Trash
The anti-Black Athena crowd continues to spew their inane hate speech. They hate Bernal and they hate Africa.
Not Scholar More Euro Hype
The Kemitians spoke of themselves as descendents of Kush Ta Netjeru (Ethiopia), they did not see themselves as black, no-one in Africa said hey I'm black; Africans were branded as such by Europeans.
The Kemitians did see themselves as different to the Nubians in the same way that Japanese people see themselves as racially and culturally different to Koreans, or in the same way that Nordic Europeans are different to olive toned Spaniards.
In fact modern day Somalians, Ethiopians and Sudanese often do not refer to themselves as being black, I know this because I am from this region myself. Yet I have brown skin, curly black hair and Europeans would definitely describe me as "negroid". What's wrong with Eritrean's for example saying "hay I'm culturally and racially different to Nigerians" It was the Europeans who lumped us all in the same basket because we had brown skin and curly hair. Black people look different depending on the region, just as Europeans have their blondes, red heads and brunettes with some olive skinned and others pale like snow - but this is common sense isn't it?
The fact is that many of the so called discoveries attributed to Europe like mathematics, medicine, religion etc were commonplace many hundreds of years earlier in Africa. Budge himself described the Sumerians as being Negroid (another great ancient civilization), and there aren't too many Europeans with thick lips, curly hair and broad noses. Look at any depiction of Kemitian art and its clear to see that they are of black origin with features resembling the Somalian, Ethiopian, and Sudanese people more notably. Yes Kemit was invaded by foreigners (the Greeks) but to call the Kemtitians Greek is to call the English Roman, or Native Americans European.
The Kemitian names alone should tell you something; Amun, Akhsunamun, Tehuti, Mintu, Auset, Ra. Do these names sound Greek or Vaguely European to you? Do they even sound Arabic? Not to mention their customs e.g. Circumcision (widely practiced in Africa since the dawn of time), reverence for nature, reliance on spirit as opposed to so called "scientific logic" for the finding of answers. All of the Kemitian names had meanings also (common practice in Africa), unlike European names which are usually taken from ones profession or place of birth.
Most of Lefkowitz claims are plain crazy, who said the Kemitians invaded and colonized Europe? I've never heard anyone of black origin make this claim, and if you read the other reviews clearly written by defensive Caucasians' its clear to see they have no idea what Afro centrism is, along with no understanding of African culture, society and history which incidentally goes back over 5000 years BC.
It really is a shame that the European people feel the need to claim absolutely everything, can't credit be given where credits due? Moreover, to suggest that this argument is based on myth is ridiculous; it's well documented by Nubian and European scholars alike. It's funny, Europeans write their own history and call it scholar, enslave and imperialise all non European peoples on the planet and then say hay "you guys have no history and no intelligence to invent such scientific marvels as astronomy, mathematics, medicine etc your just savages".
I give this book no stars; this isn't a scholarly piece of work, its just the same old facile racist nonsense we're all bored with already.
You can't deny the truth
Why do whites want to separate Egypt from Africa so bad. Egypt is in Africa and the ancient Egyptians were African just as the Greeks and Romans are Europeans. It is a fact. I feel sorry for those of you who deny the truth. Although you perpetuate a legacy of falsified European history, I am satisfied because, "the truth is like lightening with its errand done." Centuries from now (or even sooner) historians will give Africa the credit that it is due. You can't erase facts or the past.
Both sides are equally ignorant
Greek civilization was much influenced by Egyptian civilization, this cannot be doubted, especially if one refers to ancient texts. What is absurd about both accounts and the militants forging their views, is the notion that Egyptian civilization was black or that African=Black. In fact, the label African was first used to refer to Phoenicians, and would never have been used to refer to the Black sub-saharan peoples that were known as Zanj, Sudanese or Aethiopian. When black contributors claim that Egypt is in "Africa" and that Egyptians were "African" they forget that they were not part of that "Africa" and that they weren't known as "Africans", that is, until the desecration of the word, it's misuse and abuse. As it stands today, the term is a misnomer. It is sad and scary how blacks are attempting to pillage alien cultures (Egyptian for instance) out of an inability or unwillingness to acknowledge their own for what it is. It is equally sad that certain "scholars" are trying to downplay Egyptian contribution and indeed, supremacy, in the ancient world. The world is changing , and I'm afraid for the worse.
