Date:     Thu, 29 Apr 2004 22:05:09 -0400
Reply-To: H-NET List for World History 
Sender:   H-NET List for World History 
From:     David Fahey 
Subject:  [H-WORLD] Bernal's Black Athena

from David Livingstone
davidplivingstone@sympatico.ca

Somehow, critics assume that when one questions the scope commonly
recognized as that of "Western" civilization, that one is questioning the
validity of that civilization.  That of course is not the case.  To give
credit to the role of other civilizations is not to diminish the
accomplishments of our own, but to temper sentiments that give rise to
unbridled patriotism.

However, it becomes impossible to place Greek civilization in context
without recognizing the contributions of other cultures.  According to
Walter Burkert, in his "Orientalizing Revolution", the Assyrian advances
pushed Phoenician refugees westward.  Their influence on Ancient Greece was
such that  "In The East Face of Helicon" , M.L. West remarked that, "Near
Eastern influence cannot be put down as a marginal phenomenon to be invoked
occasionally in explanation of isolated peculiarities.  It was pervasive at
many levels and at most times."

Walter Burkert has pointed to the evident Middle Eastern fertility motifs
present in Homer's "Hymn to Demeter", and according to Penglase, in "Greek
Myths and Mesopotamia":

"The hymn is outstanding for the striking number and the nature of the
parallels with Mesopotamian myths.  Indeed, numerous motifs and underlying
ideas are not only closely similar but are complex features central to the
Mesopotamian myths as they are to the Greek hymn.   Just as significantly,
they are also found in a specific group of Mesopotamian myths, that is,
among the myths of the goddess-and-consort strand representing the cult of
Inanna and her consort Dumuzi [Tammuz], and of Damu, who is identified with
him.  There are many parallels, especially in the central structural ideas
of the journeys carried out by the gods and in the accompanying idea of the
power involved in the journey, but there are also striking parallels of
motif with similar underlying ideas; so many, in fact, that the conclusion
of Mesopotamian influence, is, even at first sight, hard to avoid, and on
closer inspection, compelling."

Ricardo is right, the Phoenician influence that Bernal discusses is relevant
primarily to the Bronze Age.  But, in the sixth century, a new power comes
on the scene, Persia.  It conquers most of the Middle East, including Egypt
and Babylon, as well as much of Asia Minor, and comprises the Greek
city-states of Ionia.  From then on, the primary influence on Greece is
Babylonian, by way of the so-called Magi.

David Lewis, discussing the sources of Greek knowledge of Persia in the
fifth century BC, wrote of the "strange presupposition that there was a
political and linguistic iron curtain between Greeks and Persians."
However, with Cyrus came the settlement of many Medes and Persians
accompanied by their Magi.  The Royal Road, built by the Persians after the
fall of the Lydian empire in 546 BC, linked Sardis directly with Susa,
capital of the Persian empire.  Royal messengers, who, according to
Herodotus, were stopped by "neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of
night," due to a system of relays traversed the entire road in nine days,
while normal travel time was about three months.

Ultimately, according to Strabo, "the Persians, of all the barbarians,
became the most famous among the Greeks, because none of the other
barbarians who ruled Asia ruled Greeks."   He continues:

"The Persians were the first people to rule of over Greeks. The Persians, as
soon as they broke up the power of the Medes, immediately mastered the
Lydians and also got as their subjects the Greeks in Asia; and later they
even crossed over into Greece; and, though often defeated in many battles,
still they continued to hold Asia as far as the places on the sea until they
were subdued by the Macedonians."

The wars inspired the "Persians" of Aeschylus, and the dithyramb of Pindar
praising Athenians, and the Athenian dedications at Delphi, or the paintings
in the Painted Colonnade at Athens.  Although, relations with Persia were
not always antagonistic.  Herodotus, the "father of history," in the fifth
century AD, had traveled not only to Babylon, but throughout the
Mediterranean world, around the Black Sea, and in Egypt as far south as the
Sudan.  In "Anabasis", Xenophon, a student of Socrates, wrote of his
experience with the Greek mercenaries employed by Cyrus the Younger.  Greek
specialists, craftsmen of all kinds, as well as mercenaries, had long found
their way to the Near Eastern courts, while Herodotus tells of a Greek
physician named Democedes attending to Darius.

After discussing the origin of "magic", which he locates in Babylon, and
attributes originally to Zoroaster, Pliny the Elder then remarks, "the most
surprising thing.is that there is absolutely no reference to magic in the
Iliad, although so much of the Odyssey is taken up with magic, that it forms
a major theme, unless people put another interpretation on the story of
Proteus, the songs of the Sirens, Circe and the summoning of the dead from
Hades."

It may have been Onomacritus, a notorious forger, and one of four authors
commissioned by Peisistratus to edit the works of Homer, who was responsible
for the incorporation of Babylonian influences into the epics.  According to
Herodotus, there are stories that, in the recension of the Homeric poems,
Onomacritus was in the practice of altering the text with his own
interpolations.   It was apparently for this reason that Hipparchus, the son
of Peisistratus, had him banished from Athens.  Onomacritus was later
reconciled with the followers of Peisistratus, the Peisistratids, whom he
eventually joined in exile in Persia, after they too had been expelled from
Athens.  While in Persia, according to Herodotus, it was Onomacritus who was
largely responsible for inciting the Persians to invade Greece.

