Response to Robert Palter

Bernal Martin , “Animadversions on the origins of Western science”, in the symposium on “The Cultures of Ancient Science”, Isis, lxxxiii (1992), 596–607.

It is sometimes claimed that Classicists and Aegean archaeologists have always been open to the idea of such influences. See for instance, Lefkowitz Mary , “Not out of Africa”, New republic , 10 Feb. 1992, 29–36, p. 30. There are two main arguments against this position. The first is the testimony by the few scholars who suggested profound cultural relations between the Levant and the Aegean, of the harsh treatment they received between 1950 and 1980 from their more conventional colleagues. For descriptions of this see Bass George Bikai Patricia , “Responses”, The challenge of “Black Athena”, special issue of Arethusa (1989), 111–12 and 114. The second argument has been the general reluctance of philologists to look for significant Semitic and Egyptian etymologies in Greek. This omission is not trivial as language is the heart of Classics.

See Palter Robert , “Black Athena, Afro-centrism, and the history of science”, History of science, xxxi (1993), 227–87, p. 275, n. 9. This article is hereafter cited as “Palter”.

Herodotus III. 130.3.

James George G. M. , Stolen legacy: The Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy, but the people of North Africa commonly called the Egyptians (San Francisco, 1976), 75; Preus Anthony , Greek philosophy: Egyptian origins (Research Papers on the Humanities and Social Sciences, 3; Binghamton, 1992–93), 8. Palter (p. 235) is particularly contemptuous of Stolen legacy.

Hornung Erik , Conceptions of god in ancient Egypt: The one and the many , transl. by Baines John (London and Ithaca, 1982), 66–67.

Concepts of space and time are commonly intertwined in most cultures. This was especially true in ancient Egypt, see Kadish Gerald , “Some Egyptian concepts of space and time”, paper given at “The 12th Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science and the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy etc.”, Binghampton, New York, October 1993. It would be difficult, therefore, to make a categorical distinction between the Greek atomists and Egyptian thinkers on the grounds that the former were concerned with space not time.

Palter , 228. See Bernal , op. cit. (ref. 1), 599.

See Luft H. , “Der Tagesbeginn im Ägypten”, Altorientalische Forschungen, xiv (1987), 3–11, Leitz C. , Studien für ägyptischen Astronomie (Wiesbaden, 1989) 1–5, and Krauss R. , Bulletin de la Société d'Égyptologie, Genève, xiv (1990), 55–56.

To illustrate the importance of social factors, Palter (p. 232) follows Hetherington Norriss S. , Ancient astronomy and civilization (Tucson, 1987), 22, in speculating that astronomy developed in Mesopotamia and not in Egypt because the uncertainty of life in the former encouraged astrology. The idea is interesting but not convincing. While it is undoubtedly true that the anxieties of Mesopotamian rulers did play an important role in the development of astrology and astronomy. I would argue that Egyptian pharaohs had similar concerns. New and possibly Middle Kingdom Egyptians too, had complicated calendars of good and bad days controlled by particular gods and goddesses — Linked at least indirectly through the calendar — To astronomy and astrology. See Spalinger Anthony , “An unexpected source in a festival calendar”, Revue d'Égyptologie, xlii (1991), 209–22. The idea of a divinity of the day is also found in the earliest uses of the Greek , see Onians R. B. , The origins of European thought: About the body, the mind, the soul, the world, time, and fate (paperback edn, Cambridge, 1988), 411–15. An Egyptian derivation for this concept is suggested by a plausible etymon for in the attested Egyptian term imy hrw.f, “who is on duty for the day”.

Bernal , op. cit. (ref. 1), 600–2, and Palter, 231–4. The intention of my reference to Neugebauer's “early passion for Egypt” was to indicate that it predated his interest in Mesopotamia not that his sympathy towards it changed later.

Pers. comm., Alexiou M. Professor , at Harvard, November 1987.

