Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization

In an effort to challenge the Eurocentric view on the roots of civilization, Martin Bernal commences the first volume of his series Black Athena, The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization with the chapter “The Ancient Model in Antiquity.” However, to understand what he means by ancient model, analyzing and comprehending the introduction of the book is indeed essential. Literally, through the use of the word „model‟, he reveals the draft of a belief system, and submits three models: „Aryan‟, „Ancient‟, and „Revised Ancient‟. The Aryan model, developed during the first half of the nineteenth century, views Greece as the progenitor of philosophy and literature that is essentially and exclusively European; the ancient model is the conventional classical and Hellenistic Greek version. Conforming to this model, Greek culture arose as the result of colonization by Egyptians and Phoenicians around 1500 B.C, meaning that the Greeks would have borrowed heavily from the Egyptian and the Near Eastern cultures.