A most necessary read
I came to this issue as a teacher of ancient philosophy, and a concern to understand the claims of afrocentrists, as well as Bernal, that the ancient Greek philosophers took some significant portion of their thought from the Egyptians, in particular the Egyptian priests. What I have read of these claims has not been, in my view, impressive. (The best that Bernal can offer, given that no Egyptian texts bear any resemblance to Greek philosophy, is that the popular religion of Egypt "must" have been a popularized expression of some more abstract wisdom-an argument from ignorance of the most tendentious sort.) Still Bernal is the most impressive of those who argue for a massive cultural influence on the Greeks by the Egyptians, both from the perspective of the breadth of fields he marshals (though hardly masters) in support of the position, and the massive size of his output. For many who are not specialists these two features alone might seem to suggest that Bernal is correct. Thus the great value of this volume, which includes evaluations by various true specialists in the fields that Bernal attempts to harness for his own purposes: classical studies, linguistics, archeology, Egyptology, and history (Bernal, by the way, is a trained political scientist).
What is revealed is the various ways in which Bernal gets things wrong. He trusts in the historicity of myth in a simple-minded way that no current student of mythology would. He is uncritical of the writings of ancient authors who to some degree appear to support his case. He is highly selective of the evidence. For example, his treatment of nineteenth century classical studies points to authors who appeared to have racial motivations while ignoring others, such as Grote, who clearly did not.
One, to my mind, particularly revealing article is offered by Jay Jasanoff and Alan Nussbaum, trained linguists, where Bernal's linguistic evidence is evaluated. This might be one of the more important articles simply because comparative linguistics is such a technical and seemingly arcane discipline to the uninitiated (such as me), that Bernal's seeming mastery of it in support of the claim that some 25% of Greek words had Egyptian origins might be thought to be a particularly impressive component of the overall argument. What Jasanoff and Nussbaum discover, however, is that Bernal ignores the long established standards of evidence in these fields in favor of a quite superficial "looks alike" method for finding the massive linguistic influence on the Greeks. The authors meticulously go through a wide selection of Bernal's etymologies and debunk them all.
Perhaps the most unfortunate part of the book is a section of three articles on the subject of race: "unfortunate" because Bernal and other afrocentrists have reintroduced a scientifically worthless but historically invidious concept into academic discussions in their claim that the Egyptians were "blacks" (Bernal is a bit more timid here than other afrocentrists, simply saying that certain Egyptians could "usefully be thought of" as blacks). The authors of all three articles insist on rejecting this introduction of race into the issue. To my mind one of the most interesting articles was written by a team of anthropologists headed by C. Loring Brace. Brace brings scientific techniques to bear on the question, particularly comparative anatomy. The discussion reveals two things: 1. that indeed the concept of race has no basis in scientific fact, and has been replaced by the notions of "klines" (variations of anatomy selected by environmental conditions) and "clusters" (variations due simply to the locality of a reproductive population), and 2. that evidence Brace and his team developed shows that the ancient Egyptians cannot be considered (even "usefully") as either "blacks" or "whites" in the modern senses of those terms.
The contributions to this volume are uniformly erudite, well-argued, and well-informed by the latest understandings in the various fields represented. And this is a much needed book. There has been a disturbing propensity in academe as of late to inject politics into research of various forms. This has had the general character of first defining a view that is understood as somehow politically or socially beneficial or expedient from some perspective or another, and then searching for any sort of evidence or argument, however fanciful it might be, to support the view. At times these efforts are coupled by the postmodernist view that all so-called "knowledge" is historically contextualized and a product of social interests, so that any view is acceptable so long as it is embedded in a set of the "correct" political and social motivations. Although it is true that all seekers of truths are to some extent a product of their times, this extreme view has the most unfortunate effects. In the case of Bernal and afrocentrists a couple of such effects pointed out by the authors of this volume are first that their views, quite ironically, validate once again the concept of race, a concept so long used as the basis of oppression in this country, and second rather than eschewing eurocentrism it in fact reinvigorates it by the suggestion that the only way that the achievements of any culture can attain legitimate value and be worthy of study is if they can be shown to have influenced European culture. Given the tenuous threads of argument in afrocentrist writings that attempt to connect subSaharan African culture to the Greeks, threads that I believe are bound to snap if they haven't already, the consequent devaluation of African culture is the inevitable implication.
(43 reviews)
