A Greek response to Victor Friedman's views on Macedonia and Balkan multilingualism

Πέμπτη, 12 Μαρτίου 2009 Έλληνες πανεπιστημιακοί Δράση - Επιστολές A group of Greek academics respond to a Balkanalysis.com interview (12/14/08) featuring University of Chicago Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures and Linguistics Victor Friedman, and focusing on Balkan history and culture.

Ime romeos e xeuro plus glose Fazio degli Uberti, Il Dittamondo, 3.23.36
March, 2009
In his interview on Balkanalysis.com (12/14/2008) [1], Linguistics professor and Balkan Studies scholar Victor Friedman portrays Greeks as a most undemocratic and oppressive nation, from ancient to present time, and places the role of Greece in the Balkans in a most negative light. The core of his arguments seems to lie in what he considers suppression of multilingualism and minorities in Greece, which he associates with the current dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on the name of the latter country. As scholars and academics, some of us students of Macedonian history and culture, we wish to offer an alternative perspective and rebut Friedman’s views and assertions in regard to the identity of the modern Greek nation and the true nature of the current dispute between Greece and FYROM. It should be noted that, prior to our decision to write this letter, we invited Dr. Friedman to debate his views in the Hellenic Electronic Center/Professors’ Forum*, but he declined our invitation.

Friedman’s overt bias is best exemplified in his remark “Greeks get away with this ‘cradle of democracy’ image! Give me a break! Ancient Greece was a slave-owning society,” which defies further comment. It is indeed unfortunate that such a statement came from a scholar.
We will not respond with similar sensationalism here. Rather, we will remain close to the facts and scholarly sources, and address those points made by Friedman which might sound reasonable to a reader who is not familiar with the past and the recent history of the Southern Balkan region.
1) Friedman states that “Greeks have been trying to destroy the Slavic culture and its literacy since the Middle Ages”.
Quite to the contrary, the Greeks of Byzantium and the post-byzantine period immensely and crucially contributed to the development of the Slavic cultures of Russia, Bulgaria, and Serbia, during their conversion to Christianity [2]. Remarkably, Friedman neglects to acknowledge that the written Slavic languages were developed by two Byzantine Greek monastic scholars and linguists, Cyril and Methodius of Thessaloniki. Among others, Friedman also displays sheer disregard for: a) the pivotal contributions to Russian literature and philosophy by 15th century Athonite luminary monk Maximus Graecus (Μάξιμος ο Γραικός) [3]; b) the learned Greek brothers, Ioanniky and Sofrony Likhud (Λειχούδη), founders of Moscow’s first institution of higher learning, the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, in 1687 [4]; and c) the centuries-old devotion of the Mother Church (Patriarchate of Constantinople) and Greek clergy to their Slav brethren, as embodied in the published works of the 19th century influential theologian and scholar Konstantinos Oeconomos (Κωνσταντίνος Οικονόμος εξ Οικονόμων)[5], a strong advocate of the historical ties and close kinship between Greeks and Slavs through the centuries.
2) In his rather bookish and rigidly circumscribed view about linguistically divergent constituencies in Greece, Friedman challenges the very essence of Modern Greek identity by disregarding –in a historical sense– the inclusive tradition of Romiosyni, the natural precursor of the Modern Greek nation. The concept of Romiosyni is, in many respects, akin to a 'Greek Commonwealth’, which transcends racial, tribal, and regional linguistic barriers. In failing to bring this concept into consideration when it comes to the historical context of multilingualism in the Balkan region, Friedman echoes earlier claims by—let us note—Greek scholars such as the late Loukas Tsitsipis [6] of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the late Kostas Kazazis [7] of the University of Chicago. Friedman – who is no stranger to Arvanitika, Vlahika and Slavonic dialects in the geographic region of Macedonia– fails to acknowledge that linguistically variegated groups such as Vlach-, Arvanite-, and Slavonic speakers in Macedonia, members of the Ottoman Rum millet and loyal followers of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, were not "Hellenized" subjects (by way of coercive or repressive assimilation) but rather they comprised dominant forces decisively partaking in the fermentation process leading to the shaping of Modern Greek identity and the dissemination of Greek letters in Ottoman Rumelia long before the eruption of ethnic feuds, divisions, and regional nationalisms [8, 9].

3) Friedman alludes to Greek indifference or even resistance to learning foreign languages, unlike other Balkan peoples. It is surprising that a Linguistics scholar uses the (presumed) lack of a Greek proverb to the effect that ‘languages are wealth’ as evidence that Greeks do not value multilingualism. This kind of rhetoric does not constitute a sound linguistic argument, and though possibly appealing to a lay-person, it reflects a way of thinking (called “strong relativism”) that has been largely discredited in current Linguistics.


To go back to scholarly sources, in his book “Bilingualism and the Latin Language” Cambridge University Press, 2003 [10], John N. Adams, Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, asserts that whilst "it has long been the conventional opinion that Greeks were indifferent or hostile to the learning of foreign languages, recently it has been shown that that view is far from the truth. Latin in particular was widely known, as has been demonstrated by Holford-Strevens and on a massive scale by Rochette.” [11]

With reference to the modern history of the Greek Nation (Γένος), members of the Rum millet and Romiosyni, ranging from those belonging to the high echelon of diplomats and luminaries of the Sublime Porte (viz. the Phanariots) to the ubiquitous Balkan merchants and retailers in the Ottoman Rumelia, were in fact polyglot (Greek-, Vlach-, Albanian-, Slavonic-, and/or Turkish-speaking, many of them acquainted with Russian, French, German and/or English). Noteworthy in this regard was the precocious (18th century) Greek ‘renaissance’ in Moschopolis/Moscopole (present day Albania) [12] and the 19th/early 20th century Greek cultural dimension in Pelagonia (Krushevo and Monastir/Bitola; present day FYROM) [8, 9]. These centers fostered the dissemination of Greek culture and letters, promoted by bilingual or polyglot speakers with fervent Greek national identity. Vestiges from this, once flourishing, community are still present today in FYROM.

The famous Protopiria (Primer), an Albanian-German-Modern Greek-Vlach dictionary written by the polymath cleric and scholar Theodoros Anastasiou Kavaliotis (Kavalliotes) [13], was the forerunner of comparative linguistics in the Balkans. It was printed in 1770 in Venice, and stands as a reminder of the widespread multilingualism in the flourishing Grecovlach center of Moschopolis/Moscopole and across the territories of the Ottoman Rumelia (the geographical region of Macedonia included).

Reference is made herein to the published works by Thomas Paschidis (1879) [14] and Mihail Lanbrinydis (1907) [15], which capture the collective memories of Arvanite and Vlach Greeks during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. These works offer a palpable proof of the Greek-Albanian kinship perceived by the 19th century Greek scholars. Noteworthy in this regard are the demonstrative sentiments of Thomas Paschidis, a bilingual -possibly polyglot- Greek Epirote/Arvanite luminary, towards his Grecovlach and Bulgarian brethren. His book contains an appendix in Arvanitika using Greek characters, which is especially informative and enlightening [14].

Given the above, we contend that claims for the presence of divergent identities of Greeks, Arvanites, Vlachs, and so-called Macedonian Slavs, based solely on linguistic grounds, should be viewed with cautious circumspection and within the context of time and space. In particular, it is somewhat surprising that Friedman did not consider the massive diffusion of Arbëreshë (Arvanite) speakers southward into the Helladic Mainland and the Peloponnese during the 14th and 15th centuries (and the most relevant Stradioti saga). Τhe remarkable fermentation and integration of Arbëreshë/Shqiptarë-speaking populations with Greek-, Vlach/Armîn-, and Slavonic-speaking members of the Rum millet during the ensuing centuries remains at the core of Romiosyni and Modern Greek ethnogenesis.

