Proof and Persuasion in Black Athena:: The Case of K. O. Müller

Josine H. Blok

Non tali auxilio.

Virgil, Aeneid II, 521

When in 1824 the German classical scholar Karl Otfried Müller (1797-1840) set down to write a review of Champollion's first Letter to M. Dacier (1822), he was profoundly interested. ¹ For several years he had been working on Egypt, and as he told his parents in 1820, "I have come to love Egyptian antiquity so much, that, if I were not constricted by the schedule of my classes, I would have set myself to the decipherment of the hieroglyphs, which I would not deem impossible by the clues I have found." ² During the same years (1820-25) that he wrote his early books on ancient Greece, he [End Page 705] reviewed sixteen studies on Egypt alone. ³ In his review of the Letter, then, he wanted to draw "the attention of [the] readers to this, certainly not unfounded, discovery," ⁴ though he feared the author was inclined to jump to conclusions. But in August 1824 he reviewed Champollion's more complete publication of his findings of the same year and, recalling his previous anxiety, commented:

Now, however, the reading of the present work has totally convinced me, that the usage of hieroglyphs to indicate sounds is as ancient as this writing system itself. [... This discovery should also mean that ...] the history of Egyptian religion and state will be reconstructed and expanded. ⁵

From that moment he sided unequivocally with Champollion, politely but clearly reminding German colleagues who still stumbled on with decipherments of their own, that this would not do. ⁶

With these facts in mind, Martin Bernal's rendering in his Black Athena, volume I, is bound to surprise: "[U]nlike Humboldt, Niebuhr and Bunsen [Müller] disregarded the sensational scholarly developments between 1815 and 1830. There is no indication that he paid any attention to Champollion's decipherment" (316). The contradiction between Bernal's statements and the sources on Müller's life and work turns out not to be an incidental error but part of a larger pattern. To understand this pattern and its objectives, let me first summarize Bernal's argument and my own.

In his challenging book Bernal argues that the ancient Greek world was founded on the colonization of Greece by Phoenicians and Egyptians in the second millennium bc. ⁷ The material which is to prove his thesis is offered in volume II, though volume I includes a summary. In this first volume Bernal observes that from late antiquity until the eighteenth century, awareness of the Afroasiatic roots of ancient civilization had been retained as the heritage of ancient Greece itself. Hence Bernal labels this perception underlying Western classical scholarship of the early modern period the "Ancient Model." By or soon after the 1820s, however, it was replaced by the "Aryan Model," which took Greek civilization to be partly autochthonous and partly [End Page 706] shaped by invasions coming from the North. To reveal that the fall of the Ancient Model was not the result of internal developments in classical scholarship but of externalist influences, notably the belief in progress, the defense of Christianity, Romanticism, and most importantly racism, is the core theme of volume I. Bernal sustains his argument by contending that historical source criticism was not really or entirely an internal development but created to serve the external ends, and by presenting Müller as the embodiment of Romanticist racism, who was responsible for overthrowing the Ancient Model and inaugurating its Aryan successor. Hence, by thus designating Müller as the axis around which the overall turn of classical scholarship revolved, he wants to prove that the fall of the Ancient Model was unjustified in terms of scholarship but only occurred due to dishonorable ideologies.

Through a limited number of representative issues I want to argue that Bernal's rendering of Müller and the context of his work is untenable in the light of the source material and that Bernal's explanation of the fall of the Ancient Model is untenable as well. My aim is not just to clear Müller's name of Bernal's accusations and far less to criticize Bernal's views ⁸ by presenting a "true" reading of Müller. ⁹ Rather, focusing on this essential case, I will [End Page 707] show why Black Athena conveys Bernal's political views but cannot be regarded as acceptable history.

Conditions of Scientific Change

Bernal's analysis relies on distinguishing two kinds of scientific developments, internal and external. ¹⁰ Internal developments are normal, legitimate, and indeed valuable features of a scientific discipline. The effects of external influences are liable to a different kind of judgment, that is, the agreement of the author with the ideas that informed them. According to Bernal,

a clear distinction has to be made between the fall of the Ancient Model, which can be explained only in externalist terms--that is, social and political pressures--and the rise of the Aryan one, which had a considerable internalist component--that is to say, developments within scholarship itself played an important role in the evolution of the new model. (330)

So one should not conclude that Bernal regards external reasons as generally wrong and internal reasons as generally right, since the Aryan model --wrong, except for a few elements to be included in Bernal's Revised Ancient Model--depended to a large extent on internal developments.

Bernal's crucial case of a wrong internal development is historical "source criticism," which he introduces in quotation marks. He briefly explains what this source criticism is about: "This involved the historian assessing the value of different historical sources according to their author and social context, and basing his interpretation largely or solely on the reliable ones" (217). Bernal is cautious not to discredit this method altogether, since his own argument involves a judgment on reliability according to author and social context. In showing that it was nevertheless wrong, Bernal uses the same strategy as he does later on when incriminating Müller. [End Page 708] Before introducing this method, he gives the reader extensive information about the external developments which prepared both the creation of source criticism and the fall of the Ancient Model. Next, he attributes this to an individual by presenting Chr. Meiners (1747-1810), "later to be honoured by the Nazis as a founder of racial theory" (217), as the creator of this method. By asserting the disreputable character of its origins, Bernal tries to discredit by association the entire discipline of ancient history as it subsequently evolved.

Now the choice of Meiners is odd, because usually the methods of source criticism are attributed to the philologists of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries instead of this rather obscure philosopher-anthropologist who had nothing to do with it. Indeed, Bernal does not quote Meiners on historical method, ¹¹ but instead he describes Meiner's racist historiography. Here Bernal draws on L. Poliakov, but he omits the latter's observation that Meiners's views did not match the common ideas in Germany--for example on "progress" in history--and that Meiners was the first one to assume the origins of mankind to have been in Africa. ¹² Bernal also neglects to say that Meiners worked in the Ancient Model, taking the Egyptians--and the Jews, Meiners also notes--to be an "original people" who developed out of barbarism by their own efforts, in contrast to "mixed peoples" like the Greeks, who did so due to the influence of others. For this reason Meiners argued that the Egyptians did not spring from the Ethiopians, nor from any other people. ¹³ But Meiners worked in Göttingen, which Bernal designates as the center of classicist, Romantic, racist German scholarship. Here the reader will also meet Müller.

