MARTIN BERNAL ON BLACK ATHENA, THE AFROASIATIC ROOTS OF GREEK CIVILISATION (MF GALAXY 051)
Ground-breaking
Egyptologist on Cheikh Anta Diop, connecting Senegal to Ancient
Egypt, Plato as the student of African-Egyptian ideology, and the link between
philosophy and mummification
Across the world, modern peoples look towards the
great civilisations of antiquity of their continent for answers about who they are
now, and from what greatness they have arisen. East Asians gaze toward China;
indigenous Americans recall the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca; Europeans
remember Greece and Rome... and Africans remember Nubia and Egypt.
Yet despite the obvious Africanity of Egypt, for more
than two hundred years, Europe has taught an imperial racist mythology that
erased who the Egyptians truly were, and thanks to Hollywood, has pinkwashed them
into Europeans, a depiction never created by any ancient Egyptian painter or
sculptor.
To re-establish Egypt, or Kemet, literally, the
Black Land, as an African society and civilisation populated and led by racial
Africans is a complex task, due to the crushing weight of more than two
centuries of racial brainwashing. Doing so requires a multidisciplinary
approach engaging Archeo-Linguistics, Philosophy, Comparative Religion,
Physical and Cultural Anthropology, and blood-type analysis, to name only a
few.
Few scholars were better suited to such labour than
the late Dr. Martin Bernal,
author of the monumental series Black Athena: The Afro-Asiatic
Roots of Classical Civilisation.
A maverick academic and historical investigator,
Dr. Bernal employed thousands of modern and ancient documents, and addressed
innumerable cultural, philosophical, scholarly, and scientific issues in order
to re-establish what the Greeks and
other ancient Europeans said: that the Egyptians were dark-skinned Africans
whose vast genius formed the basis of Greek religion, philosophy, art,
architecture, mathematics, science, and civilisation.
Bernal was a professor of Government at Cornell
University. His career began in Chinese studies, but grew into the tradition of
groundbreaking African scholars such as George G.M. James, St. Clair Drake, and
Cheikh Anta Diop. While Bernal is primarily interested in understanding Greece
so as to understand Europe, his work in clarifying the Egyptian influence on
Greece has required him to establish Egypt’s Africanity.
I had the privilege of interviewing Martin Bernal
in person way back in November 2000 in Edmonton, when he spoke at Edmonton
Public Library Stanley Milner Branch. He was the guest of the Living History
Project of which I was a member, a committee of the Council of Canadians of
African & Caribbean Heritage. He die on June 9, 2013. He was a
delightful man, and a brilliant scholar. I’ll always be grateful for his time.
In this edition of MF GALAXY, Martin Bernal discusses:
- Why the ground-breaking Senegalese Egyptologist Cheikh Anta Diop, author of The African Origin of Civilisation, didn’t receive more credit in Black Athena
- His surprising turn-around on Diop’s linguistic analysis connecting Senegal to Ancient Egypt
- How Ancient Egyptian language connects with southern African Bantu languages, and West African languages such as Hausa
- The preservation by Freemasonry of knowledge connecting Greece as a student to Egypt as a master
- Plato as the student of African-Egyptian ideology
- His reactions to claims that Ancient Egyptians were incapable of developing philosophy, and the claim that philosophy and rational thought are exclusively Greek inventions, and
- His bold assertion of the link between philosophy and mummification
To hear the 90-minute-long
patrons-only BONUS CONTENT EDITION of my conversation with Martin Bernal, visit
mfgalaxy.org to click on the
Patreon link to
become a sponsor for a dollar or more per week.
By funding MF
GALAXY, you get access to all extended editions of the show, plus video
excerpts from selected interviews as they become available. This extended
edition includes Martin Bernal discussing:
- His responses to the anti-Afrocentric work of Mary Lefkowitz, author of Not Out of Africa
- The reasons why Eurocentric scholars faked data through infamous hoaxes as the Piltdown Man fossil
- The degree to which the Eurocentric academic establishment in the US accepts the Africanity of Ancient Egyptian people and civilisation
- The continuing blight of Eurocentric racism on US culture
- The Eurocentric Aryanisation of Christianity
- The European cult of Black Madonnas, and the backlash one student faced for wanting to study them
- The anti-African nature of Stargate and Erik Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods, and
- The Eurocentric fantasy of Classical Zimbabwe being the product of Phoenicians
COMING IN
DECEMBER, don’t miss the serialized AUDIOBOOK VERSIONS of my cult-classic novels
THE COYOTE KINGS and my award-winning
SHRINKING THE HEROES, available
exclusively on PATREON!
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