals of the Middle Bronze Age. Orbis Biblicus et
Orientalis, Series Archaeologica. Fribourg: Universitätsverlag.
In the light of Woudhuizen, in press, o.c., it might be tempting
to amend the latter argument so as to make somewhat greater
allowance for extensive and direct Egyptian influence on second
millennium Crete; however, the argument throughout Part II of Global
Bee Flight, on bee-related cults in the eastern
Mediterranean including the ancient Egyptian Neith cult, first
has to be incorporated in Woudhuizen's argument before I can
consider revising my own argument of 1997.
42 Bernal, Black Athena II, o.c., ch. XI.
43 Bietak, M. 1992. 'Minoan Wall-Paintings Unearthed at Ancient
Avaris.' Egyptian Archaeology: Bulletin of the Egyptian
Archaeological Society 2: 26-28.
44 Cf. Bernal, Black Athena I, o.c., p. 484 n. 141.
45 Bernal, M., 1997, 'Responses to Black Athena: General and
linguistic issues', in: van Binsbergen, Black Athena: Ten Years
After, o.c., pp. 65-98.
46 For an overview, see: Bernal, 'Responses to Black Athena',
o.c.; and the index to that volume, where I have listed a
considerable number of Greek words for which Bernal proposes an
Afroasiatic (ancient Egyptian or West Semitic) etymology.
47 Van Binsbergen, 'Alternative models', o.c. Also cf.
Lambropoulou, A., 1988, 'Erechtheus, Boutes, Itys and Xouthos:
notes on Egyptian presence in early Athens', The Ancient World
18: 77-86.
48 Also cf. Davison, J.M., 1987, 'Egyptian influence on the Greek
legend of Io', paper given to the Society for Biblical
Literature.
49 Though far from entirely, cf. the criticism by Blok, o.c.;
Palter, 'Eighteenth century'; Jenkyns, o.c.; Norton, o.c.
(c) 1999 Wim van Binsbergen
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