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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