Thus, from a modern historic and anthropological perspective, the rigidly circumscribed and sharply delimited ethno-linguistic ‘definitions’ and compartmentalizations brought forward by Friedman are open to critical reappraisal. Importantly, they are, to a large extent, alien and irrelevant to the Greeks of Arvanite or Vlach origin, whose identity has been shaped by their collective participation in the Modern Greek Experience during the past two (and possibly more) centuries.

The "Declaration of the Northern Epirotes from the Districts of Korytsa and Kolonia Demanding Union of Their Native Province with Greece -- Pan-Epirotic Union in America, (Boston, 1919)" is a testament to the perception of their Greek identity among Albanian-, Vlach- and Greek speakers in Southern Albania/Northern Epirus http://www.helleniccomserve.com/pdf/Declaration%20of%20Northern%20Epirotes%20in%2019%5B1%5D...pdf

Whilst the vision of the 18th century Grecovlach luminary Rigas Velestinlis Thettalos (Feraios) for the creation of a post-Ottoman Balkan Federation/Commonwealth, transcending regional and linguistic differences, did not materialize, the idea –nonetheless- reflected the sentiment of many emancipated Greeks at the time. But the ethnic/national ‘awakenings’ and the divisive forces were already underway, heralding the partial disintegration of Romiosyni followed by a protracted and intractable course of regional feuds and dissensions, which unfortunately live up to this day. The emergence of the ethnocentric national(istic) narrative of ‘Makedonism’ is symptomatic of delayed ‘awakening’ thanks –in part- to the contributions by scholars like Dr. Victor Friedman.

4) Friedman’s argument that “the Greeks came up with a line claiming the Macedonians could not claim the name Macedonia unless they were descended from the Ancient Macedonians” is a sheer misrepresentation. The basis of the dispute between Greece and FYROM lies on the open attempt by the FYROM government to appropriate a very significant part of the Greek history (see examples: http://faq.macedonia.org/history/ and http://www.macedonia-timeless.com/). As part of its newly constructed national narrative, FYROM has opted to trace its historical roots to classical antiquity, underrating the predominantly Slavonic cultural heritage of the majority of its population, which is shared with its Bulgarian brethren. In the words of Dr. Evangelos Kofos, Greece’s leading authority on Modern Macedonian History, this all-encompassing doctrine of ‘Makedonism’ is “encroaching upon an illustrious past, which had been recorded in the annals of Hellenic heritage, almost a millennium prior to the arrival of Slavic tribes in the region” [16] (N.B. There was no Slavic presence in Macedonia until nearly 1,000 years after the time of Alexander the Great).

Aside from the grandiose ideations traceable to antiquity, there is yet another darker side to the ethnocentric national narrative of ‘Makedonism’. Central to the problem at hand is the morbid obsession with race, DNA, HLA haplotypes, and the likes, underlying a broader racial purity narrative. In the video below, one can see footage from a staged propaganda-style inspirational film titled “Makedonska Molitva” (Macedonian Prayer), which was aired on the government-run MTV1 - National TV, First Channel television station of Skopje. Note that the video culminates in a crescendo blending biblical apocalyptic delusions with overtly racial overtones from a different era. Thus, using Hellenized terms, the narrator speaks God's words to the children of the Sun and Flowers telling them that Mother Earth gave birth to three races: "Makedonjoide = white race, Mongoloide = yellow race, Negroide = black race (all others being mulattoes)." And God went on to say to the Makedontsi that, "All white people are your brethren because they carry 'Macedonian' genes." [17]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZJ62MGF7xI
It is indeed regrettable that Friedman has opted to downplay the gravity and long-term implications of a morbidly nationalistic narrative nurtured in the primary and secondary school curricula of FYROM.

Greeks throughout the world do not harbor any enmity or hostility toward FYROM nationals, and yearn for a peaceful and productive coexistence between the two peoples. Greece has an earnest desire for mutual respect and the realization of a lasting political solution with its northern neighbor. Greece does not deny the nationals of FYROM their identity (or identities). In this dispute, Greece is only compelled to delineate the distinction between the ethno-cultural domains of Greek Macedonia and FYROM. With this in mind, we wish that the people of FYROM start questioning the state propaganda and reflect upon their recent history. They were victimized for half a century under a totalitarian regime and were nurtured under a propagandistic educational system. In keeping with this entrenched tradition, Article 6 of the Law on the Scientific Research Activity, as published in the "Official Gazette of the Republic of Macedonia" Nos.13/96 and 29/02, proscribes the development of any scientific research on the ethnic identity of the citizens of FYROM. We believe that such obsessive preoccupation with national identity in the 21st century, coupled with misrepresentation of history, only harms the citizens of FYROM.

As a geographic region, Macedonia has long been known for its ethno-linguistic diversity for which the time-honored term “Macedonian salad” was coined. Hence, Macedonia is neither a single country nor the cradle of a single nation, but a geographic region (with protean borders throughout history) parts of which belong nowadays to three states, each with its distinctive cultural heritage, national identity, and collective memory. It is most disturbing that Skopje claims the entire geographic Macedonian region of modern times as part of that nation’s “tatkovina” (fatherland), thus effectively laying claim to unredeemed territories in Greek Macedonia [18]. This is not a “hidden agenda”. The government of FYROM has published and circulated a state map showing FYROM to extend over Greek territory, including Thessaloniki [19].


The Hellenic identity of ancient Macedonia is indisputable; it is supported by historical, archeological, and linguistic evidence. For the socio-political and historical facts, the most authoritative source is the classic work of the leading scholar on the history of ancient Macedonia, the late Prof. Nicholas Hammond's book, The Macedonian State, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989. As regards the language, by 5th century B.C. Attic Greek was standardized as the language of Ancient Macedonia (Makedon). For instance, of the 1,044 inscriptions included in the fascicle Inscriptiones Thessalonicae et Viciniae (ISBN 3 11 0018594) –one of the most painstaking and complex volumes of the Berlin corpus, encompassing all the inscriptions of ancient Thessaloniki from the 3rd century B.C. to the 7th or 8th century A.D.– most are Greek, while a few are Latin (personal communication with Dr. John C. Rouman, Professor Emeritus of Classics at the University of New Hampshire) [20]. When considering the pre-5th century B.C. language (for which evidence is more fragmentary), the current consensus seems to be that it was a Hellenic dialect. The term “Hellenic” has been proposed by Professor Brian Joseph (Ohio State University, 1999, 2001) [21] to refer to the linguistic sub-family within the Indo-European languages that comprises Ancient Macedonian and the rest of the Greek dialects. This classification has been adopted by the LINGUIST list (the official electronic site of Linguistics); see
http://www.linguistlist.org/forms/langs/GetListOfAncientLgs.html and http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/get-familyid.cfm?CFTREEITEMKEY=IEG
On the first site, it is additionally cautioned that “Macedonian is the ancient language of the Macedonian kingdom in northern Greece and modern Macedonia during the 1st millennium B.C. Not to be confused with the modern Macedonian language, which is a close relative of the Slavonic Bulgarian [emphasis ours].” For additional references on the subject, see G. Babiniotis, “Ancient Macedonian: The Place of Macedonian among the Greek Dialects” in : A. M. Tamis (ed.), Macedonian Hellenism, Melbourne 1990, pp. 241-250; C. Brixhe, A. Panayotou, “Le Macédonien” in: Langues indo-européennes, ed. Bader, Paris, 1994, 205–220; and J. Chadwick, The Prehistory of the Greek Language, Cambridge 1963.