Onomacritus was also purportedly the composer of Orphic hymn.  Orphism
itself is widely recognized as having derived from Magian influence.
Heraclitus equated the rites of the Bacchants with those of the Magi.  And,
according to a papyrus recently discovered in Derveni, near Thessalonika,
and belonging to the fourth century BC, we read about "incantations" of the
Magoi that are able to "placate daimones who could bring disorder.
Therefore, the magoi perform this sacrifice as if they would pay an amend,"
and initiates of Dionysus, "first sacrifice to the Eumenides, like the
magoi."

Since the time of Homer, Greek literature was filled with the names of
constellations, which for the most part, were translations or adaptations of
the Babylonian names.  As Franz Cumont summarizes:

".the reality of Hellenic borrowings from Semitic sources remains none the
less indisputable.  At a distant date Hellas received from the far East a
duodecimal or sexagesimal system of measurement, both of time and of
objects.  The habit of reckoning in terms of twelve hours which we still use
today, is due to the fact that the Ionians borrowed from the Orientals this
method of dividing the day.  Besides the acquaintance with early
instruments, such as the Sun-dial, they owed to the observatories of
Mesopotamia the fundamental data of their celestial topography: the
ecliptic, the signs of the zodiac, the majority of the planets."

Astrological thought in Greece was so prevalent, from the fifth century BC
onward, that the general trend was to associate many of the Greek myths with
the constellations.  For every Babylonian god a Greek god who bore some
resemblance to him in character was substituted as ruler of the same planet.
The catalogue of astronomical information by Eudoxus of Cnidus, a pupil of
Plato, though scientific in spirit, who had adopted the vocabulary of myth,
drew on Babylonian data.

Osthanes, a supposed disciple of Zoroaster, known as the "prince of the
  Magi", was said to have accompanied Xerxes on his campaign against Greece.
Osthanes, mentioned Pliny, was the first person to write a book on magic
"and nurtured the seeds, as it were, of this monstrous art, spreading the
disease to all corners of the world on his way...  Osthanes was chiefly
responsible for stirring up among the Greeks not merely an appetite but a
mad obsession for this art."

It is said that after the emperor's defeat at Salamis, Osthanes stayed
behind to become the teacher of Democritus, an Ionian philosopher, born in
460 BC.  The reputed author of seventy-two works, Democritus apparently also
visited Babylon to study the science of the Chaldeans, of which he is to
have written on the subject.  He summed up his results of his investigations
in a Chaldean Treatise, another tractate was entitled "On the Sacred
Writings of Those in Babylon", and as a result of his visit to Persia, he
wrote "Mageia".  As has been pointed out, Democritus, following the
Babylonian pattern, distinguishes the trinity of Sun, Moon and Venus from
the other planets.

Greeks may have also absorbed Magian tenets through their extensive contacts
with the Egyptians.  Herodotus recounted that, "during the reign of Cambyses
in Egypt, a great many Greeks visited that country for one reason or
another: some, as was to be expected, for trade, some to serve in the army,
others, no doubt, out of mere curiousity, to see what they could see."  As
Diodorus explained:

"But now that we have examined these matters we must enumerate what Greeks,
who have won fame for their wisdom and learning, visited Egypt in ancient
times in order to become acquainted with its customs and learning.  For the
priests of Egypt recount from the records of their sacred books that they
were visited in early times by Orpheus, Musaeus, Melampus, and Daedalus,
also by the poet Homer and Lycurgus of Sparta, later by Solon of Athens and
the philosopher Plato, and that there came also Pythagoras of Samos and the
mathematician Eudoxus, as well as Democritus of Abdera and Oenopides of
Chios.  As evidence for the visits of all these men they point in some cases
to their statues and in others to places or buildings which bear their
names, and they offer proofs from the branch of learning which each one of
these men pursued, arguing that all the things for which they were admired
among the Greeks were borrowed from Egypt."

The Persian period of Egypt was also an opportunity for contact between
Greeks and Jews.  The books II Kings and Jeremiah report that virtually the
entire population left in Judah, after the raid of Nebuchadnezzar, fled to
Egypt.  A Jewish military colony had been established since 589 BC at
Elephantine to the south, which displayed definite heretical leanings,
worshipping a trinity, composed of Yahu (Yahweh), alongside a goddess
Anathbethel (Athena), and another god whose pronunciation is unknown.   The
earliest coins of Judea imitated Greek coins for the purpose of trade with
the Greeks, and Greek money is mentioned in one of the papyri dated 402 BC,
from Elephantine, and the recent discovery of another papyrus shows that in
the fourth century BC, a story like the judgment of Solomon was known in
Greece.  Democritus was acquainted with a collection of wisdom sayings of
Ahiqar, the oldest extant version of which was found among the ruins of
Elephantine in Egypt.  According to the Book of Tobit, Ahiqar was an exiled
Jew.