What are the oriental factors in Greek civilization?

Probably today, there are still many people who have good reasons to believe that western civilization is very different from other civilizations in the world. It evolved independently from ancient Greek and Roman civilization, through medieval Christian civilization and modern industrial civilization. Some people even attribute the political, economic, legal, cultural and educational systems in Europe after the industrial revolution to the evolution of the "internal essence" of ancient Greek and Roman civilization.

In fact, this view was opposed in ancient times. In the 1920s and 1930s, this view that "the West" has been a civilized tradition since ancient Greece and Rome began to be fundamentally questioned. Nowadays, more and more scholars find that "Western" civilization actually "originated" from non-Western, or ancient "Oriental" civilization, and Greece in the Orientalization era was influenced by Oriental civilization in all fields. ?

Hegel once said, "The eastern world is the foundation of the Greek world". As far away as the west is still in the primitive society, the two river basins in the east, Egypt, India and other places have established powerful countries. With the development of East-West trade, the continuous occurrence of wars and large-scale immigration, the people of all ethnic groups along the Mediterranean coast merged with each other to a certain extent, which promoted the gradual introduction of oriental culture into Greece.

The Greeks learned pinyin from Orientalism, knowledge of nature in astronomy, mathematics and medicine from Egypt and Babylon, their agricultural, handicraft, sailing and ironmaking techniques, and many things from various primitive religious superstitions in the East, thus producing and enriching their own culture. Mesopotamia and Egypt, the so-called East-West confrontation, are like two lighthouses, shining on the undeveloped western world.

The light comes from the east? This is a famous ancient Greek proverb, which describes the influence of ancient Asian and African cultures on ancient Greek culture. However, there are still many people who have good reasons to believe that western civilization is very different from other civilizations in the world. It developed from ancient Greek and Roman civilization to modern industrial civilization through medieval Christian civilization. Some people even attribute the political, economic, legal, cultural and educational systems in Europe after the industrial revolution to the evolution of the "internal essence" of ancient Greek and Roman civilization. In fact, this view was opposed in ancient times.

In the 1920s and 1930s, this view that "the West" has been a civilized tradition since ancient Greece and Rome began to be fundamentally questioned. Now more and more scholars find that "Western" civilization actually "originated" from non-Western, or ancient "Oriental" civilization. [2] One of the most representative works is bernal's Black Athena.

Generally speaking, the arguments among classical scholars hardly attract the attention of the general public, but the book Black Athena's Classical Civilization's Non-Asian Roots (Volume 1), which was published in 1987 and won the National Book Award in 1990, is an exception. This is a revisionist book about the origin of Greek civilization. In fact, it is also the most controversial ancient history book published in the west in recent decades. Its purpose, method, logic and hypothesis have become the focus of people's attention, and major academic institutions in the United States, such as the American Classical Society, the Egyptian Society and the Linguistic Society, have launched heated discussions on it.

Nowadays, the debate is not limited to classical scholars and Egyptian scholars. All the media joined the debate and published a lot of research articles and comments. Some people agree, others disagree, so that some people call it a "culture war". Some people accuse him of jumping to conclusions without enough evidence, saying that he "just made bold assumptions and didn't verify them carefully", while others say that this is in line with the revisionist fashion.

In any case, he put forward the important proposition that ancient Greek culture is not new and influenced by ancient civilizations in West Asia and North Africa, which cannot be easily ignored. However, what we want to oppose is the kind of "Afrocentrism", which has long been manifested in the form of "Pan-Egyptism" and "Pan-Babylonism" of world civilization. They not only denied the achievements of the ancient Greeks in philosophy, science and democracy, but also said that Socrates and Cleopatra were black, Aristotle stole the library of Alexandria and so on.