5) Friedman’s assertion that the Greek State has implemented repressive measures against the “Macedonian minority” in Greece is politically motivated. Most importantly, it misrepresents the real demographic situation in the Northwestern prefectures of Greek Macedonia, by not taking into account the fact that the use of variant local Slavonic-like idioms/dialects is widespread among bilingual, indigenous Greek Macedonians with unambiguous Greek identity. These bilingual Greek Macedonians (also known as Grecomans or Grkmani) along with Grecovlachs were the backbone of Romiosyni and Hellenism in the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. Friedman should by now be cognizant of the fact that when it comes to Macedonian identities it ultimately boils down to choices of national affiliation, as, not infrequently, even members of the same family may profess divergent ethnic/national identities. And even though Greece disputes the existence of a “Macedonian minority” on the grounds of definition, the self-described “party of the Macedonian minority in Greece”, Rainbow-Vinozhito, enjoys full recognition by the Greek state (and receives a negligible number of votes in elections). Vinozhito’s members are free to openly express their grievances and dissenting opinions.

The problem of FYROM is further compounded by the fact that a large proportion of its population, and a number of the Slavophone inhabitants of Greece, collaborated with the Italian and German occupation forces (1941-1944) [22] and by the rekindling of old family feuds and grievances dating back to the days of the Greek Civil War (1945-1949). These have nowadays resurfaced thanks to the bitter politics embraced by a third generation of politicians in Skopje, belonging for the most part to the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party [16, 22]. Some of them, like current Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, identify themselves as “Aegean Macedonian” (Egejski) political refugees, based on their family roots in Greek Macedonia [16]. At issue are claims for restitution and/or repatriation, subjects that other states with autonomist Axis collaborators (such as the Czech Republic and Poland) refuse even to discuss [22, 23]. Whilst during the past thirty years the Greeks have managed to heal some of the Civil War wounds, there are still fresh memories, even among members of the Greek Communist Party, about the subversive actions of Makedonski autonomist bandsmen of NOF endangering the territorial integrity of Greek Macedonia. By playing the Egejski card half a century later, in the midst of negotiations over the thorny ‘name issue’, Skopje shows an increasingly intransigent and confrontational -rather than constructive- approach.



We conclude by emphasizing that sensationalism and sheer bias, as displayed in Friedman’s interview, serve neither historical truth nor a constructive scholarly or political discourse; and they certainly do not help the people of FYROM. No intellectual and scholar should feel comfortable accepting, let alone promoting, such rhetoric.


ENDNOTES

1. Victor Friedman on Macedonia: the Balkanalysis.com Interview
http://www.balkanalysis.com/2008/12/14/victor-friedman-on-macedonia-the-balkanalysiscom-interview/

2. “Byzantium nurtured the untamed tribes of the Serbs, Bulgars, Russians and Croats and shaped them into nations. It gave them its religion, its institutions, its traditions, and taught their leaders how to govern. Indeed, [Byzantium] gave them the essence of culture –written language/script and philology.” F. Dvornik, Les Slaves, Byzance et Rome au IXe siècle, II, Paris 1928 and P.P. Charanis, The development of Byzantine Studies in the United States. Acceptance lecture by Professor P. Charanis upon his conferral of Doctor honoris causa by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (14.3.1972), Thessaloniki, 1973, 34. Cited in Achille Lazarou, Ellinismos kai Laoi Notioanatolikis (NA) Evropis. Diachronikes kai Diepistimonikes Diadromes. Tomos A’. Lychnia Publishers, Athens, 2009, p. 218 [ISBN 978-960-930950-9].

3. Antonios-Emilios Tahiaos O Athonitis Monahos Maximos o Graikos. O Teleftaios ton Vyzantinon sti Rossia, published by the Society for Macedonian Studies, People's Library, Thessaloniki 2008.
http://www.ems.gr/ems/client/userfiles/file/EKDOSEIS/MAKEDONIKI_LAIKI_BIBLIOTHIKI/Taxiaos_Maximos_Graikos.pdf

4. Before coming to Moscow, the Greek brothers studied in Venice and Padua. At the Moscow Academy, Ioanniky taught physics while his brother Sofrony taught physics and logic in the Aristotelian tradition, while also emphasizing the works of Byzantine philosophers. The Greek brothers embodied the so-called "Greek" trend that prevailed in Russian culture prior to the radical reforms introduced by Peter the Great. Unlike the "Latin" tradition, which emanated from medieval Western scholasticism with a slant toward rhetoric and poetry, the Greek trend focused heavily on philosophy, history, and natural sciences. The rich and fertile rivalry between these two scholarly and scientific traditions was a prevailing feature of Russian culture during the late 17th century [Source: Alexander Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture: A History to 1860, Stanford University Press, 1963]


5. P. Matalas, Ethnos kai Orthodoxia. Oi peripeteies mias schesis. Apo to ‘Elladiko’ sto Voulgariko schisma. Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis, 2002

6. Lukas D. Tsitsipis. A linguistic anthropology of praxis and language shift: Arvanítika (Albanian)
and Greek in contact. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Also, see Victor Friedman's “The Albanian Language in Its Eastern Diaspora.” Arvanitika kai Ellenika: Zetemata polyglossikon kai polypolitismikon koinoteton [Greek: Arvanitika and Greek: Problems of multilingual and multicultural communities],
Vol. 2, ed. by Loukas Tsitsipis. Livadeia, Greece: European Union & The Prefecture of Levadeia, 1998,
pp. 215-231.

7. Kostas Kazazis' obituary by Victor Friedman posted on the website of Society Farsarotul, a United States-based political activist group promoting the so-called independent Aromanian movement http://www.farsarotul.org/nl25_5.htm

8. Antonis M. Koltsidas' monograph entitled Greek Education in Monastir – Pelagonia Organisation and Operation of Greek Schools, Cultural Life. [English Translation by Janet Koniordos] published by the Society for Macedonian Studies, Macedonian Library - 105, Thessaloniki 2008 http://www.ems.gr/ems/client/userfiles/file/EKDOSEIS/MAKEDONIKI_BIBLIOTHIKI/Koltsidas_Monastiri_Pelagonia.pdf

9. See Christos D. Katsetos’ article entitled Vlahoi. Rahokokalia tou Ellinikou ethnous (Vlachs - The backbone of the Greek nation) published in the Athens newspaper Apogevmatini (on 11 November, 2007, p. 17) http://www.vlahoi.net/content/view/257/109/

10. See the excerpt from the Introduction of J.N. Adams' book.
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/17714/excerpt/9780521817714_excerpt.pdf

11. See Rochette's treatise Les Romains et le latin vus par les Grecs.
http://www2b.ac-lille.fr/langues-anciennes/telechargement/20Latinetgrec4eme.pdf

12. See Lazarou, op. cit., p. 293 [vide supra]. Prokopios Dimitrios Pamperis Moschopolitis, «Απαρίθμησις Λογίων Γραικών», Hamburg, 1772. Reprinted by Karavias Publishers, Athens, 1966 http://www.rarebooks.com.gr/book.asp?catid=361

13. Theodoros Kavaliotis, founder of the New Academy of Moschopolis, was the author of a quadrilingual dictionary entitled Protopiria. Das dreisprächige Wörterverzeichnis von Theodoros Anastasiu Kavalliotes aus Moschopolis, gedruckt 1770 in Venedig: albanisch-deutsch-neugriechischich-aromunisch/ neu bearbeit, mit dem heutigen Zustande der albanischen Schriftsprache verglichen_ [Protopiria (Πρωτοπειρία)= Primer. Three Lists of Words in Three Languages, which was printed in 1770 in Venice: Albanian-German-Modern ('Nea') Greek-Armîn/Vlach; New edition, with the today's Situation of the Albanian written Language].

