Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization: The Linguistic Evidence, Vol. 3

848 Pages·2006·3.62 MB·English

by  Martin Bernal

B A
LACK THENA
Previous volumes by Martin Bernal:
Black Athena
The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization
Volume I
The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785–1985
Black Athena
The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization
Volume II
The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence
Black Athena
The Afroasiatic Roots
of Classical Civilization
Volume III
The Linguistic Evidence
Martin Bernal
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, New Jersey
First published in the United States of America by
Rutgers University Press, 2006
First published in Great Britain by Free Association Books, 2006
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bernal, Martin
Black Athena
Includes bibliographies and indexes.
Contents: v. 1. The fabrication of ancient Greece, 1785–1985 — v. 2. The
archaeological and documentary evidence — v. 3. The linguistic evidence.
1. Greece—Civilization—Egyptian influences. 2. Greece—Civilization—Phoenician
influences. 3. Greece—Civilization—To 146 B.C. I. Afroasiatic roots of classical
civilization. II. Title.
DF78.B398 1987
949.5
87–16408
ISBN-10: 0-8135-3655-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-8135-3655-2
Copyright © 2006 by Martin Bernal
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from
the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ
08854 8099. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law.
Manufactured in the United States of America
To my mentor Edwin Pulleyblank
who taught me to look thoroughly and think broadly
and to my family for their love and support over
the 30 years this project has taken.

C
ONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments xv
Transcriptions and Phonetics xvii
Maps and Charts xxi
INTRODUCTION 1
The previous volumes and their reception 1
“Classics has been misunderstood” 4
Anathema from a G.O.M. 6
Outline of Volume 3 10
Chapter 1 HISTORICAL LINGUISTICSANDTHE IMAGE
OF ANCIENT GREEK 28
Nineteenth-century romantic linguistics:
The tree and the family 28
Saussure and the twentieth-century epigones
of nineteenth-century Indo-European studies 36
Ramification or interlacing 37
viii CONTENTS
Chapter 2 THE “NOSTRATIC”AND “EUROASIATIC” HYPER-
AND SUPER-FAMILIES 39
Nostratic and Eurasiatic 40
Archaeological evidence for the origin of
Nostratic and Euroasiatic 48
Gordon Childe and Colin Renfrew 53
Language and genetics 56
Conclusion 57
Chapter 3 AFROASIATIC, EGYPTIANAND SEMITIC 58
The origins of African languages and the development
of agriculture in Africa 58
The origins and spread of Afroasiatic 60
Conclusion 88
Chapter 4 THE ORIGINSOF INDO-HITTITEAND INDO-
EUROPEANAND THEIR CONTACTSWITH OTHER LANGUAGES 90
The origins and diffusion of Indo-Hittite and
Indo-European 90
Loans from other languages into PIH 98
Development of an Indo-European gender system based
on sex 108
Conclusion 115
Chapter 5 THE GREEK LANGUAGEINTHE
MEDITERRANEAN CONTEXT: PART1, PHONOLOGY 116
Greek: Result of a linguistic shift or of language contact? 116
The elements of the Greek linguistic amalgam 121
CONTENTS ix
The phonologies of Indo-Hittite and Indo-European 122
Phonological developments from PIE to Greek 126
Conclusion 154
Chapter 6 THE GREEK LANGUAGEINTHE MEDITERRANEAN
CONTEXT: PART2, MORPHOLOGICAL AND SYNTACTICAL
DEVELOPMENTS 155
Morphology 155
Syntax 157
Summary on syntactical changes 163
Conclusion 164
Chapter 7 THE GREEK LANGUAGEINTHE MEDITERRANEAN
CONTEXT: PART 3, LEXICON 165
Introduction 165
The study of lexical borrowings 165
Ancient Greeks’ sense of lexical borrowing 175
Loans from Afroasiatic into Greek and into Albanian or
Armenian 178
Conclusion 185
Chapter 8 PHONETIC DEVELOPMENTSIN EGYPTIAN, WEST
SEMITICAND GREEKOVERTHE LAST THREE MILLENNIA
BCE,AS REFLECTEDIN LEXICAL BORROWINGS 187
Introduction 187
Semitic 189
Egyptian 192
Conclusion 207
x CONTENTS
Chapter 9 GREEK BORROWINGSFROM EGYPTIAN PREFIXES,
INCLUDINGTHE DEFINITE ARTICLES 209
Introduction 209
Greek Borrowings from Egyptian definite article prefixes 210
The Egyptian word pr“house, temple, palace” 231
R- “entry” or local prefix 240
(R)dˆt, “causal prefix” 241
Greek borrowings from Egyptian verbs beginning
with dˆ(t)- 242
Conclusion 244
Chapter 10 MAJOR EGYPTIAN TERMSIN GREEK: PART 1 245
1. Ntr/KÅ 245
2. Œn∆ 258
3. M(w)dw, mu'qo" 262
4. SbÅ 262
5. Dr, R-dr, drw 267
6. ÷Mwr,MÅŒt, Moi'ra, Meivromai and MmÅŒt,Ma 269
7. Ôpr 271
Conclusion 275
Chapter 11 MAJOR EGYPTIAN TERMSIN GREEK: PART 2 276
nfr (w)/ms 276
nfr/ms 278
Conclusion 298