Re: Athene

From: HÃ¥kan Lindgren
Message: 3316
Date: 2000-08-20

I just got a copy of Black Athena, which seemed like an interesting book...   until I read an essay about Bernal's etymologies: Word Games: The Linguistic Evidence in Black Athena by Jay H. Jasanoff and Alan Nussbaum. After reading their essay I no longer trust what Bernal says, about etymology or anything else. The essay is found in the anthology Black Athena Revisited, Editors Mary R. Lefkowitz & Guy MacLean Rogers, University of North Carolina Press, 1996.  
 
For someone who doesn't know much (like me) Bernal's etymologies might seem convincing. We all know that words sometimes have a long history where they originally meant something else (when Bernal wants to derive "chariot" from "fishing net" you might think: "Why not? I've seen weirder things"). It was good to read Jasanoff's and Nussbaum's essay because their explanations has made me understand more about the systematic knowledge that lies behind true linguistic work. They show that true etymology is not about finding words that look more or less alike on the printed page, it's about discovering regular patterns of phonetical correspondence. Such patterns may not be obvious at first glance: Armenian erku "two" is related to Latin duo and Sanskrit dva(u) through well known sound laws (PIE *dw- always comes out as erk- in Armenian).
 
Jasanoff and Nussbaum are easily able to refute Bernal's etymologies by showing older forms of the Greek words that Bernal says are borrowed from Egypt: these older forms have no similarity with Bernal's Egyptian words. For example, Bernal wants to derive Thebes from Canaanite tebah, "ark, chest" and Egyptian tbi/dbt, "box" - but Mycenaean inscriptions like te-qa-de "to Thebes", te-qa-ja "Theban" show that there was originally no b in Thebes but "a Proto-Greek "labiovelar" *gw".
 
When a language borrows words from another language the pronounciation is changed to make the new word fit in - Jasanoff and Nussbaum explain that these changes are usually very regular. In the words that we know the Greeks borrowed from Egyptian or Semitic the voiced stops (b, d, g) are "quite systematically represented by voiced stops in Greek; the same holds true, mutatis mutandis, for the voiceless stops (p, t, k, etc.), liquids (r, l) and nasals". But in Bernal's etymologies Egyptian b sometimes gives Greek p, sometimes ph, sometimes b. And the Egyptian word ntr ("pure", "holy", "divine") has "according to Bernal five distinct phonetic treatments in Greek!"
True loan words also mean exactly the same as the word in the original language. Greek khrusos, "gold", corresponds to Hebrew harus and Ugarit hrs - these words mean "gold", not "yellow", "precious", "god gives" or anything else. Bernal wants to derive Greek harma, "chariot" from the Semitic root hrm, "net" - if the words he is comparing don't have to mean the same thing, then he can derive anything from whatever he wants! Just roughly match the consonantal skeleton of any Egyptian word to a Greek word which he wants to show is borrowed.
 
There are several examples that show that Bernal doesn't know what he is talking about. He says that the name of the "Lake Kopais" comes from the Egyptian kbh, "purify", which according to him also had the subsidiary meaning "lake with wild fowl". To make us believe him he adds that this lake "has many Egyptian connections in Greek tradition" (without any sources for this and without explaining what these connections are) - but he is mistaken: Kopais is not a lake name at all, it's an adjective, derived from the nearby city named Kopai. The full name of this lake is Kopais limne: "the Copaean lake". Jasanoff and Nussbaum conclude that Bernal's claim to have revealed hundreds of new Greek-Egyptian and Greek-Semitic etymologies is "simply false". Since Black Athena is heavily based on "linguistic evidence" this means that the book falls apart.
 
All this doesn't mean that there aren't any Egyptian and Semitic loan words in Greek, it just means that Bernal makes his own etymologies, any way he wants.
 
Anyone interested in this should try to find Black Athena Revisited - this book is not just the other side of a quarrel where both sides are equally biassed: on the contrary, it is calm and informative. Bernal, on the other hand, never mentions anyone without stamping them with a quick judgment: according to him, people are either racists or "good guys". Revisited is not only about linguistics: it contains essays about Egyptian mathematics and astronomy,  about ethnology, historiography etc.
 
Dennis wrote:
I'm not saying that I agree wholeheartedly with Bernal, but he sets forth a highly credible historical scenario which provides a basis for this kind of influence from Egypt and the Levant. What I am arguing for, is the inclusion of the possibility of Egyptian and Levantine influence when one is discussing the origins of otherwise unknown or obscure elements in the Greek language and culture.
What makes people disagree with Bernal isn't that he proposes a credible Egyptian and Semitic influence for Greek culture - everyone in this business agrees that these cultures influenced one another. He is criticized because of his false etymologies and his distortion of facts. Also, his description of the racism in 18-20th century history writing is far from giving a true, complete picture of this period. He distorts history, just like the racist scholars he is accusing of doing the same thing.
 
There's more to be said about this, but I'm still in the middle of reading these two books.
Hakan