Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization

Introduction: Critical issues in Transnational Italian Studies

“…In this sense, Egonu's prime-time TV appearance also seems a world away from the now 20-year-old advertisements centered upon the figure of the Black Venus discussed by Ponzanesi. The iconic image of the volleyball player walking down the stairs of Teatro Ariston is, rather, reminiscent of Black Athena-a representational trope that emerged from research on ancient Mediterranean history (Bernal, 1987). As Scott and Paprocki (2023) show in a recent article, Bernal's academic argument according to which figures like pagan deities and other mythical characters that Western historiography associates with ancient Greece actually originated in Africa (in Egypt in particular) has recently crystallized into a set of highly recognizable "feel-good" representations in contemporary US media.…”

Circular movements: Migratory citizenships in anticolonial Athens

“…In Athens, specifically, this disrupts the idea of the city as wellspring of Europeanness. By foregrounding movement and circulations, the thing called Hellenism is less some spontaneous formation or origin of European thought, but more something that emerges through influence and exchange with the ancient Egyptians and the Phoenicians, and with cultures from elsewhere in Africa and Asia (Bernal, 1991). 3.…”

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“…This is not the same as avoiding identity politics or denying the origin of a musical system. Based on Reed (2010) and various Sri Lankan sources (Kulatillake 1976 and1991;Suraweera 2009), Sykes traces an authentic Sinhala musical style back over thousand years, clearly noting that it is not Tamil or Indian. Yet, he also contends that it is a "deeply heterogenous tradition that shows countless interactions with non-Sinhalas over the centuries" (Sykes 2018a: 35).…”

“…As Martin Bernal (1987Bernal ( -2006 wrote in his Black Athena, "The Greek worship of Isis is a descendant of the Egyptian foundation established there 700 years ago." The ancient Egyptian worship of Isis had a great influence on that of Demeter in Eleusinian, Greece.…”