K. O. Müller in Black Athena

Müller is the first classical scholar whom Bernal mentions (after James Frazer and Jane Harrison as laudable exceptions), and he is introduced as "the man who destroyed the Ancient Model" (4). Müller "used the new techniques of source criticism to discredit all the ancient references to the Egyptian colonization," (31) a phrase strongly suggesting that Müller abused an internal asset for an "externally" motivated aim. Throughout the first part, general remarks are scattered which simply designate Müller as a racist. [End Page 709] For instance, "the question of 'Semitic blood' " leads to Müller, who "had denied that the Phoenicians had had any influence on Greece, but he was extreme in his Romanticism and ahead of his time in the intensity of his racialism and anti-Semitism ..." (33). In brief, the first forty-odd pages sketch a picture of classical studies in the decades around 1800 as involved in a general thrust towards "racial purity." This thrust is embodied in particular in Müller, who saw to its enforcement in the overall perception of antiquity. This role of Müller's is confirmed by hints about the reception of his work during the nineteenth century, when extreme "Aryan Model" scholars "recognized Müller as a forerunner" (34).

After this judgment on Müller, partly created a priori and partly in retrospect, Bernal discusses the rise of Romantic classicism more or less in chronological order (chaps. IV-VI). Romanticism is represented only in an unfavorable contrast to the Enlightenment and is defined here to consist of belief in progress and racism, instead of being a factor among and in debate with the others, as stated elsewhere (e.g., 204). Thus racist, progressive Hellenocentrism was institutionalized in Humboldt's educational system, whose veneration of a "pure" Greece explains Müller's "attacks" on the now "intolerable" Ancient Model, since Müller himself was "one of (its) first products" (282).

Müller now gets a lengthy treatment of his own. His Romanticism is beyond doubt; even his "untimely" death is "Romantic" (309). Bernal has not read Müller's thesis of 1817, Aeginetica; ¹⁴ but he declares it to be, "though partly inspired by the marbles recently brought to Germany from there ... a perfect example of Romantic-Positivism" (309; emphasis added). The first phrase refers to an "internal" motivation, namely new material, which is then subjected to the second, "external," and by now unsavory objective. That the latter was what actually drove Müller to write his thesis in this manner Bernal suggests first, by citing G. P. Gooch, who quoted in 1913 E. Curtius mentioning a resemblance of the Aeginetica to the study of Osnabrück by "the Romantic-conservative Justus Möser," (309) though Bernal omits its date, 1768, ¹⁵ and second, by observing that Aegina is an island and thus "convenient for exhaustive study," and that "it was inhabited by Dorians and faced Athens, the chief city of the 'corrupt' Ionians" (309). That the Ionians sustained the legacy of the Ancient Model and thus [End Page 710] were corrupted by Eastern influence in the eyes of Müller and his Aryan colleagues has been suggested earlier in Black Athena (e.g., 83-84). A few pages later, however, Bernal interprets Müller as regarding the Athenians as "pure-blooded" (312). That in addition there might have been some problem in Müller's having seen the Ionian Athenians as "corrupt," while he wrote "voluminously on ancient art and archeology," (309) does not seem to occur to Bernal, who accuses Müller of "confused and confusing argument" (313).

Describing his happiness to be at Göttingen, Müller uses a "surprisingly Hebrew turn of phrase" (309; emphasis added). ¹⁶ Thus Bernal suggests that Müller, as an allegedly ardent anti-Semite, cannot be expected to use words related to the Jewish tradition. The impact of Müller's Protestant education is not mentioned at all. He is described as protected by several German states and using his wide-ranging professionalism to attack the Ancient Model. Müller's main books between 1820 and 1825 are proclaimed to have become "the pillars of Altertumswissenschaft" (309).

Until now Bernal's picture of Müller is made up only by suggestions of this kind. When next Bernal rightly shows Müller refuting the impact of non-Greek civilizations on the Greek ones, he for the first time offers some quotations, mixing selections from the three works into one argument. But he passes over the fact that Müller is concerned here with the earliest stages of Greek culture. Throughout, Bernal renders Müller views on the Greekness of Greek myth as either malicious or ignorant. He dismisses Müller's insistence on proof by denouncing "distinct proof " as "dubious in any branch of knowledge ... absurd in such a nebulous region as the origins of Greek mythology" (314). To show that Müller was wrong and wilfully misread his sources, Bernal has only his own readings to offer, which are concerned precisely with the nebulous origins of Greek mythology, notably concerning Kadmos and Danaos.

Allegedly motivated by his racist wish to overthrow the Ancient Model, Müller is pictured as eager to attack his opponents, as a champion bred and set in the forefront of Romantic-Positivist racism. Attacks on himself are mentioned just once, in the case of H. Usener in 1882. Bernal does not mention that Müller started writing his Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (1825) to defend his views in the face of the harsh criticisms of Orchomenos und die Minyer (1820) and Die Dorier (1824), though the German edition is clear on this matter and Gooch also relates this fact. ¹⁷ In the seven pages (308-14) on Müller, not including the notes, the following words set the tone: "arrogant," "despise" (twice), "pathology" (twice), "demolish," "challenge" (twice), "dismiss" (twice), "attack" (five times), "sleight of hand," and "bluff." [End Page 711]

Bernal varnishes his picture of Müller's objectives and impact in two ways. On the one hand Müller had to be heralded by scholars who consciously elevated this uninnovative upstart as "scientific" and as the true founder of "racist" Altertumswissenschaft. On the other hand more recent classicist interpreters and/or those who were connected with Semitist scholarship knew better. In the latter cases, if they praise Müller, they are misguided; if they denounce him, they are right (315-16). Again, this picture is created almost entirely by means of suggestion. One example is C. Thirlwall's work of the 1830s on Greece, which figures as a step towards the Aryan Model in England. In doing so

Thirlwall summarized Müller's argument, though without mentioning him by name. He also added a fascinating note on Müller's motivation: "[the early colonization of Greece by foreigners] might never have been questioned, if the inferences drawn from it had not provoked a jealous enquiry into the grounds on which it rests." Thirlwall did not specify what these inferences were, but, given Müller's work, it is hard to see any alternatives to Romantic and racial ones. (324-25, emphasis added by Bernal)

Thirlwall does not mention Müller; yet he is supposed to clarify the unnamed Müller's motivation, this motivation being given as "jealous enquiry" into the foundation of the colonization-model. This jealous enquiry cannot be an internal motivation--new questions, new methods--but has to be an external influence, that is, Romanticism and racism, "proven" by the unnamed work of Müller which was "proven" to be racist.