14. Thomas Paschidis, «Οι Αλβανοί και το μέλλον αυτών εν τω Ελληνισμώ - Μετά παραρτήματος περί των Ελληνοβλάχων και Βουλγάρων», υπό Θ. Πασχίδου [Shqiptarët dhe e ardhmja e tyre në helenizëm - Me shtesë mbi grekovllehtë dhe bullgarët] Th. Paskidu, 1879 [The Albanians and their future in Hellenism -With an appendix on Grecovlachs and Bulgarians]. Reprinted by Karavias Publishers, Athens, 1981 http://www.rarebooks.com.gr/book.asp?catid=356
http://www.shqiptarortodoks.com/tekste/albanologji/Paskidu_1879.pdf

15. Mihail Lambrinidis, «Οι Αλβανοί κατά την κυρίως Ελλάδα και την Πελοπόννησον (Ύδρα-Σπέτσαι)», υπό Μιχαήλ Λαμπρυνίδου, 1907[Shqiptarët në Greqinë qendrore dhe në Peloponez Mihail Lambrinidou, 1907] [The Albanians in Mainland Greece and Peloponnese (Hydra-Spetsae)]. Reprinted by Karavias Publishers, Athens, 1981 http://www.rarebooks.com.gr/book.asp?catid=357
http://www.shqiptarortodoks.com/tekste/albanologji/Lambrinidu.pdf

16. See analysis by Dr. Evangelos Kofos of the ICG Report “Macedonia’s Name: Breaking the Deadlock” http://blogs.eliamep.gr/en/kofos/analysis-icg-report-macedonia’s-name-breaking-the-deadlock/#more-92
Also, see essay by the same author entitled 'The Unresolved “Difference over the Name”: The Greek perspective'. In: Kofos E, Vlasidis V (Eds) Athens-Skopje: An Uneasy Symbiosis, 1995-2002. Research Centre for Macedonian History and Documentation at the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle, Thessaloniki, 2005 http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/InterimAgreement/Downloads/Interim_Kofos.pdf

17. See claims about the ‘Sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks’ in state-sponsored ethnogenetic studies.
http://www.makedonika.org/processpaid.aspcontentid=ti.2001.pdf

18. Kofos, ibid

19 Vance Stojcev. Voena Istorija Na Makedonija: Skici. Sojuzot na drustvata na istoricarite na RM i Voenata akademija General Mihailo Apostolski, ISBN 9989776075 (9989-776-07-5)/ Military History of Macedonia. Military Academy General Mihailo Apostolski, ISBN 9989134057 (9989-134-05-7)

20. Excerpted from the letter of Dr. Rouman to the New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson (dated 2002). Dr. Rouman was for five years, both at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, research assistant during Professor Charles F. Edson's protracted and difficult project, focusing on the editing of all the inscriptions of ancient Thessalonica from the third century B.C. to the seventh or eighth century A.D. for the German Academy of Berlin. For his meritorious contribution Dr. Edson was awarded the prestigious Charles Goodwin Award of Merit of the American Philological Association.
21. Brian Joseph (1999), Ancient Greek in: J. Garry, C. Rubino, A. Faber, R. French (editors), Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages: Past and Present, New York/Dublin, H. W. Wilson Press, 2001

22. See article by Aristide D. Caratzas titled Oi nazistikes rizes tou VMRO (the Nazi origins of VMRO) published in the Athens newspaper Ethnos (2.8.2009)
http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=11378&subid=2&tag=8334&pubid=1370687
Also, see article by the same author entitled “Why the Greek People Cannot Easily Accept FYROM’s Claims” published in The National Herald (30.8.2009)
http://rieas.gr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=739&Itemid=41

23. See commentary by Evangelos Kofos titled “Unexpected Initiatives: Towards the resettlement of a Slav-Macedonian minority in Macedonia?” (Originally published in the Athens newspaper To Vima on June 25 , 2003) http://www.macedonian-heritage.gr/Opinion/comm_20030710Kofos.html



SIGNATURES
Martis, Nikolaos, Former Minister of Macedonia/Thrace.
Agathos, Spiros N., Professor, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, BELGIUM.

Albrecht-Piliouni, Effie, Professor of Linguistics, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA.
Albrecht, Ulrich, Professor of Mathematics, Auburn University, Auburn, AL USA.


Anagnostopoulos, Stavros A., Professor of Civil Engineering, Head, University of Patras, 26500, Patras, GREECE.


Anastassiou, George, Professor of Mathematics, University of Memphis, USA.

Anastassopoulou, Jane, Professor, NTUA, GREECE.

Andreadis, Stelios T., Ph.D., Professor, Bioengineering Laboratory, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, New York, USA.

Antoniou, Antonios, Dr. Dent., D.M.D., Dental Surgeon, Lemesos, CYPRUS.
Arkas Evangelos, Ph.D., CEO Prometheus Technology Inc. London, UK.

Aroniadou-Anderjaska, Vassiliki, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Dept. of APG and Dept. of Psychiatry, F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine, Bethesda, MD, USA.

Athanassouli, Georgia, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Patras, GREECE.

Baloglou, George, Associate Professor of Mathematics (retired, SUNY
Oswego), Thessaloniki, GREECE.

Balopoulos, Victor, Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Thrace, GREECE.

Barbas, John T., Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA, USA.

Billis, Euripides, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.

Bitros, George C., Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Department of Economics, Athens, University of Economics and Business, Athens, GREECE.

Botsas, Lefteris N., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Economics Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA.

Boundas, Constantin V., Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, CANADA.

Bouros, Demosthenes, MD, Ph.D. FCCP Professor of Pneumonology, Chairman, Dept, of Internal Medicine, Democritus University of Thrace, GREECE.

Bronstein, Arna, Associate Professor of Russian, Dept. of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.


Burriel, Angeliki R., DVM, MSc, MSc, PhD, MRCVS, GREECE.


Bucher, Matthias, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, ECE Dept., Technical University of Crete, Chania, Crete, GREECE.


Cacoullos, Theophilos, Emeritus Professor, University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.


Caratzas, Aristide D., Historian, Academic Publisher, Athens/New York.

Chaniotakis, Nikos, Professor of Chemistry, University of Crete, Crete, GREECE.


Christodoulou, Chris, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, 75 Kallipoleos Ave, P.O. Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, CYPRUS.


Christodoulou, Manolis A., Professor of Control Laboratory, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Crete, GREECE.


Chrysanthopoulos, Michael, Ph.D., Historian, Hagiographer, Thessaloniki, GREECE.

Cladis, John B., Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics, Lockheed Martin Space Physics Lab, Palo Alto, California, USA.

Clairmont, Richard, Dr., Senior Lecturer of Classics, University of NH, USA.

Constantinides, Christos, Professor Emeritus, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wyoming, USA.

Constantinou, Philip, Ph.D., Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. National technical University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.

Constantopoulos, Yannis, Professor, GREECE.

Coucouvanis, Dimitri, Professor of Chemistry, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.