Williams James H. Jr , Fundamentals of applied dynamics (Cambridge, Mass., forthcoming), chap. 1.

Vercoutter Jean , chap. 1, “Egypt: Mathematics and astronomy”, in Taton René (ed.), Ancient and medieval science: From the beginnings to 1450 (New York, 1963), 32–45, pp. 35–37; and Heath Thomas , Greek astronomy (New York, 1932) and Hartner Willy , “Comments” on Giorgio de Santillana, “Forgotten sources in the history of science”, in Scientific change, ed. by Crombie A. C. (New York, 1963), 868–76.

Professor Palter himself points out (p. 231) that not all modern historians agree with Neugebauer's dismal assessment of Egyptian astronomical observations. He cites the description by Kurt Locher of a “high level of observational astronomy” in Egypt in the twenty-first century b.c.: “A further coffin-lid with a diagonal star-clock from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom”, Journal for the history of astronomy, xiv (1983), 141–4, p. 141. The historian of Egyptian mathematics and science, Anthony Spalinger, is also convinced that Neugebauer's views of ancient Egyptian scientific capacities were sometimes much too harsh (letter, March 1992).

Heath Thomas , A history of Greek mathematics, i: From Thales to Euclid (paperback edn, New York, 1981), 137–8.

Turner Frank M. , “Martin Bernal's Black Athena: A dissent”, in special issue of Arethusa (ref. 2), 97–109, p. 100.

Lauer J. F. , Observations sur les pyramides (Cairo, 1960), 1–2.

For the frequency of Homeric papyri, see Finley Moses , The world of Odysseus, rev. edn (New York, 1978), 21.

Drake Stillman , Discoveries and opinions of Galileo (New York, 1957).

Drake Stillman , “The Galileo–Bellarmine meeting: A historical speculation”, Appendix A in Geymonat Ludovico , Galileo Galilei: A biography and inquiry into his philosophy of science , transl. by Drake Stillman , with a forward by Giorgio de Santillana (New York, 1965).

Westfall R. S. , The life of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1993), 51–52.

McGuire J. E. Rattansi P. M. , “Newton and the Pipes of Pan”, Notes and records of the Royal Society, xxi (1966), 108–143; Dobbs B. J. T. , The foundations of Newton's alchemy: The hunting of the Greene Lyon (Cambridge, 1975).

Dobbs B. J. T. , The Janus faces of genius: The role of alchemy in Newton's thought (Cambridge, 1991), 193–212.

In his ref. 102, Palter airily dismisses the views of the extremely knowledgeable and very sceptical specialists on Egyptian science, Gay Robbins and Charles Shute, when they argue that the circle area formula was derived from the Pythagoras theorem, which, on axiomatic grounds, he believes that the “Egyptians almost certainly did not know”.

Froidefond C. , Le mirage Égyptien dans la littérature grecque d'Homère à Aristote (Paris, 1971), 268–9.

Phaedrus 274d and elsewhere.

Heath , op. cit. (ref. 16), 322.

Isokrates , Busiris 22, and Froidefond , op. cit. (ref. 26), 239.

Burkert Walter , “Oriental myth and literature in the Iliad”, in The Greek renaissance of the 8th century BC: Tradition and innovation: Proceedings of the Second International Symposium of the Swedish Institute in Athens, 1–5 June 1981, ed. by Hägg Robin (Stockholm, 1983), 51–56, p. 52.

See Bass George F. Pulak Cemal Collon Dominique Weinstein James , “The Bronze Age shipwreck at Ulu Burun: 1986 campaign”, American journal of archaeology, xciii (1989), 1–29. pp. 10–11.

Burkert Walter , The orientalizing revolution: Near Eastern influence on Greek culture in the early Archaic Age , transl. by Pinder Margaret L. Burkert Walter (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 40.

For a survey of modern views on the subject see Bernal M. Cadmean letters: The transmission of the alphabet (Winona Lake, 1990), 7–26.