Yet some surprises are in store. In getting on with his story, Bernal sees some differences between Müller and the proponents of the Aryan Model, although Müller is still held responsible for the change (332, 333). Indeed, Müller is now "probably anti-Semitic" (359; emphasis added). Here for the first time Bernal refers to Müller's own work on this issue, hence the reference is worth quoting:

[Why is it the intention of many scholars] to transfer every greatness of Greek prehistory to the Near East [das Morgenland] [and] place everything authentic at the very end? Then, when one has quitted the way of earlier scholars, to tie everything to the writings of the Old Covenant and make paganism into nothing else than a fractured Judaism that has lost its nature: then not a few, and highly inspired [interpreters], exactly like the ancient ones, turn their eyes steadily only to Egypt, Phoenicia, the farthest East [Morgenlande] ... [instead, it were a better principle to see ...] Greek and Oriental life, in their distinct authenticity and unmitigated truth, each by itself, completely founded and represented. ¹⁸

[End Page 712]

It is difficult to read this as "intense anti-Semitism." What Müller, though a deeply pious Protestant, here defies is the tradition of understanding pagan religions as degenerated remnants of Judaeo-Christian monotheism.

Assessment: Müller's Writing

In order to make his picture of Müller as a staunch racist seem true, Bernal has to make several assumptions, which are scattered throughout the pages dealing with Müller. First, Müller must reject the interest in Egypt of the Greeks themselves as "disorders" and "delusions" since the Egyptians were "barbarians" (309-10). Second, Müller must be committed to the racism and perceptions of progress that Bernal holds to be the cornerstone of Romanticism in general and of Göttingen University in particular (passim; 215ff). Third, Müller must be aware of "two enemies" whom he must "attack": on the one hand the Ancient Model as represented by the Masons and C. F. Dupuis, and on the other hand the Indophilia of F. Schlegel, F. Creuzer, and other "Heidelberg" scholars. ¹⁹ Fourth, Müller must ignore on purpose "facts" that sustain the Ancient Model and despise the fields that generated them. Fifth, Müller must not be innovative where his material is concerned. Bernal, who discusses only four of Müller's several hundred publications, ²⁰ declares: "The most striking feature of Müller's work for us is that it was based entirely on traditional material.... None of the 19th century extensions of knowledge was involved" (315-16). Though Müller is excused for not knowing material discovered after his death,

unlike Heyne and Heeren, he was not particularly interested in the 18th century explorations ... [following first quote on neglect of Champollion] his hostility to India meant that despite his close contact with the Grimm brothers and other Indo-Europeanists, he did not apply the new Indo-European linguistics to his work. (316)

This account is to prove that Müller did not work from changing "internal" views, but stirred by racism only.

A confrontation between Bernal's account and the original documents concerning Müller's life and work shows that not one of Bernal's assumptions holds true. Again a few examples must suffice. [End Page 713]

1. Müller was not only committed to Egyptology and Champollion's work, he was also fascinated by the cultures of the Far and Near East ²¹ and familiar with the Indo-European, Sanskrit, and other etymologies and with the scholarly fields that sustained them. ²² He considered new material to be of primary importance, to whose accessibility and interpretation he himself contributed a great deal. Like few others before him, he emphasized the importance of archaeological material in connection with written sources. In this respect he proved to be a true pupil of August Böckh (1785-1867), who tried to interpret antiquity based on new, epigraphical sources to an unprecedented degree but who does not figure in Black Athena at all. Before he could go to Greece himself, however, Müller responded to all new discoveries on the ancient world, including the Near East, in the GGA and in his own historical writing. He read a lot in the travel literature of the eighteenth century and of his own time. ²³ He knew many languages well, including Italian, Modern Greek, and Hebrew. ²⁴ His profound knowledge of Arabic was indispensable to his writing on the Near-Eastern city of Antioch (1839), ²⁵ a book which Bernal does not seem to know.

Müller's research on this book was inspired by collaboration with his close friend A. H. L. Heeren (1760-1842), whom we just met as the living contrast to Müller. Heeren figures in Black Athena as a "transitional figure" (297). Heeren's professional life in Göttingen is to account for his "exhaustive scholarship" only, but somehow did not preclude his writing on "Carthage, Ethiopia and Egypt."

Heeren was not treated well by those of his contemporaries who have had an influence on posterity.... [He] was punished by the Romantics not merely for his choice of subject but for staying with the Ancient Model too long. Only black historians read him today. (297)

[End Page 714]

No evidence is offered to show the validity of the last comment. Nor does Bernal seem to know that Müller, whom Bernal would certainly count among "the contemporaries who had an influence on posterity," appreciated Heeren deeply. Or did Bernal choose not to tell this? In his discussion of Orchomenos, he mentions Müller's refutation of an Egyptian origin of Danaos as a historical figure. Müller knew of course of the legend that the Danaids came from Egypt, but "this ... did not grant the legends historical status, given the 'facts' of the general north-south direction of cultural flow and 'the Egyptian abhorrence of all travel and seafaring' " (312, and note). In full, however, the passage quoted by Bernal runs as follows: "... in spite of the abhorrence of the Egyptians of all travel and seafaring, except for on the holy Nile ...." for which last statement Müller refers to Heeren, among others. ²⁶ Bernal has omitted this and many more references to Heeren's work by Müller.

On the other hand the "fact" of the north-south direction of cultural flow is absent on these pages of Orchomenos, though Bernal's text suggests that this "fact" is voiced by Müller. Since Bernal reiterates that Müller, as a Romantic, always preferred North to South (311), a reader recalling the yearning of many northern Romantics for the Mediterranean as a source of spiritual life would be interested to see if Müller expresses such a view. Bernal's reference in the footnote to the Prolegomena suggests again that indeed Müller himself says "that vitality flows from north to south." A check reveals, however, that this is not the case at all; and the same goes for Bernal's "proof " concerning cults, myths, or names in Greece and the Near East in this context which he attributes to Müller. We must conclude that the argument on the Romantic, and hence Müller's, preference of the North to the South here (311) is fabricated by Bernal himself. ²⁷ This way of dealing with the sources is less surprising if one observes that Bernal has done so before, for instance, where he expounds that Müller's "main technique for removing what he saw as these late accretions was 'the argument from silence' ... especially when Müller was attacking the Ancient Model" (310, and note). The footnote after the seemingly quoted "argument from silence" actually refers not to Müller but to Bernal himself.

2. Since according to Bernal the Ancient Model fell because of racism, because Müller was the core of this racism and because anti-Semitism was the core of Müller, one would expect Bernal to prove Müller's anti-Semitism by numerous, unflinching quotes from his writings; but such is not the case. [End Page 715] In fact, except for the few selective quotes mentioned earlier, all Bernal's judgments on Müller and his work are based on readings by others, ²⁸ and Müller's anti-Semitism is not borne out by this secondary literature. After an investigation of the 430 letters by Müller I have seen to this date and of the diary of his journey to Italy and Greece, I found two brief remarks.