Daglis, Ioannis A., Ph.D., Research Director, Institute for Space Applications National Observatory of Athens, Penteli, GREECE.

Damianou, Pantelis, Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Cyprus, 1678, Nicosia, CYPRUS.



Danginis, Vassilios A., Ph.D., Director of Engineering, SMSC, Hauppauge, NY 11788, USA.



Deltas, Constantinos, Professor of Genetics, Chairman of Biological Sciences, Head, Laboratory of Molecular and Medical Genetics, University of Cyprus, Kallipoleos Nicosia, CYPRUS.



Demetracopoulos, Alex C., Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of Patras, 265 00, Patras, GREECE.


Demopoulos, George P., Ph.D., Eng., FCIM, Professor and Gerald Hatch Faculty Fellow,
Associate Chair and Graduate Program Director, Department of Mining and Materials Engineering, McGill University, Wong Building, 3610 University Street, Montreal, QC H3A 2B2, CANADA.


Dimopoulos, Nikitas, PhD, PEng, FEIC, Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Computer Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Victoria
PO BOX 3055, Victoria B.C. V8W 3P6, CANADA.

Dokos, Socrates, Dr., Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, University of New South Wales Sydney, AUSTRALIA.


Doulia, Danae, Professor of Nat. Techn. University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.


Dritsos, Stephanos E., Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of Patras, 26500, Patras, GREECE.

Economou, Thanasis, Senior Scientist, Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, IL, USA.

Efthymiou, Pavlos N., Professor, Dr. ret. nat., Faculty of Forestry and Natural Environment, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GR - 541 24 THESSALONIKI, GREECE.
Episcopos, Athanasios, Associate Professor, Athens University of Economics and Business, Athens, 10434, GREECE.
Eriotis, Nikolaos, Associate Professor of Accounting, University of Athens, Philothei, GREECE.

Fleszar, Aleksandra, Assoc. Professor of Russian, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.

Flytzani-Stephanopoulos, Maria, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA.

Fotopoulos, Spiros, Professor, Electronics Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Patras, GREECE.

Foudopoulos, Panayotis, Ph.D., Electrical Engineer, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.

Fthenakis, Vasilis, Director, Center for Life Cycle Analysis, Earth and Environmental Engineering Department, Columbia University, 926 S.W. Mudd, 500 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA.
Gatzoulis, Nina, Supreme President of the Pan-Macedonian Association (USA) and Professor, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of New Hampshire, USA.

Gavalas, George, Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, USA.

Gavras, Irene, MD, Professor of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.

Georgakis, Christos, Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering,
Bernard M. Gordon Senior Faculty Fellow of Systems Engineering, TUFTS University, Medford, MA, 02155, USA.

Georges, Anastassios T., Professor, Department of Physics, University of Patras, GREECE.

Georgiou, Demetrius A., Associate Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, GREECE.

Giannakidou, Anastasia, Professor of Linguistics, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Chicago, USA.

Grammatikos Theoharry, Associate Director, Methods and Processes Improvement,
European Investment Bank, 100, blvd Konrad Adenauer, L-2950, Luxembourg.

Groumpos, Petros P., Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, GREECE.
Halamandaris, Pandelis, Ph.D., Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Brandon University, Deputy Director, University of Manitoba Centre for Hellenic Civilization, CANADA.

Hassiotis Sophia, Ph.D., Civil Engineering Program Director, CEOE, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, N.J. 07030, USA.

Horsch, Georgios M., Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering
University of Patras, Patras, GREECE.

Ioannou, Petros, Ph.D., Professor, Electrical Engineering-Systems, University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Iliadis, Lazaros S., Associate Professor, Democritus University of Thrace, GREECE.

Kakouli-Duarte, Thomais, Ph.D., President, Hellenic Community of Ireland, and Lecturer, Environmental Bio-Sciences, Dept. of Science and Health Institute of Technology, Carlow, IRELAND.

Kamari, Georgia, Professor, Division of Plant Biology, Department of Biology, University of Patras, GR-265 00, Patras, GREECE.
Kambezidis, Harry, Dr., Research Director, National Observatory of Athens, Athens, GREECE.
Karabalis, Dimitris L., Professor, University of Patras, GREECE.
Karageorgis, Demetris, Information Science Teacher, Nicosia, CYPRUS.

Karagiannidis, Iordanis, Ph.D., Assistant Researcher, Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Karakatsanis, Theoklitos S., Ph.D., Electrical Engineer N.T.U.A, Assistant Professor D.U.TH., Dept. of Production Engineering & Management, School of Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, GREECE.

Karatzios, Christos, M.D. C.M., FRCPC, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, McGill University Health Centre, Division of Infectious Diseases, Montreal Children's Hospital; Associate Member, Special Immunology Division, Centre Universitaire Mere-Enfant de l'Hopital Ste Justine, University of Montreal, Quebec, CANADA.

Karayanni, Despina A., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Marketing, University of Patras, Department of Business Administration, GREECE.

Karpathakis, Anna, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology, CUNY, New York, USA.

Katsetos, Christos D., M.D., Ph.D., FRCPath, Professor of Pathology, Drexel University College of Medicine and St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.


Katsifarakis, Konstantinos L., Ph.D., Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GREECE.

Katsifis, Spiros, Ph.D., FACFE, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Biology, University of Bridgeport Bridgeport, CT, USA.

Katsoufis, Elias C., Associate Professor of Physics, School of Applied Sciences, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.Katsouris, Andreas, Professor of Ancient Greek Philology, Division of Classical Philology, University of Ioannina, GREECE.

Kitridou, Rodanthi C., MD, FACP, MACR Professor Emerita of Medicine (Rheumatology), USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Komodromos, Petros, Lecturer, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering University of Cyprus, CYPRUS.

Konstantatos (Kostas), Demosthenes J., Ph.D., M.Sc., M.B.A., Telecommunications, Greenwich, CT, USA.

Kottis, George C., Emeritus Professor, Athens University of Economics and Business Science, Athens, GREECE.


Kugiumtzis, Dimitris, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, GREECE.

Koussis, Antonis D., Ph.D., Research Director, Institute for Environmental Research, National Observatory of Athens, Metaxa & Vassileos Pavlou, GR - 152 36 Palaia Penteli, Athens, GREECE.

Koutroumbas, Konstantinos, Ph.D., Researcher, Institute for Space Applications & Remote Sensing, National Observatory of Athens, Palea Penteli, 15236 ATHENS-GREECE.

Koutselini, Mary, Dr , Department of Education, University of Cyprus, CYPRUS.
Kouzoudis, Dimitris, Lecturer, Engineering Sciences Department, University of Patras, 26504 Patras, GREECE.

Kritas, Spyridon K., DVM, Ph.D., Dipl. ECPHM Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, School of Veterinary Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Macedonia, GREECE.

Kritikos, Haralambos N., Professor Emeritus, Department of Systems and Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA, USA.

Kyriacou, George A., Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, GREECE.

Kyriakou, Anastasia, Plant Pathologist, Agricultural Research Institute, Lefcosia, CYPRUS.

Ladikos, Anastasios, Professor, Department of Criminology and Security Sciences, University of South Africa, Pretoria, SOUTH AFRICA.
Lagoudakis, Michail G., Assistant Professor, Technical University of Crete, Chania, GREECE.

Lambrinos, Panos, Professor of Mathematics, School of Engineering, Democritus, University of Thrace, Xanthi, GREECE.
Lampropoulos, George A., Ph.D. Adjunct Professor, ECE Dept., University of Calgary, CANADA.

