Dennis,
thanks for your reply!
I've seen Black Athena before
without being interested, now I'm going to give it a try (even though Guillaume
calls it "ce livre a la con"). I'm already getting the impression that this is a
hotly debated area. Some people want everything to come from
Africa as a kind of revenge for the slavery and colonialism of the 18 and 19th
centuries, others scream at such provocative thoughts. Myself, I don't belong to
any of these camps - not yet! :o) - I prefer people who give me the
whole picture, people who do not distort or leave out facts that don't fit
their theory.
I don't have the knowledge to begin discussing
your examples of Egyptian or Semitic loan words in Greek, but I would like to
know more about this. Could you recommend some articles/books on this subject
(your links, except for Bernal's rewiev, were broken). When you say that as much
as 50% of the Greek vocabulary might be borrowed, what are your sources for
this?
If so many Greek city names, lake and river names
etc. are of Semitic origin, wouldn't this imply that a Semitic people had lived
there before the Greeks? If the Greeks borrowed the names of foreign
technologies, weaponry and architecture that's one thing, but they wouldn't
borrow the name of their city or river from a foreign people. When a people move
into a new country, they usually keep some toponyms from the people who lived
there before them (such as the Indian place names in the USA). Hmm... on second
thoughts, this sounds vaguely familiar, perhaps this is what you & John are
quarrelling about (I haven't been following that discussion too closely). If
that's the case, you don't have to repeat it all for me!
Also, I would like to know more about Senwosre -
you said he was the legendary founder of Athens (I couldn't find him in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica). Was this a Greek legend? Did the Athenians believe
that their city was founded by an Egyptian pharaoh?
And, since we are talking about Egyptian, what are
the relations between Egyptian and other Semitic/Afro-Asiatic languages, like
Hebrew or Arabic? Are they closely related or very different? How much do we
know about Egyptian today? Everything I've read about Egyptian makes it seem
like a language that's still half unknown. Piotr, you seem to know Egyptian
as well! Would you like to explain what is known about this language?
Danny wrote:
What university was
it? The legend that the Greeks and Romans invented
what we call
"Western Civilization" -- and civilization in general --
is a sign that you
were the victim of a "conservative" school. It's a
reaction to
"political correctness" among "liberal" school which often
seems to border
on europhobic, so I was wondering.
I studied at the
University of Stockholm, Sweden. No, I'm not a victim of a conservative school!
:o)
The people at the
University of Stockholm would be shocked if anyone accused them of not being
politically correct.
All the
best,
Hakan