The first occurs in a letter from Berlin dated 1816 to his friend E. F. J. Dronke, asking for collections of his notes he had lent to fellow students:

Please greet all the old fellows and friends of the Seminar.... Would [Klossmann] soon send my notes on Plato to my parents! I have also lost here my notes on Naturphilosophie to the Jew Heilborn. ²⁹

Heilborn was one of a group who had come from the Brieg Gymnasium to Breslau. As he told his parents in a letter of his freshman year there,

I have made many acquaintances and renewed many, also only now perceived whoever are here from Brieg. In all we are 15: Groth, Klein, Krummer, back from the field, likewise Jany, whom I was sitting next to at the fair, Boy, who has now become Praeses, Pratsch, Müller, Barth, the gloomy Cöster and Gravert, Heilborn, Jäkel, Grüttner, and me. ³⁰

The second remark occurs more than twenty years later in his diary on his travel through Italy.

Yesterday, I had dinner at Rothschild's, where food and drink was outstanding, yet conversation precisely such as one can expect from a Jewish Baronet and the gentleman his son, who has been educated in the schools of the most modern Bildung (the same one who was at Göttingen). Yet I must say that throughout much more pleasantness and naturalness was to be found here than at the Duke of Torlonia's in Rome. ³¹

Set against Bernal's accusations on the one hand and the anti-Semitism current at the time (not at all new, as Bernal takes it to be) on the other, Müller's remarks are actually surprisingly few and temperate. Although he [End Page 716] designated Heilborn as "Jew" to Dronke, he did not do so to his parents, to whom he was very frank. The reasons for this difference, if we take the designation to be meant more unkindly than was considered normal at the time, can only be guessed at. Apparently he was still in touch with Heilborn and lent him his notes, just as he kept in touch with Jäkel when he was in Berlin. ³²

So much for Müller's intense anti-Semitism and likewise his light irony on the Bildung at German universities, including Göttingen, may be multiplied with other references from his letters. ³³

If the reception of an author is as revealing of his true intentions as Bernal holds it to be, then the edition of Müller's letters by S. Reiter is equally revealing. Reiter, who had previously published letters by F. A. Wolf, finished editing his collection of Müller's in 1940. Reiter was a Jew, who apparently did not take much offense to the "racism" of the two classical scholars. The Nazis, however, prohibited the publication of Müller's letters. In 1942 Reiter was imprisoned in Theresienstadt and then sent to Poland, where he perished. After the war, K. Svoboda, to whom Reiter had entrusted his material, took much trouble to publish Reiter's work in 1950. It is noteworthy that the Nazis did not ban the Jewish scholar only to hand over the material to an "Aryan," as they did in other cases. They banned the whole publication of Müller's letters. In brief, they did not regard his writing as supportive to their cause.

3. Müller's disagreement with Creuzer did take place, but in a vastly different way than Bernal has suggested. Müller met with some difficulties, in Göttingen as elsewhere, because of the kinship between his own ideas and Creuzer's on the formative role of religion and nature in the creation of culture. Among the many "attacks" on Müller were those by admirers of Creuzer, who were adamant against Müller's ideas on local origins which were the main point of difference between the two scholars. ³⁴ Bernal locates the "attack" on Creuzer in the epilogue of the Prolegomena, ³⁵ where in fact Müller summarized the views on myth of six influential scholars, including his teacher P. Buttmann (Berlin) and the late J. H. Voss, Creuzer's enemy from Heidelberg. Thus he wanted to clarify his own principles by comparing them with those of others. All the same, Bernal is not interested in Creuzer, as the latter pleaded for India instead of Egypt.

I have not found an "attack" on Masons by Müller until now; Bernal does not show one either. ³⁶ The lines on Dupuis occur in an article on the [End Page 717] myths around the stars of Orion (1834), the only publication of Müller's Bernal claims to have read beside the Histories and Prolegomena. The "attack" is worth quoting:

In Dupuis this way of interpretating the ancient sagas of religion [the popular interpretation of Greek myths as based on the zodiac] was a revolutionary attack against positive religion [i.e., the formal abolishing of Christianity, including its calendar, in the French Revolution]; he intended to show that Christian belief was also futile, while all religions could be traced back to one calendar, represented in images. One cannot accuse our German mythologists of aims of this kind; to them, the world of sagas seemed to gain in value and sublimity by the connection to the firmament. But they did not realize how often they puzzled out a hollow game with isolated relations and dry abstractions, instead of true and natural feelings, as the foundation of meaningful myths. ³⁷

In its later pages, the essay pays due attention to influences of Phoenician and Chaldaean astrology on Greek perceptions and to a parallel between Greek and Hebrew ideas on Orion. Clearly, Müller disagrees with his German colleagues as well. Bernal's silence on these points leads me to wonder how much he has read of this article, or if he was willing at all to account for aspects that might complicate his views. ³⁸

Given the fact that Bernal wants to prove Müller's pervasive "racism," he seems to have missed the passages which shed the most unfavorable light on Müller's ideas in this respect. A revealing instance from Bernal's point of view would be Müller's lecture "On the alleged Egyptian origins of Greek art" (1820). ³⁹ Here Müller took sides with J. J. Winckelmann who had been severely criticized for his belittlement of the dependence of Greek on Egyptian art. Greek and Egyptian art, according to Müller, were totally different. He explained this perception with recourse to the difference between the strength of the Greek and the effeminacy and weakness of the Egyptian representations of human forms, due to the timeless oppression of the Egyptian people by native and foreign rulers alike. Why did Bernal not select this lecture as a definite proof of his case?

Müller disagreed with Winckelmann in his argumentation. To the latter Egyptian art was a stage before Greek art; to Müller it was a matter of independent development of two different cultures. The same problem, though pertaining to myth instead of art, he had discussed in Orchomenos, [End Page 718] published hardly a year before. Müller's vehemence in the lecture had to do with defending his ideas on local cultural authenticity and his concommitant rejection of the idea of progressive stages. Indeed, to make a case for racism one would have to base one's arguments on Müller's idea of authenticity as opposed to the idea of progress. But Bernal has put all his cards on the equation of racism with the idea of progress. So instead of fitting Bernal's argument, the lecture on Egyptian art contains a refutation of his construction of Romantic racism.