Lampropoulou, Venetta, Professor of Deaf Education, Deaf Studies Unit, Department of Education, University of Patras, GREECE.

Lazaridis, Anastas, Professor Emeritus, Widener University, One University Place, Chester, PA 19013, USA.
Leventouri, Theodora, Dr., Professor, Department of Physics, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA.

Lialiaris, Theodore S., BSc, MD, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor of Medical Biology and Cytogenetics, Medical School of Democritus University of Thrace, GREECE.
Lolos, George J., Professor, Physics Department, University of Regina, CANADA.
Lymberopoulos, John Ph.D., Leeds School Summer Dean, Professor of International Business & Finance Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.

Manias, Stefanos, Professor, National Technical University of Athens, Dep. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Electrical Machines and Power electronics Laboratory, Athens, GREECE.

Manolopoulos, Vangelis G., Assoc. Professor of Pharmacology, Democritus University of Thrace, Medical School, Alexandroupolis, GREECE.

Maragos, Petros, Professor, National Technical University of Athens,
School of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Athens , GREECE.

Melakopides, Costas, Associate Professor of International Relations, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, CYPRUS.

Mermigas, Eleftherios, Professor, ASCP, Pathology and Anatomical Sciences, University at Buffalo NY, USA.


Metallinos-Katsaras, Elizabeth, Ph.D. RD, Associate Professor, Nutrition Department,
Simmons College, Boston MA, USA.


Michaelides, Stathis, Ph.D., P.E. Professor and Chair, Mechanical Engineering University of Texas at San Antonio One UTSA Circle San Antonio, TX, USA.

Michailidis, Dimitri, M.D., Gen.Surgeon, President, ELEFI (Hellenic Association of Pharmaceutical Physicians), President, Auditors Committee, Hellenic Society of Pharmacology, Member, EB IFAPP, GREECE.

Michopoulos, Aristotle, Dr., Greek Studies, Hellenic College, Brookline, MA, USA.


Miller, Stephen G., Professor Emeritus, Classical Archaeology, University of California, Berkeley CA, USA.



Mylonakou-Kekes Iro, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational, Sciences, Faculty of Primary Education, University of Athens, 13A Navarinou, 10680 ATHENS, GREECE.
Milonas, Nikolaos, Professor of Finance, University of Athens, Marousi, GREECE.

Moulopoulos, Konstantinos, Dr., Associate Professor of Physics, University of Cyprus, CYPRUS.

Mourtos, Nikos J., Ph.D., Professor, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, San Jose State University, One Washington Square San Jose, CA, USA.
Nasis, Vasileios T., Ph.D., Adjunct Professor, Drexel University College of Engineering, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Nenes, Athanasios, Associate Professor, Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.
Newman, Constantine, Reverent Dr., Classics Professor-University of New Hampshire, USA.

Newman Anna, Professor of Classics-University of New Hampshire, USA.

Nikolakopoulos, Konstantin, Professor, Institute of Orthodox Theology, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, GERMANY.

Panagiotakopoulos, Chris T., B.Sc., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Educational Technology, University of Patras - School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Education, Archemedes Str., 265 04 Rio Patras, GREECE.

Panagiotakopoulos, Demetrios, Professor of Civil Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, GREECE.

Panagiotopoulos, Dimitrios P., Assoc. Professor, University of Athens, Attorney-at-Law, President of International Association of Sports Law, GREECE.

Papadopoulos, George K., Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Epirus Institute of Technology, Arta, 47100, GREECE.

Papadopoulos, George, Professor Emeritus, Applied Electronics Laboratory, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, GREECE.

Papadopoulos, Kyriakos, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.
Papamarkos, Nikos, Professor, Democritus University of Thrace, School of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, GREECE.
Papavassiliou, Dimitrios P., MD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics
Pediatric Cardiology, Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of New York-Presbyterian
Columbia University Medical Center. New York, NY, USA.
Papazoglou, Georges, Professor of Palaeography, Chairman - Department History and Ethnology, Democritus University of Thrace, KOMOTINI, GREECE.

Patitsas, Steve, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor, Physics Department, University of Lethbridge,
4401 University Drive, Lethbridge, Alberta, T1K 3M4, CANADA.

Patitsas, Tom Athanasios, Professor Emeritus, Department of Physics and Astronomy Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, CANADA.

Pelekanos, Nikos, Professor of Materials Science and Technology, University of Crete, Heraklion-Crete, GREECE.

Pelides, Panayiotis, Ph.D., Consultant Anesthesiologist, American Heart Institute, Nicosia, CYPRUS.
Persephonis, Peter, Professor, Physics Department, University of Patras, GREECE.
Phufas, Ellene S., Professor, English/Humanities SUNY- ECC Buffalo, NY, USA.

Pintelas, Panagiotis E., Professor of Computer Science, Dept. of Mathematics, University of Patras, Patras, GREECE.

Pittas, Stamatios, Head of Marketing Dept., KOSTEAS GROUP OF COMPANIES, Chalkis, GREECE.

Plionis, Manolis, Ph.D., Research Director, Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics, National Observatory of Athens, GREECE.


Pnevmatikatos, Dionysios, Assoc. Professor, ECE Department, Technical University of Crete, GREECE.

Polychroniadis, K.E., Professor, Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, GREECE.

Poularikas, Alexander D., Professor Emeritus (University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, Alabama), Houston, Texas, USA.

Pozios, John LL.B., MBA, Director, Desautels Centre for Private Enterprise and the Law, Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba, CANADA.

Psaras, GK, Ph.D., Professor, Section of Plant Biology, Department of Biology, University of Patras, Patras, GR 265 00, GREECE.

Psyrri, Amanda, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.

Rantsios, Apostolos T., Ph.D., Dipl., Past President, World Veterinary Association, Marousi, GREECE.

Rapsomanikis, S., Ph.D., Professor, Director, Laboratory of Atmospheric Pollution, Control Engineering of Atmospheric Pollutants, Department of Environmental Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, GREECE.
Raptis, Aristotle, Professor, University of Athens, GREECE.

Rigas, Fotis, Ph.D., Associate Professor, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.

Roilides, Emmanuel, MD, PhD., Assoc. Professor, 3rd Dept. Pediatrics, University of Thessaloniki, Hippokration Hospital, Thessaloniki, GREECE.


Romanos, Michael, Ph.D., Professor of Economic Development, School of Planning, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.


Rontoyannis, George P., Professor, Dept. Phys Ed Sports, Science University of Thessaly, GREECE.

Rouman, John C., Dr., Professor Emeritus of Classics.

Sarafopoulos Dimitrios, Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, GREECE.

Samaras George, Professor, USA.

Samothrakis, Periandros, Ph.D., P.E., Hydraulic Engineer, Frederick, Maryland, USA.
Sapatinas, Theofanis, BSc, MSc, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Statistics, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, CYPRUS.

Savvas, Minas, Professor Emeritus, San Diego State University, SanDiego, CA, USA.

Siafarikas Panayiotis, Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Patras Patras, GREECE.

Sideris, Kosmas, Ph.D., Civil Engineer Lecturer, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi, GREECE.

Simitses, George J., Professor Emeritus of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA.

Siolas, John G., Ph.D., Educator, New York, USA.

Sivitanides, Marcos P., Ph.D., CCP. Associate Professor, Information Systems, McCoy College of Business, Texas State University San Marcos, Texas, USA.

Skias, Stylianos G., Assist. Professor, Democritus University of Thrace, GREECE.

