Ethnicity Meditproto ENDVERSI
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PART I. ETHNICITY IN MEDITERRANEAN PROTOHISTORY EXPLORATIONS IN THEORY AND METHOD WITH EXTENSIVE DISCUSSIONS OF THE HOMERIC CATALOGUE OF SHIPS, THE BIBLICAL TABLE OF NATIONS, AND THE SEA PEOPLES OF THE LATE BRONZE AGE, AGAINST THE BACKGROUND OF A LONG- RANGE COMPARATIVE FRAMEWORK BY WIM M.J. VAN BINSBERGEN To my brother Peter, my first scholarly role model Tell-tale signs of long-range connections: The newly opened tomb of Tutankhamun (1341-1323 BCE), revealing numerous parts of spoked-wheel chariots (at the time a relatively new technology in Egypt, invented c. 2000 BCE in Kazakhstan), and leopard-skin motifs ( e.g. on the stools – centre – and on the animal figurines); picture © Bradley & Malek, 1999-2004, with thanks CHAPTER 1. INTERDISCIPLINARY CO-ORDINATES, METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL ORIENTATION, ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, AND SUMMARY, FOR PARTS I AND III At the beginning of this study, I wish to situate my work in much of what I attempt to do in the present study would be the intermeshing disciplinary commitments that have made anathema to this role model of my intellectual youth (I still up my academic work since the 1960s; briefly define my vividly remember the utter contempt and ridicule with overall methodological and theoretical perspective; and which André Köbben lectured on such early-twentieth- acknowledge my indebtedness to a considerable number of century CE diffusionists as Elliot Smith and Perry, whereas people and institutions without which it would never have their approach, however obsolete, theoretically barren, and come into being. one-sided, here yet appears in a more positive light). Wim Wertheim was my inspiring guide into Asia, socio-political 1.1. Interdisciplinary co-ordinates history and scholarly political and ideological self-reflexi- and acknowledgements for Parts I vity, and thus a life-long inspiration. As my early teachers, Anton Reichling and Simon Dik laid the linguistic founda- and III tions, and R.A.M. Bergman the physical anthropological foundations, that made my excursions in the present book, In several respects, this is the work of a Mediterraneanist- however defective, not blind sallies into totally unknown manqué . territory. The Palestinian refugee Muhammad Suudi taught Douwe Jongmans, with the assistance of Klaas van der me principles of Arabic (1966-67), without which I would Veen, competently and passionately introduced me to never have felt at home, as a researcher, on the southern Mediterranean anthropology, and (with the assistance of shores of the Mediterranean. Half a decade earlier, my ex- Marielou Creyghton and Pieter van Dijk) intensively su- cellent teachers at the St Nicolaaslyceum, Amsterdam pervised my first anthropological and historiographical re- (Mssrs van Buren S.C.J., Bank, Hamann, and Huurdeman), search (on popular religion in North-western Tunisia), taught me to read, and to love, classical Greek and Latin, 1967-68, under the aegis of the Department of Anthropol- and kindled my delight in the Homeric epics and in Ovid, ogy and Development Sociology, Amsterdam University. which has proved an essential asset for the present study. My debt to these colleagues is hardly smaller than that to At the same time, however, this book is very much the the Musée des Arts et Traditions populaires, Tunis, and to work of a passionate Africanist, who even when temporar- the villagers of Sidi M ḥammad and Mayziya. It is these vil- ily turning his gaze to the northern, Mediterranean fringes lagers’ hospitality and trust which made this fieldwork a of the African continent, cannot help pressing the emerging crucial reference point for everything I was to undertake as regional insights into service for the elucidation of major an anthropologist, historian and intercultural philosopher problems of long-range African pre- and protohistory. throughout my career. Jeremy Boissevain supervised Without the present research, I would never have discov- (1968-71) the academic work I wrote on the basis of this ered the considerable evidence for Niger-Congo and other, fieldwork, and, as a Mediterraneanist, was largely respon- now exclusively African, linguistic macrophyla in the sible, in the end, for me not becoming one, but an African- Mediterranean realm; would not have realised the affinity ist instead. André Köbben, the leading Dutch Africanist between Ancient Greek and Bantu, in the linguistic field anthropologist of the mid-1950s to early 1970s, was my but also in the socio-political field; would not have criti- main teacher of social-science method and theory, and this cally assessed Stephen Oppenheimer’s Sunda theses (prob- book (in its confidence that modern anthropology, as a so- ably red herrings as far as the Ancient Mediterranean is cial science, offers insightful models of socio-political or- concerned, yet valuable insights for the protohistory of sub- ganisation often superior to what alternatives circulate