Assessment: Secondary Literature and Language in Black Athena

How and why could Bernal come up with a picture of Müller that is untenable in the light of a sincere assessment of the source material? The most insufficient explanation is a practical one: the availability of information. In the years Bernal was preparing volume I secondary literature on Müller was relatively scarce, notably in English. It showed mainly that one of Müller's few books to remain popular from the second half of the nineteenth century onward was the translation of Die Dorier; in Germany the original was finally used to situate Sparta in the context of Nazi history on "Aryan" forebears. ⁴⁰ If this historiography illuminates the concerns of later readers, it hardly reveals that the book was heavily criticized when published, and even less that Müller himself became deeply dissatisfied with both parts of the Geschichten. ⁴¹ Already in 1827 W. J. Hamilton (1805-67), an English geographer and former student of Müller, had suggested to him to have Orchomenos translated, which Müller did not want to do without substantial revisions. ⁴² He did make revisions in the English translation of the Dorier ⁴³ but was not satisfied with the result. ⁴⁴

Although this historiographical scarcity should have mitigated his ideas on the "pillars of Altertumswissenschaft," Bernal manages to use it against Müller. A. D. Momigliano, who is portrayed throughout as "seeking to stress the rational aspects of his discipline," is suggested to have omitted Müller [End Page 719] from his historiography (1982) because of Müller's "questionable aspects" (315) and hence is situated suddenly on Bernal's side. Thus he passes over in silence the fact that Momigliano published extensively on Müller in 1983, 1984, and 1985, including an assessment of Müller's questionable aspects. ⁴⁵ In a book with the scope of Black Athena one might excuse a reliance on secondary literature on several topics, but given the crucial role he attributes to Müller, Bernal would have had to use the primary sources for the essential aspects of Müller's work. This he did not do; instead, he has read and quoted his selection of Müller's writing in an extremely selective way. In addition, Bernal professes to have read his choice of Müller's work in the original. In those cases I have checked his references to the German editions and the fact that they often do not fit at all leads me to wonder what role these originals have actually played in his argument.

This turns our attention to another related problem. Bernal never offers quotes in the original language. ⁴⁶ In particular he fails to quote the original German texts that make up the core of his argument. The recourse to translations in the main text is probably due to the publisher's policies. Yet even if for this reason Bernal might be excused for offering translations only, translation itself entails a sincere responsibility. The German vocabulary often changes significantly by translation into English; this change can assume various qualities. In my experience German Romantic prose rendered into English tends to become more flat and factual than the original. Nazi German prose, on the other hand, looks--or even sounds--more innocent in English. In both cases the specific meaning, dependent on cultural context and reverberating in the original words, tends to disappear in translation. In addition to this, the cultural meaning of words changes considerably over time. Though later meanings are often embroidered on top of old ones, it goes against the purpose of historical understanding to identify the latter with the first.

A vital example of this problem is Bernal's use of the word "race" to show the racism of classical scholarship. Usually, Bernal just writes "race" without recourse to the original language, though in the case of German scholars he sometimes uses Volk. The Romantic use of Volk came first to the fore as a prefix, to mark the difference with "court" or even "bourgeoisie" in their creation of Kunst ("high" art). This Volk evolved into a regular usage as noun, referring to the whole people as a cultural, autonomous unity on a [End Page 720] par with Nation, both adopted and elaborated by the Nazis. Romantic usage might lead to a hierarchical difference between Völker but not necessarily so; if an author wanted to say this, he or she had to say so explicitly (some did). In Nazi usage, Volk always implied race and always hierarchy; if--hypothetically and not very likely--an author did not want to say this, he or she had to say so explicitly. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for the English word "race." Throughout the nineteenth century, "race" could be used as an equivalent to "people." But it could also--and indeed, would increasingly from the second half of the century onward--be used in the sense of "race" as we know the word today. So precisely in cases like these, where vital and sensitive issues are concerned, it is highly important to try to understand as faithfully as possible what an author meant to say and to render it in a vocabulary that is as true as possible to historical intentions. All this is obvious to any historian but Bernal seems to have discarded this principle. Two instances from Black Athena may illustrate his usage of language in this respect.

1. As a rule, Bernal simply uses the word "race" as if it had the same, that is, modern, meaning over the centuries. After 250 pages of seeing the word "race" without any historical qualification as to its original usage, we find, as we draw near Romanticism, suddenly and only once, "ethnicity" (254). ⁴⁷ This is, to my mind, in general much closer to the Romantics' generic sense of the term. Bernal, however, just declares that

in many ways, Rasse (race) or Geschlecht (kind) were merely the "scientific" terms for the Romantic Volk (people) or Gemeinschaft (community). [Herder's notion of 1774 that] the Volk was the source of all truth ... appears in the 19th century as the "racial truth" which supersedes all others. (305)

Bernal thus denies that a change of vocabulary might well imply a significant change in meaning and politics, and uses later ideas to clarify earlier ones, just as he had done when evaluating Müller. Considering Bernal's remark that Rasse was the scientific term used in the modern sense of "race" and his depiction of Müller's "capture of the academic 'high ground' from which he could demand 'proof ' from challengers [in order to make] the destruction of the Ancient Model secure" (314), we would expect Bernal to show Müller's recurrent use of Rasse. But that is not the case. As a rule Müller used Volk, Nation, and national, which do not evoke the same meaning of racism. [End Page 721]

In the context of Rasse we also find Bernal's only caveat: "there is a contradiction between the Romantic ideal of racial authenticity and the racialist right of a master race to conquer" (305). This insight, though Bernal knows that the claim of authenticity was used to fuel wars of liberation such as those against Napoleon and in Greece, has not tempted him to choose a more nuanced interpretation of the impact of Romanticism and its "racism."

2. Bernal denounces F. A. Wolf for substituting the individual writer Homer with a creation by "the Greek/European Volk" (283), implying a racist assumption by the now notorious word Volk. How could Wolf, whose second edition of the Prolegomena ad Homerum (1804) is mentioned but not quoted, have used this German word in his Latin text? What would Bernal make of the fact that Wolf used recent work on Hebrew scriptures as a comparative model for his own source criticism? ⁴⁸ A sincere reading of the Prolegomena would have yielded in addition that Wolf developed his views due to new material. ⁴⁹ If Bernal had done so, his views on Wolf would have become more complicated. ⁵⁰ On the other hand, why did Bernal not select one of the appalling passages from Wolf's course-book in German, in which he denied "Africans and Asiatics" to have created a literary civilization (a true Kunst) and in which he used the word Volk frequently? ⁵¹ It is tempting to ascribe the misjudgment of Bernal's argument to his reliance on secondary literature in English, here in particular the lemma on Wolf in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. ⁵² An inquiry reveals, however, that none of the references he quotes to sustain his interpretation of Wolf's Homer as representing the Volk actually does so. ⁵³ In sum, in the case of Wolf's Prolegomena Bernal has added both the argument and the word Volk himself.