Skodras, A. N., Professor, Head of Computer Science, School of Science & Technology
Hellenic Open University, 13-15 Tsamadou, GR-26222 Patras, GREECE.
Sotiropoulou, Georgia, PhD, Assoc. Professor, Department of Pharmacy, School of Health Sciences, University of Patras, Rion-Patras 26500, GREECE.

Staikos, Georgios, Assoc. Professor, Laboratory of Organic Chemical Technology
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Patras, University Campus – Rion, GR - 265 04 Patras, GREECE.

Stamatoyannopoulos, George, M.D., Dr., Sci., Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences, Director, Markey Molecular Medicine Center, K-240 Health Sciences Building, Box 357720, Seattle, WA 98195-7720, USA.

Stamboliadis, Elias, Associate Professor, Mineral Resources, Engineering Dept, Technical University of Crete University, Campus Chania, Crete, GREECE.

Stavrou, Esther, Ph.D., Associate Clinical Professor, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York, USA.



Stephanopoulos, Greg W.H., Dow Professor, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Cambridge, MA, USA.


Syrimis, Michael, Assistant Professor, Department of French and Italian, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

Tassios, Dimitrios, Professor Emeritus, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.
Tavouktsoglou, Athanasios N., Ph.D., Professor, Concordia University, College of Alberta, CANADA.

Templar, Marcus A., M.A., M.S., Balkans expert, Illinois, USA.
Thramboulidis, Kleanthis, Assoc. Professor, Software Engineering Group (SEG) - Electrical & Computer, University of Patras, PATRAS, GREECE.

Triantaphyllopoulos, Demetrios D., Professor, Department of Archaeology and History,
University of Cyprus, CYPRUS.

Tryphonopoulos, Demetres P., A/Dean, School of Graduate Studies, Professor, Dept. of English, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, N.B., CANADA.


Tsakiridou, Cornelia A., Ph.D., Associate Professor, Philosophy, Director, Diplomat-In-Residence Program, La Salle University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

Tsatsanifos, Christos, Ph.D., Civil Engineering MSc., D.I.C. M.ASCE. Athens, GREECE.

Tsigas-Fotinis, Vasiliki, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Caldwell College, Caldwell, New Jersey, USA.

Tsihrintzis, Vassilios A., Ph.D., P.E., P.H., Professor of Ecological Engineering & Technology, Director, Laboratory of Ecological Engineering & Tehnology, Chairman, Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi 67100, GREECE.
Tsaroucha, Alexandra, MD, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Surgery, Democritus University of Thrace, Xanthi 67100, GREECE.

Tsinganos, Kanaris, Professor, Department of Physics, University of Athens, Athens, GREECE.

Tsohantaridis, Timotheos, Ph.D., Professor of Biblical Studies and Greek, George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon, USA.

Valanides, Nicos (visiting scholar at DePaul University, Chicago, USA), Associate Professor (Science Education), Nicosia, CYPRUS.

Velivasakis, Emmanuel E., PE, FASCE, President, PANCRETAN ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA & HELLENIC AMERICAN NATIONAL COUNCIL, New York, USA.

Vardulakis, Antonis, Professor, Department of Mathematics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, GREECE.

Varkaraki, Elli, Ph.D., Senior Researcher, Centre for Renewable Energy Sources, GREECE.

Vasilos, Thomas, Professor Emeritus, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts, USA.

Velgakis, Michael, Professor of Physics, Engineering Science Dept., University of Patras, Patras, GREECE.

Vlavianos, Nickie, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, Calgary, CA, USA.

Vomvas, Athanassios, Associate Professor, Department of Physics, University of Patras
26500 Patras, GREECE.

Voudrias, Evangelos A., Professor, Department of Environmental Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, GREECE.

Vrongistinos, Konstantinos, Ph.D., Biomechanics Laboratory, Department of Kinesiology, 18111 Nordhoff St., California State University, Northridge, CA, USA.

Yannopoulos, Panayotis C., Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Patras, GREECE.

Yiacoumettis, Andreas M., Assoc. Professor, Plastic Surgery, Democritus University of Thrace, Secretary General ESPRAS ExCo, President 11th ESPRAS CONGRESS, President UEMS Section Plast. Rec.& Aesthetic Surgery, GREECE.

Ypsilanti, Maria, Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek Literature, University of Cyprus, Dept. of Classical Studies and Philosophy, PO Box 20537, 1678, Nicosia, CYPRUS.

Zavos, Panayiotis, Professor Emeritus, Reproductive Medicine & Andrology, Lexington, KY, USA.

Zervakis, Michalis, Professor of Electronics and Computer Engineering,
Technical University of Crete, Chania, GREECE.

Zervos, Nicholas A., Ph.D., Director, Adv. Multimedia ALGOSYSTEMS, Athens, GREECE.

Zotou, Vassiliki, Ph.D., Language and Linguistics, University of Thessaly, Volos, GREECE.



* Hellenic Electronic Center (HEC) www.greece.org is a non-profit (IRS 501 (c )3 (51-0377653) US organization with 38,000 members and 90 forums. The Professors' and PhDs' forum has a membership of 5,000 academics from 18 countries. One of the objectives of HEC as well as the Professors' forum is to defend Hellenic history, language, and culture and inform the global community on these issues.

Rewriting history: Not just a Greek sport!!!

We are all aware of the scandal of 2007 where a group of New World Order executers (M. Repousi & Co) decided to rewrite history in Greek schools with the history book of the 6the grade being the primary example. This attempt caused outrage among the locals and an organised opposition resulting finally in the govermentb withdraing the said book. However, it seems that the practice of rewriiting history does not belong exclusive to Greeks but is celebrated in other parts of the world as an attempt to erase from the memory what the NWO does not fancy. Take a look below:

Iraq: teachers told to rewrite history
MoD accused of sending propaganda to schools

Friday, 14 March 2008


Britain's biggest teachers' union has accused the Ministry of Defence of breaking the law over a lesson plan drawn up to teach pupils about the Iraq war. The National Union of Teachers claims it breaches the 1996 Education Act, which aims to ensure all political issues are treated in a balanced way.


Teachers will threaten to boycott military involvement in schools at the union's annual conference next weekend, claiming the lesson plan is a "propaganda" exercise and makes no mention of any civilian casualties as a result of the war.

They believe the instructions, designed for use during classroom discussions in general studies or personal, social and health education (PSE) lessons, are arguably an attempt to rewrite the history of the Iraq invasion just as the world prepares to mark its fifth anniversary.

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the NUT, said: "This isn't an attack on the military – nothing of the sort. I know they've done valuable work in establishing peace in some countries. It is an attack on practices that we cannot condone in schools. It is a question of whether you present fair and balanced views or put forward prejudice and propaganda to youngsters."

At the heart of the union's concern is a lesson plan commissioned by an organisation called Kids Connections for the Ministry of Defence aimed at stimulating classroom debate about the Iraq war.

In a "Students' Worksheet" which accompanies the lesson plan, it stresses the "reconstruction" of Iraq, noting that 5,000 schools and 20 hospitals have been rebuilt. But there is no mention of civilian casualties.

In the "Teacher Notes" section, it talks about how the "invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein" but it fails to mention the lack of United Nations backing for the war. The notes also use the American spelling of "program".

Addressing whether the MoD should be providing materials for schools, Mr Sinnott said that he did not object, as long as the material was accurate, presented responsibly and contained a balanced view of opinions.