Lumpkin B. , “The Egyptian and Pythagorean triples”, Historia mathematica, vii (1980), 186–7, and Robbins Gay Shute Charles , “Mathematical bases of ancient Egyptian architecture and graphic art”, ibid., xii (1985), 107–22, p. 112.

Robbins Gay Shute Charles , The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus: An ancient Egyptian text (London, 1987), 44.

Tomb 3, published in Schlieman H. , Mycenae: A narrative of research and discoveries at Mycenae and Tyrins (London, 1878), 196–8. See also Bernal M. , Black Athena: The Afroasiatic roots of Classical civilization, ii: The archaeological and documentary evidence (London and New Brunswick, 1991), 262–3.

The Egyptian sign transcribed as is usually rendered as a. However, there is no doubt that up to the New Kingdom, either it was a liquid r or l or it was heard as such by non-Egyptian speakers. A phonetic parallel for this etymology for can be seen in the derivation of the Greek , “ugly multitude” from the Egyptian , “multitude”.

Robbins Shute , op. cit. (ref. 34), 112.

See Robbins Shute , op. cit. (ref. 35), 58.

For Plato and Egyptian art, see Davis W. , “Plato and Egyptian art”, Journal of Egyptian archaeology, lxvi (1979), 121–7. For Plato and Egyptian philosophy, see Preuss , op. cit. (ref. 5), 9–11. For Plato and Egyptian politics see Bernal Martin , Black Athena: The Afroasiatic roots of Classical civilization, i: The fabrication of ancient Greece 1785–1985 (London and New Brunswick, N.J., 1987), 105–8, and Stephens Susan , “Plato's Republic: Innovation or allusion?”, paper given at the American Philological Association annual meeting, Washington, D.C., December 1993.

For the first three, see the bibliographical note 15, in Bernal , op. cit. (ref. 1), to which Palter adds Ghalioungui's Paul “The relation of Pharaonic to Greek and later medicine”, Bulletin of the Cleveland Medical Library, xv/3 (1968), 96–107. For Sigerist Henry see his Primitive and archaic medicine (New York, 1967; 1st edn 1951), 357–8.

von Staden Heinrich , “Affinities and ellisions: Helen and Hellenocentrism”, Isis, lxxxiii (1992), 578–95, pp. 587–8.

Ibid., 588.

Ibid., 589–93.

I am convinced by Joseph Needham's arguments on this in The grand titration: Science and society East and West (London 1972), 41–54.

von Staden , op. cit. (ref. 42), 581–2.

See the comments above, ref. 2.

von Staden , op. cit. (ref. 42), 584. Without our being aware of each other's papers, I made the same general point in my contribution to the symposium. See Bernal , op. cit. (ref 1), 597.

Bernal , op. cit. (ref 1), 598.

See ref. 36.

For pro's and contra's on this, see Bernal Martin , “Phoenician politics and Egyptian justice in ancient Greece”, Anfänge politischen Denkens in der Antike: Die nah-östlichen Kulturen und die Griechen, ed. by Raaflaub K. (Munich, 1993), 241–61, p. 257, nn. 24 and 25.

See Bernal , op. cit. (ref. 40), 61 and op. cit. (ref. 51), 257. See also Rendsburg G. in “Black Athena: An etymological response”, in the special issue of Arethusa (ref. 2), 67–82, pp. 78–79, who suggests a Semitic etymology for but accepts the derivation of the Greek from the Egyptian mtrw.

See ref. 32 above.

See my Appendix on the Washington Monument.