Bernal constructs the connection between racism and historiography by identifying both with the idea of progress, though an attempt to trace the [End Page 722] ways he handles this subject would again require a separate article. Briefly, it turns out that he understands "progress" to be the overall perception of historical development in stages and more in particular its specific version, which saw historical development as progress in the strict sense. This is clearly the Enlightened version before it changed its face in Romanticism, and Bernal identifies it without much ado with the evolutionism of the later nineteenth century. He seems to be unaware of Romantic criticism of the stage-theory, as voiced by Müller among others, as well as of its variety which assumed instead of progress a gradual decay. Instead of looking into the many strands of the stage-theory, Bernal in fact places the beginning of progress and Romanticism in the early eighteenth century (cf. 283) in order to connect "progress" to racism and then to identify the two. By means of this idea that is both rather idiosyncratic and extremely helpful in lumping together more differentiated positions, he is able to downplay the ambiguity of the Romantic concept of ethnicity, which could further either ideas of superiority or of egalitarian difference, and limit it to racist hierarchy only.

Müller himself was not interested in race but rather in religion. ⁵⁴ Bernal has justly observed the Romantic concern for the local and particular (204), and Müller too held any culture, Greek or otherwise, to be originally its own before cultural exchange would take place. From the outset his views contained a tension between the universality of the human mind (Geist) and the specificity in time and place of historical cultures. He assumed all people to be endowed with identical mental, and ultimately religious capacities. By the application of this capacity, responding to the natural landscape and first historical experiences, cultures would develop their distinctive authenticity. This cultural, mental development he labelled "internal history," and politics and economics he labelled "external history" (compare his comment on Egyptian history above: first religion, then the state). The impact of cultural exchange would merge with the original characteristics and Müller insisted on clear arguments as to how and why one deemed such an exchange to have taken place and how to classify the origins of a phenomenon. Sometimes he also evaluated cultures as different in a sense that implied their inequality, often not at all; his ideas appear to be inconsistent on this matter. Throughout, however, his respect for the Jewish tradition was profound.

Even if a distinction between internal and external developments in scholarship is useful, most historians would agree that historiography entails a complicated mixture of both. Internal and external criteria merge into a perception of the past, which is finally to be estimated by assessment of the source material. Yet Bernal presents the "Ancient Model" as a purely internal argument: scholars who worked in this model did so because of its truth inherent in the sources, while the Aryan Model was created from [End Page 723] external convictions. The only legitimate reason, then, for revising the Ancient Model would have been an internal one, according to Bernal. But the methods of historical source criticism, which together with new material in fact contributed to this revision, would have been precisely such an internal argument. This result he could not allow, because of his ultimate aim to show that the denial of Egyptian and Phoenician colonization of Greece was due to racism only and had nothing to do with internal developments. So when it came to the fall of the Ancient Model, he identified this method with external ideologies he objects to. But when he used it himself in his depiction of classical scholarship, he has dropped several essential rules of historical inquiry. His construction of Müller's role as the embodiment of the racist attack against the Ancient Model depended on five assumptions, which I have shown to be untenable in the light of the source material. The refutation of Bernal's case against Müller, then, actually undermines the overall structure of his argument.

One may regret that Bernal has taken to these means to address an issue that is worth a serious consideration. There are today few ancient historians who do not deplore the former Hellenomania of classical studies. In particular the Eurocentrism and its frequent racism, the impact of which increased in the second half of the nineteenth century until far into the twentieth century, have evoked a powerful reaction within classical scholarship as well as without. The search for different approaches including a systematic interest in the interconnections between Greece, Egypt, and the Near East, has now been going on for several decades. But this situation does not make Bernal's account of the Ancient Model and the reasons of its replacement accurate and convincing. To advance a global perspective in the writing of history, fairness of argument, and decency in proof are equally indispensable.

The University of Groningen

Notes

1. I am much indebted to the program "Standards of Proof and Methods of Persuasion in the Discipline of History" of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center of Historical Studies at Princeton University, in which I participated in 1994; to Glen Bowersock, Suzanne Marchand, Joan Wallach Scott, Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg and to the members of the Historische Kring at Groningen; Stefan Radt, Henk Versnel, and Donald R. Kelley. The survey of Müller's works by Wolfhart Unte, provided for the K. O. Müller-Tagung (Bad Homburg; March 1994) has been an invaluable checklist. Reference here is to Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, I, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985 (New Brunswick, 1987).

2. On his studies in these fields see, e. g., Müller to his parents, 26 March 1820, Carl Otfried Müller. Lebensbild in Briefen an seine Eltern, mit dem Tagebuch seiner italienisch-griechischen Reise, ed. O. and E. Kern (Berlin, 1908) [henceforth cited as LMK], no. 42; 70; on his various publications on Egyptian culture and art, see E. Müller's biographical sketch in K.O. Müller's Kleine deutsche Schriften über Religion, Kunst, Sprache und Literatur, Leben und Geschichte des Althertums, nebst Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Verfassers, ed. E. Müller (2 vols.; Breslau, 1847-48), lv and note (henceforth KdS); and his unnumerable reviews of studies on Egyptian antiquities in Göttingische Gelehrte Anzeigen (henceforth GGA).

3. Of his reviews in GGA of 1822 one concerned Egypt, in 1823 two, in 1824 seven, in 1825 six; add another six in 1826.

4. GGA, March 1824, 353-59; 356.

5. GGA, August 1824, 1257-71; 1258, 1261.

6. On the late F. A. G. Spohn, GGA, 1825, 1225-30; on his successor G. Seyffart, GGA, 1826, 825-36; on J. W. Pfaff, GGA, 1826, 837-40, Müller siding with Champollion against J. Letronne; but cf. Bernal, 253.

7. Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, I, The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985 (New Brunswick, 1987), pages cited in parentheses. Vol II. The Archeological and Documentary Evidence (New Brunswick, 1991). Two more volumes are promised.

