Martin Gardiner Bernal (; 10 March 1937 – 9 June 2013
)
was a British scholar of modern Chinese political history. He was a Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
. He is best known for his work ''
Black Athena
''Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization'', its three volumes first published in 1987, 1991, and 2006 respectively, is a controversial book by Martin Bernal proposing an alternative hypothesis on the origins of ancient Gre ...
'', a controversial
[Jacques Berlinerblau, ''Heresy in the University: The Black Athena Controversy and the Responsibilities of American Intellectuals'', Rutgers University Press, 1999]
on Internet Archive
/ref> work which argues that the culture, language, and political structure of Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cu ...
contained substantial influences from Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
and Syria-Palestine.
Early life and education
Bernal was born and grew up in Hampstead
Hampstead () is an area in London, which lies northwest of Charing Cross, and extends from the A5 road (Roman Watling Street) to Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland. The area forms the northwest part of the London Borough o ...
, London, the son of the physicist John Desmond Bernal
John Desmond Bernal (; 10 May 1901 – 15 September 1971) was an Irish scientist who pioneered the use of X-ray crystallography in molecular biology. He published extensively on the history of science. In addition, Bernal wrote popular book ...
and artists' patron Margaret Gardiner.[Martin Bernal obituary, the Guardian, 21 June 2013, accessed 4 June 2015](_blank)
/ref> He was educated at Dartington Hall
Dartington Hall in Dartington, near Totnes, Devon, England, is an historic house and country estate of dating from medieval times. The group of late 14th century buildings are Grade I listed; described in Pevsner's Buildings of England as "on ...
School and then at King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the cit ...
, where he was awarded a degree in 1961 with first-class Honours in the Oriental Studies Tripos
At the University of Cambridge, a Tripos (, plural 'Triposes') is any of the examinations that qualify an undergraduate for a bachelor's degree or the courses taken by a student to prepare for these. For example, an undergraduate studying mat ...
. At that time he specialised in the language and history of China, and spent some time at the Peking University
Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education.
Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charte ...
. He carried on as a graduate student at Cambridge, and with the assistance of the Harkness Commonwealth Fellowship also at University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...
and Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
, finishing his PhD in Cambridge in 1965 with thesis titled ''Chinese Socialism to 1913'' when he was elected a fellow
A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context.
In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements.
Within the context of higher education ...
at King's.
Career
In 1972 Bernal moved to Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...
in New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, United States. There he resided in the Telluride House
The Telluride House, formally the Cornell Branch of the Telluride Association (CBTA), and commonly referred to as just "Telluride", is a highly selective residential community of Cornell University students and faculty. Founded in 1910 by Am ...
as a faculty fellow, and became a full professor in 1988. He taught there for the rest of his career, retiring in 2001.
Initially he taught Government Studies at Cornell, and continued his research on modern Chinese history. Under the impact of the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
[''Black Athena'', Vol I, Preface] he had also developed an interest in Vietnamese history and culture, and learned the Vietnamese language.
From about 1975, however, Bernal underwent a radical shift in his interests. In his own words:
The scattered Jewish components of my ancestry would have given nightmares to assessors trying to apply the Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of ...
, and although pleased to have these fractions, I had not previously given much thought to them or to Jewish culture. It was at this stage that I became intrigued—in a Romantic way—in this part of my 'roots'. I started looking into ancient Jewish history and— being on the periphery myself—into the relationship between the Israelites and the surrounding peoples, particularly the Canaanites and the Phoenicians. I had always known that the latter spoke Semitic languages, but it came as quite a shock to learn that Hebrew and Phoenician were mutually intelligible and that serious linguists treated both as a ''dialect'' of a single Canaanite language.
During this time, I was beginning to study Hebrew and I found what seemed to me a number of striking similarities between it and Greek ...
Bernal came to the conclusion that ancient Greek accounts of Egyptian influence on their civilisation should be taken seriously. He had been interested in ancient Egypt since childhood, in part inspired by his grandfather Sir Alan Gardiner
Sir Alan Henderson Gardiner, (29 March 1879 – 19 December 1963) was an English Egyptologist, linguist, philologist, and independent scholar. He is regarded as one of the premier Egyptologists of the early and mid-20th century.
Personal life
G ...
.[ Bernal's new direction was strengthened by his discovery of the work of ]Cyrus Gordon
Cyrus Herzl Gordon (June 29, 1908 – March 30, 2001) was an American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and ancient languages.
Biography
Gordon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Lithuanian emigrant and physician Benjamin Gordon ...
and Michael Astour.[ In due course he wrote '']Black Athena
''Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization'', its three volumes first published in 1987, 1991, and 2006 respectively, is a controversial book by Martin Bernal proposing an alternative hypothesis on the origins of ancient Gre ...
''.
Bernal also wrote the book ''Cadmean Letters'', devoted to the origins of the Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...
. He devoted his next twenty years to writing the next two volumes of ''Black Athena'', with the second volume devoted to archaeological and documentary evidence, and the third to linguistic evidence. He also spent considerable time defending his work.
He became Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
upon his retirement in 2001.
Personal life
In 1961, Bernal married Judy Pace (later known as Judith Dunn
Judith Frances Dunn, (born 1939) is a British psychologist and academic, who specialises in social developmental psychology.
Early life and education
Dunn was the daughter of James Pace and Jean Stewart. She studied at New Hall, Cambridge, gra ...
). Together, they had one daughter and twin sons. They later divorced. His second wife, Leslie Miller-Bernal, and his five children survived him.[''Black Athena'', Vol III, Preface]
Books
* (pamphlet)
*
* [Volume I of Black Athena was first published by ]Free Association Books
Free Association Books is a project started in London in the 1980s. Bob Young and colleagues began a search using psychoanalysis to understand the problems of liberation. Other people became involved in the movement such as Andrew Samuels and B ...
in the UK. Rutgers then published it in the USA. Subsequent volumes were issued by both companies in parallel.
*
* [
*
*
*
]
Responses
* (critical response)
*
*
*
*
*
Notes
References
* Nishikawa, Kinohi. "Martin Bernal", ''The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Literature''. Ed. Hans Ostrom and J. David Macey, Jr. 5 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. . pp 114–15.
External links
Martin Bernal page at Cornell University
Martin Bernal short CV at Cornell University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bernal, Martin
1937 births
2013 deaths
Harvard University alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
American classical scholars
Classical scholars of Cornell University
Fellows of King's College, Cambridge
English classical scholars
British expatriate academics in the United States
Alumni of King's College, Cambridge
Scholars of ancient Greek history
People educated at Dartington Hall School
Afrocentrists
British people of Portuguese-Jewish descent
British people of Spanish-Jewish descent
British people of Italian-Jewish descent
American Book Award winners