Bernal is eager to attribute this etymological insight — Which I cannot help seeing as a bad pun — To the Afro-centrist, James George G. M. , whose suggestion has been elaborated by Anthony Preus. In fact, though Preus does say, astonishingly, that “Generally people understand ['atom'] as meaning ‘uncuttable’ or anyway ‘uncut’, and it may have had some of that sense for [Democritus]” (Greek philosophy: Egyptian origins (Research papers on the Humanities and Social Sciences, 3; Binghamton, 1992–93), 8, my italics), he seems to be mainly concerned with an entirely independent point, namely, that the Democritean atom and the Egyptian deity share an ambiguity as to their existence: According to Erik Hornung, Atum is both existent and non-existent, while a cryptic Democritean fragment may be saying somewhat the same thing about atoms. (One English version of the fragment — Quoted in Greek by both Preus and Bernal — Has it that “The Aught had no more reality than the Naught” ( Freeman Kathleen , The pre-Socratic philosophers (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), 304.) But surely when Democritus had available for his enlightenment the entire earlier development of a dialectic of Being, Non-Being, and existence, culminating in Parmenides and Zeno, he did not need Egyptian mythology to instruct him on the nature of atoms.

For an illustration of a shadow-clock dated to c. 1450 b.c., see Leach E. R. , “Primitive time-reckoning”, in Singer Charles (eds), A history of technology , i (New York and London, 1954), 112, fig. 44.

Bernal objects to my remark concerning the narrow range of Otto Neugebauer's scholarship (“Response”, 4). What I wanted to stress was Neugebauer's preferred focus on mathematical astronomy (as defined above). I might have added, though, that, in his edition (with Richard Parker) of “Egyptian astronomical texts”, Neugebauer was necessarily concerned with astronomy in a somewhat wider sense because there simply are no Egyptian texts on mathematical astronomy: After calendar problems, cosmogonic mythology, and astrology are deliberately excluded, all that remains for the earlier periods are star clocks on coffin lids and lists of stars on ceilings of royal tombs. In this connection, it is worth quoting the following remark by Neugebauer and Parker: “… in contrast to the enormously extended and specialized technical terminology of Babylonian astronomy in the Seleucid period, and in equal contrast to Greek astronomical terminology, we find in the Egyptian vocabulary practically no technical term beyond the most common concepts, such as exist in every civilized language” ( Neugebauer O. Parker Richard A. , Egyptian astronomical texts (3 vols, Providence, 1960, 1964, 1969), iii, 213). This strengthens the argument from silence (i.e., the absence of Egyptian texts on mathematical astronomy), a type of argument which Bernal — Unreasonably, I think — Continues to insist is highly misleading (“Response”).

This is not disputed by four of the five scholars who, in Bernal's view, disagree with Neugebauer's low estimate of Egyptian astronomy: Heath Thomas Vercoutter Jean Hartner Willy Locher Kurt (“Response”, pp. 5; 18, n. 15); the work of the fifth scholar, Spalinger Anthony , I have not seen.

One important type of proportion was “division in extreme and mean ratio”, later also called “continuous proportion”, “divine proportion”, and “golden section”. I want to take this opportunity to mention an important reference omitted in my earlier discussion of the golden section (“Black Athena, Afro-centrism, and the history of science”, 262–3; 283, nn. 144, 150): Herz-Fischler Roger , A mathematical history of division in extreme and mean ratio (Waterloo, Ont., 1987).

Relying on the work of Hornung Erik , Anthony Preus suggests as the origin of the “Pythagorean mathematized universe” the manner in which “some Egyptian gods are characterized as generative in a geometrical or arithmetic way”, as in this inscription on a coffin of c. 1000 b.c.: “I am one become two. I am two become four. I am four become eight” ( Preus , op. cit. (ref. 2), 7, 10). Preus does not mention the intense preoccupation with doubling in Egyptian arithmetic, which long antedates the aforementioned coffin.

My sources for this account of the Washington Monument are: Smith G. E. Kidder , The architecture of the United States, i: New England and the Mid-Atlantic States (New York, 1981), 100–2; and Scott Pamela Lee Antoinette J. , Buildings of the District of Columbia (New York, 1993), 100–2.