8. For criticism up to 1992 see Molly Myerowitz Levine, "The Use and Abuse of Black Athena," American Historical Review, 97 (1992), 440-64, who recurrently mentions the silence of classical scholars on vol. I, beside discussing the effect of Black Athena on ethnicity-debates in the U.S.; Robert L. Pounder, Black Athena 2: History without Rules," American Historical Review, 97 (1992), 461-64; Robert Palter, "Black Athena, Afrocentrism, and the History of Science," History of Science, 31 (1993), 227-87; P. O. Kristeller, "Comment on Black Athena," JHI, 56 (1995), 125-27. To many of these texts Bernal has written a reply. I could not yet read Mary Lefkowitz, Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History (New York, 1996), and Black Athena Revisited, ed. Mary Lefkowitz and Guy MacLean Rogers (Chapel Hill, 1996), offering a survey of critical responses to Black Athena, including essays by Robert Norton on J. G. Herder and by Guy MacLean Rogers on George Grote. In his review of Not Out of Africa in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review on internet (5 April 1996), Bernal reiterates that "it is precisely this historiographical or ideological aspect of my work [that is, vol. I and the neglect of Champollion's decipherment in Germany until the 1850s due to racism only] that has been most widely accepted." I thank Froma Zeitlin for bringing this review to my attention.

9. On Müller see the theme-issue of Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore de Pisa (henceforth ASNP), ser. 3, 14 (1984); K. Nickau, "Karl Otfried Müller, Professor der Klassischen Philologie 1819-1840," Die Klassische Altertumswissenschaft an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Eine Ringvorlesung zu ihrer Geschichte, ed. C. J. Classen (Göttingen, 1989), 27-50; W. Unte, "Karl Otfried Müller," Classical Scholarship. A Biographical Encyclopedia, ed. W. W. Briggs and W. M. Calder III (New York, 1990), 310-20; A. D. Momigliano, "A Return to Eighteenth-Century 'Etruscheria': A. D. Momigliano, K. O. Müller," Studies on Modern Scholarship, ed. and tr. G. W. Bowersock, and T. J. Cornell (Berkeley, 1994), 303-14 (orig. Italian, 1985); and K. O. Müller Reconsidered, ed. W. M. Calder III, H. Flashar, and R. Schlesier (Urbana, Illinois Classical Studies, forthcoming); also W. Burkert, "Griechische Mythologie und die Geistesgeschichte der Moderne," Les Etudes classiques aux XIXe et XXe siècles: leur place dans l'histoire des idées, ed. O. Reverdin and B. Grange (Fondation Hardt, 26) (Vandoeuvres, 1980), 159-207, 162-63; R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From 1300 to 1850 (Oxford, 1976), 187ff.; G. Pflug, "Methodik und Hermeneutik bei Karl Otfried Müller," H. Flashar, K. Grüder, and A. Horstmann (eds.), Philologie und Hermeneutik im 19. Jahrhundert. Zur Geschichte und Methodologie der Geisteswissenschaften, I (Göttingen, 1979), 122-40; A. D. Momigliano, "K. O. Müller's Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie and the Meaning of 'Myth,' " ASNP, ser. 3, 13 (1983), 671-89; M. M. Sassi, "Ermeneutica del mito in K. O. Müller," ASNP, ser. 3, 14 (1984), 911-36; H. J. Gehrke, "Karl Otfried Müller und das Land der Griechen," Athenische Mitteilungen, 106 (1991), 9-35; and J. H. Blok, "Quests for a Scientific Mythology: F. Creuzer and K. O. Müller on History and Myth," Proof and Persuasion in History, ed. A. Grafton and S. Marchand, History and Theory, Theme Issue, 33 (1994), 26-52; J. H. Blok " 'Romantische Poesie, Naturphilosophie, Construktion der Geschichte': K. O. Müller's Understanding of History and Myth," Calder et al. (eds.), K. O. Müller Reconsidered (forthcoming).

10. Bernal, Introduction, and passim.

11. C. Meiners, Geschichte des Ursprungs, Fortgangs und Verfalls der Wissenschaft in Griechenland und Rom (1781-82) is listed in the bibliography, but Bernal's note refers to a quote in L. Braun, Histoire de l'histoire de la philosophie (Paris, 1973).

12. L. Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe, tr. E. Howard (London, 1974), 178-79.

13. C. Meiners, Versuch über die Religionsgeschichte der ältesten Völker, besonders der Egyptier (Göttingen, 1775), 24 (on the Jews), 28, and extensively in ch. 3. And see Friedrich Lotter, "Christoph Meiners und die Lehre von der unterschiedlichen Wertigkeit der Menschenrassen," Geschichtswissenschaft in Göttingen, ed. Hermann Wellenreuther (Göttingen, 1987), 30-75.

14. Aegineticorum liber, scripsit C. Mueller, Silesius. A copy of the unpublished original was recently rediscovered, but a summary was included in K. O. Müller, Kunstarchäologische Werke, 1817-1840 (Berlin, 1873), I, 1-19, under the title "De arte Aeginetica."

15. No doubt, Justus Möser (1720-94) was a conservative; the Osnabrückische Geschichte (2 vols.) appeared in 1768 and a revised edition in 1780; the latter was reprinted in 1819, that is after the Aeginetica was written and included in Sämmtliche Werke (10 vols.; 1842-44) after Müller's death. I have found no reference to author or work in Müller's writings unto now; Bernal, in his reference to Gooch, omits that the latter quotes Curtius and does not draw the comparison himself.

16. "the place of places for me...," quoted by Bernal from J. W. Donaldson, "Introduction," K. O. Müller, A History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (3 vols.; London, 1858), I, vii.

17. G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 19132), 37-38.

18. Orchomenos, I, 8; trans. mine.

19. This is the only mention of Creuzer, whose Symbolik is mentioned only in the first edition (1810-12), although Müller responded to the second, revised edition of 1819-20. This choice may be due to Bernal's reliance here on Momigliano's article on Creuzer, "Friedrich Creuzer and Greek Historiography" (1946), in Studies on Modern Scholarship, ed. Bowersock and Cornell, 1-14.

20. I.e., the three volumes of the Geschichten (Orchomenos, Dorier, I and II) and the Prolegomena; the Aeginetica only as discussed by Gooch; and on "Orion" (the "attack" on Dupuis) see below.

21. On his courses see, e.g., letter by K. J. Sillig to C. A. Böttiger, 20 November 1822, recounting how he enjoys Müller's course on mythology, with its survey of Indians, Egyptians, Near Eastern peoples, Persians, Hellenes, and Italians. Quoted in S. Reiter (ed.), C.O. Müller, Briefe aus einem Gelehrtenleben, 1797-1840 (2 vols.; Berlin, 1950), II, 31 (no. 36) [henceforth BMR].