Saharan Africa); would not have insisted on the occurrence among historians, archaeologists and linguists) owes more and significance of Flood myths of large parts of Africa, than meets the eye to the intellectual seed he sowed; yet and many other significant African-Eurasian continuities in 19 VAN BINSBERGEN & WOUDHUIZEN , ETHNICITY IN MEDITERRANEAN PROTOHISTORY the field of comparative mythology; would not have en- and historical interest in the modern Mediterranean could gaged in a lexical reconstruction of the proto-Bantu life find a suitable addition from Assyriology and Hebrew Bi- world with its indications of a homeland in a well-watered ble / Old Testament studies. I wish to thank my brother, temperate climatic zone – nor would I have felt the need Peter Broers, during many years the Hon. Secretary of the for a detailed statistical assessment of Niger-Congo>Bantu Netherlands Association for the Study of Hebrew, for in- as a possible reflex of *Borean hence as a specific sub- troducing me, at a tender age, to scholarship in general, and macrophylum cognate to Eurasiatic and to the majority of more recently to the rudiments of Biblical Hebrew, through other modern macrophyla of the world; and, to crown it all, his didactic method Qol devarim , and through many spe- I would never have found the inspiration nor the need to cific discussions. It is fitting that my contributions to this formulate the Pelasgian Hypothesis as a viable alternative book should be dedicated to him, in recognition of a great for Martin Bernal’s Black Athena thesis, reversing his fac- and life-long indebtedness. ile and seemingly politically-correct Afrocentrism for a Through the years, the African Studies Centre, Leiden, more subtle appreciation of what sub-Saharan Africa, and the Netherlands, has formed a context where my explora- Egypt, brought to the wider world and what they derived tions at the fringe of African Studies have found a stimulat- from it to begin with – especially from a belt of seething ing and supportive environment. I wish to thank my cultural innovation extending, in the Neolithic and the colleagues there, especially those in the Theme Groups on Early Bronze Age, from the fertile Sahara to China. Work Globalisation, and on Agency in Africa. Some of them on the present project since 2000 spawned and fertilised all have graciously commented on earlier drafts of this study; these Africanist projects of mine now coming into fruition others have contributed by driving home to me the counter- in the form of book manuscripts and articles, while this paradigmatic nature of this kind of work, and forcing me to book’s final result in itself could not be attained without face up to the consequences of such an intellectual stance. the additional theoretical, methodological and factual ad- The first notes towards the present study were jotted down vances made in these Africanist projects. during plane flights and at airports between the Nether- As far as the Ancient Near East (including Egypt) and lands and Benin, and back, in January 2004; the bulk of the its connections with the Aegean and with Europe as a work was done during a sabbatical period at the end of the whole are concerned, my present argument seeks to bring same year – although the need to get a much better grip on to maturity many of the themes that I explored from 1996 the comparative mythological implications of the few onwards in the context of the collection I then published as scraps of cultural evidence we have on the Sea Peoples a guest editor in TAΛANTA (Proceedings of the Dutch Ar- (boat symbolism, aquatic bird symbolism, dress and head- chaeological and Historical Society ), under the title Black gear, mirror symmetry); in combination with the increas- Athena Ten Years After (now reprinted as Black Athena ingly opening up opportunities of identifying a substantial, comes of age ). I thank all contributors to that collection, consensual ethnic basis for the Sea Peoples’ effective mili- and all participants in the preparatory 1996 conference, for tary exploits in the genetic, ethnographic and literary evi- their continued inspiration. I am indebted to my sometime dence for a Black Sea / Mediterranean, Pelasgian identity PhD student Fred Woudhuizen, for sharing with me, in the from the Neolithic onward; and the development of a long- first place, his exciting struggle to discover ‘the ethnicity of range comparative perspective on the Biblical Flood and the Sea Peoples’, and, more in general, his vast knowledge the figure of Noah (Hebrew Nū[a] H), 1 delayed the finalisa- of Mediterranean archaeology and linguistics. Although I must take full responsibility for the sec- 1 tions that appear under my name, I am thankful to Fred In my primarily historical and ethnic contribution (Part I) I have avoided burdening the reader and myself with attempts at special- Woudhuizen for making extensive and constructive criti- ist philological transliteration – except where I specifically quote cism of my contributions, and for reading their proofs.