Black Athena
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization is a controversial three-volume scholarly work by Martin Bernal. He discusses ancient Greece in a new light. Bernal's thesis discusses the perception of ancient Greece in relation to Greece's African and Asiatic neighbors, especially the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians who, he believes, colonized ancient Greece.
Bernal proposes that a change in the Western perception of Greece took place from the 18th century onward and that this change fostered a subsequent denial by Western academia of any significant African and Phoenician influence on ancient Greek civilization.
Although the influence of Egyptian and Near Eastern civilizations on ancient Greece is not controversial in either ancient or modern Greek historiography, the Afrocentric claims contained in Black Athena have been described as pseudohistory by Ronald H. Fritze.
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