22. On his learning Sanskrit, letter to Böttiger, 21 November 1820; BMR, no. 22.

23. A survey of his reading of travel accounts on Greece, Egypt and the East in the years 1820-25, based on his reviews in GGA: Choiseul-Gonfier to Greece, 1820; E. Dodwell in Greece (London, 1819), 1820; R. Walpole to Turkey and the East (London, 1820), 1821; F. Pouqueville to Greece, 1821; G. Belzoni on Egypt and Nubia, including the excavations (London, 1821), 1822; T. S. Hughes to Sicily, Greece and Albania (London, 1821), 1822; new volume by Pouqueville, 1824; M. C. D. Raffenel on Greece and Turkey (Paris, 1822), 1824.

24. On the courses he took at Breslau University, LMK, no. 17, 29 October 1815, where he studied Hebrew and Italian, besides of course Latin and Greek.

25. See G. W. Bowersock, "The Search for Antioch: K. O. Müller's Antiquitates Antiochenae," in K. O. Müller Revisited, ed. Calder et al. (forthcoming), who also discusses some differences between the Latin and the German versions of this study.

26. Orchomenos, 108; Bernal refers to 112.

27. Note 127 and 128 on 311, referring to Prolegomena 232-34 and 239-40 respectively; the final section of this paragraph on "North and South" without reference. The first note claims to refer to Müller's views on the relationship between the Dorians and Apollo. The pages of Prolegomena mentioned by Bernal do not deal with this issue at all, but on Prolegomena 227 we find a discussion of the myth of the Hyperboraeans--in an entirely different way from what Bernal can possibly mean.

28. Donaldson, "Introduction," in Müller, A History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (1858); G. P. Gooch ("C. P. Gooch"), History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (1913); Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship (1976); two contributions to M. Bollack and H. Wismann (eds.), Philologie und Hermeneutik im 19. Jarhundert, II (Göttingen, 1983 [but once quoted 1984]).

29. BMR, no. 3, 4; 18 October 1816; cf. no. 2, 3; July 1816.

30. LMK, no. 11, 16; 19 and 20 October 1814.

31. Diary of his travel through Italy and Greece, 16 January 1840; LMK, 309.

32. See BMR, II, 1-3.

33. E.g., Müller to his parents, 21 November 1819; LMK no. 39; 54-55.

34. For details and sources, see Blok, "Quests for a Scientific Mythology."

35. Black Athena, 310; note 122, on 492.

36. Müller mentions the Masons once, when they were said by others to have prevented a scholar to get a tenured position, because they accused this man of having betrayed their secrets. He just relates this event to his parents, without passing judgment or taking sides; LMK, no. 62, 143; October 1823.

37. "Orion," KdS II, 113; trans. mine.

38. Bernal in note 122 on 492 does not quote, but referring to the article as a whole suggests that it was devoted in full to an "attack" on Dupuis.

39. K. O. Müller, "Ueber den angeblich ägyptischen Ursprung der griechischen Kunst," Kunstblatt, Beiblatt zum Morgenblatt (1820), no. 79; KdS, II, 523-37.

40. For a full discussion, see V. Losemann's contribution to K. O. Müller Reconsidered in Calder et al. (eds.), forthcoming.

41. For his own sense of failure to interpret Dorian culture, see letter to Ludwig Tieck, 12 April 1821; BMR, no. 24, 36. On Müller's later dissatisfaction with Orchomenos and Die Dorier, see O. Kern (ed.), Aus dem amtlichen und wissenschaftlichen Briefwechsel von Carl Otfried Müller ausgewählte Stücke mit Erlauterungen (Göttingen, 1936) (henceforth BMK), 200, letter to A. Schöll, June 1833; his relief that both books were nearly sold out, and his wish not to reissue them, BMR, no. 230, from his publisher J. Max, 3 January 1839; his reply BMR, no. 231, 4 March 1839.

42. BMR, II, 55-56 (no. 74), from Hamilton to Müller, 15 July 1827.

43. K. O. Müller, The History and Antiquities of the Doric Race, tr. H. Tufnell and G. C. Lewis (2 vols.; London, 1830).

44. On his insistence that he wanted to rewrite the history of Greece after studying the Greek antiquities in situ, Gehrke, "K. O. Müller und das Land der Griechen," 28ff.

45. For full references, see note 9. The article of 1985/1994 is an excellent example of Momigliano's tendency to "stress the rational aspects of his discipline," because his argument that Müller was not a Romantic and was little influenced by religion is unconvincing in the light of Müller's public and private writing.

46. Thanks to Bernhard Scholz for discussing these questions with me. See also the entry of Reinhard Koselleck on "Das Volk" in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (8 vols.; Stuttgart, 1972-93), VIII.

47. This is the second time, but the first time it is only used to be dismissed: "... ancestry was not seen in terms of the transmission of philosophy and reason, but as a Romantic one of 'blood' and kinship.... After the 1780's, the intensification of racism and the new belief in the central importance of 'ethnicity' as a principle of historical explanation became critical for the perceptions of Ancient Egypt" (224).

48. See F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer (1795), ed. and tr. A. Grafton, G. W. Most, and J. E. G. Zetzel (Princeton, 1985), 18-26.

49. Notably the edition of the A-scholia to the Iliad, by J. B. G. d'Ansse de Villoison, Homeri Ilias ad veteris codicis Veneti fidem recensita (Venice, 1788).

50. Likewise his views on Müller as an alleged "follower" of Wolf. Bernal knows of Müller's personal antipathy towards Wolf but keeps emphasizing Wolf's influence on Müller (308), an assumption that is refuted both by Eduard Müller's biographical account of his brother (EMB, xx) and, more importantly, by Müller's own writing, for instance on "Africans and Asiatics."

51. E.g., from Wolf's Darstellung der Althertums-Wissenschaft nach Begriff, Umfang, Zweck und Werth (Berlin, 1807), selected by the editorial board of Der Neue Pauly to illustrate the arrogance and limitations of Hellenocentrism.

52. D. B. Monro, "Wolf, Friedrich August," Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th ed.), XXVIII, 770-71; and see next note.

53. Note 4 on 487 refers to Pfeiffer, A History, 173-77, and to F. M. Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1981) 138-39; but Turner documents and explains the British mixture of difference and displeasure towards Wolf's findings, mentioning explicitly the Encyclopaedia Britannica in this respect, whose 11th edition is quoted by Bernal to prove the insignificance of Wolf's Prolegomena (284, note 6 on 487).

54. For a full discussion see Blok, " 'Romantische Poesie, Naturphilosophie, Construktion der Geschichte' " (see note 9).

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_ideas/v057/57.4blok.html.