The union has protested to the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, who has referred the complaint to the MoD. In a letter to Mr Balls, Mr Sinnott said: "I have to say that were the MoD pack to be distributed and followed without the legally required 'balanced presentation of opposing views' there would, in my view, be very serious risk of a finding of non-compliance with section 406 (of the 1996 Education Act) at least.

"I do not doubt that there would be many members of this union who would not accept as 'fact' the assertions made particularly in the Teacher Notes, nor, I think, could some of the assertions made in the Student Worksheet be regarded as non-controversial."

Mr Sinnott reminded Mr Balls that a High Court judge had ruled that the film An Inconvenient Truth, by the Oscar-winning former American vice-president Al Gore, could not be used in schools without teachers counteracting some of the assertions made in it.

Mr Balls sought to distance himself from supporting the material.

He said: "I am sure you are aware my department does not promote or endorse specific resources or methods of teaching for use in schools but I appreciate you drawing this to my attention." Mr Balls added that he had instructed his officials "to take this matter up" with the MoD.

A spokesman for the MoD said the ministry had consulted with interested parties over the proposed lesson plan in order to ensure it had the support of the education community. "We did ask the Stop The War coalition to take part although it refused."

The spokesman added that the programme was "a set of web-based resources" whose use was "completely voluntary".

"We have consulted widely with teachers and students during the development of these products and feedback from schools has been extremely encouraging," he added.

"Teachers and students found them to be valuable and fun resources for applied learning.

"They are designed to support teachers in delivering a whole range of subjects across the national curriculum and its equivalents in Scotland and Wales.

"We are happy to engage with the NUT and we will be writing to them."

Union members say they are also worried that armed forces recruitment fairs in schools glamorise the job by citing exotic countries that recruits will visit but fail to mention that they may be required to kill people.

According to an independent assessment of the MoD's recruitment material by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, however, the material concerned was "very dubious". The trust said it had used misleading marketing with advertising campaigns that "glamorise warfare, omit vital information and fail to point out the risks and responsibilities associated with a forces career".

Mr Sinnott said: "On their recruitment material, it tells what an exotic lifestyle this can be, but it doesn't mention that being in the military involves killing people. These things don't feature as they should in a proper, balanced view of what it is like being in the armed forces."

What the MoD's guide says... and what it omits

* "Iraq was invaded early 2003 by a United States coalition. Twenty-nine other countries, including the UK, also provided troops... Iraq had not abandoned its nuclear and chemical weapons development program". After the first Gulf War, "Iraq did not honour the cease-fire agreement by surrendering weapons of mass destruction..."

The reality: The WMD allegation, central to the case for war, proved to be bogus. David Kay, appointed by the Bush administration to search for such weapons after the invasion, found no evidence of a serious programme or stockpiling of WMDs. The "coalition of the willing" was the rather grand title of a rag-tag group of countries which included Eritrea, El Salvador and Macedonia.

* "The invasion was also necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam, an oppressive dictator, from power, and bring democracy to Iraq".

The reality: Regime change was not the reason given in the run-up to the invasion – the US and UK governments had been advised it would be against international law. Saddam was regarded as an ally of the West while he was carrying out some of the worst of his atrocities. As for democracy, elections were held in Iraq during the occupation and have led to a sectarian Shia government. Attempts by the US to persuade the government to be more inclusive towards minorities have failed.

* "Over 7,000 British troops remain in Iraq... to contribute to reconstruction, training Iraqi security forces... They continue to fight against a strong militant Iraqi insurgency."

The reality: The number of British troops in Iraq is now under 5,000. They withdrew from their last base inside Basra city in September and are now confined to the airport where they do not take part in direct combat operations.

* "The cost of UK military operations in Iraq for 2005/06 was £958m."

The reality: The cost of military operations in Iraq has risen by 72 per cent in the past 12 months and the estimated cost for this year is £1.648bn. The House of Commons defence committee said it was "surprised" by the amount of money needed considering the slowing down of the tempo of operations.

* "Over 312,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained and equipped (Police, Army and Navy)."

The reality: The Iraqi security forces have been accused, among others by the American military, of running death squads targeting Sunnis. In Basra, the police became heavily infiltrated by Shia militias and British troops had to carry out several operations against them. On one occasion British troops had to smash their way into a police station to rescue two UK special forces soldiers who had been seized by the police.

* "A total of 132 UK military personnel have been killed in Iraq."

The reality: The figure is 175 since the invasion of 2003. A British airman died in a rocket attack at the airport two weeks ago despite British troops not going into Basra city on operations. Conservative estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion stand at around 85,000.

* "From hospitals to schools to wastewater treatment plants, the presence of coalition troops is aiding the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq."

The reality: Five years after "liberation", Baghdad still only has a few hours of intermittent power a day. Children are kidnapped from schools for ransom and families of patients undergoing surgery at hospitals are advised to buy and bring in blood from sellers who congregate outside.

Golden Graves Of Ancient Vani Exhibited At Washington Museum

The story of Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the most enduring of ancient Greek myths. According to legend, Jason and his shipmates, the Argonauts, set sail on a perilous journey from Greece to Colchis (modern-day Georgia), then located beyond the known world.

His successful quest for the Golden Fleece, which hung in a sacred grove guarded by a dragon, came to symbolize bravery, strength and determination and rightful kingship.

Less well known today, however, is the archaeology and artifacts of Colchis, with its intermingling of Greek and Persian motifs with local styles and traditions. Metalworking, whether in gold, silver, iron or bronze, was a traditional focus of Colchian art and craftsmanship. Another mainstay of Georgian life throughout several millennia has been the production of wine—the earliest evidence of wine and winemaking comes from the area.

“Wine, Worship and Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani,” on view Dec. 1 through Feb. 24, 2008 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, presents spectacular gold, silver, ceramic vessels, jewelry, Greek bronze sculpture, Greek and Colchian coins, and Greek glassware. Together these objects provide a rich and informative view of the ancient land of Colchis and its principal sanctuary city, Vani, a town in the Imereti region of western Georgia.

Vani took shape as an urban center in the sixth century B.C. and continued in existence until it was destroyed in the later Hellenistic period around the mid-first century B.C. Extensive archaeological excavations have taken place there during the past half century. Although only a third of the site has been studied, it has produced an astonishing number of artifacts: imported Greek luxury items, including silverware and bronze work; exquisite golden jewelry unique to Colchis, including outstanding examples of gold granulation; and Greek and Colchian pottery.

The exhibition highlights the contents of a grave unearthed in Vani in 2004. It contained elaborate Colchian hair ornaments made of gold and appliqués for clothing; a Persian silver bucket, ladle and libation bowls; and Greek wine amphorae and red-figure pottery—evidence of the importance of wine in ancient Georgian culture. The exhibition also features a spectacular bronze torso in a fifth-century Greek style; Greek silver drinking cups; a magnificent Colchian gold necklace with 31 pendant tortoises, each decorated with tiny granulation; and a gold pectoral, inlaid with carnelian and turquoise figures and influenced by Egyptian, Greek and Achaemenid jewelry.

With more than 100 objects on view, the exhibition at the Sackler is a much expanded version of the exhibitions recently presented at three venues in Europe—in Berlin, Paris and Nice, France. After leaving the Sackler, the show will open as the inaugural exhibition at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.

“Wine, Worship and Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani” has been made possible by The Leon Levy Foundation; The Ministry of Culture; Monuments Protection and Sport of Georgia; Georgian National Museum; Vani Archeological Museum; and the Embassy of Georgia to the United States of America, Canada and Mexico. -- www.si.edu

Was Greek Culture Stolen from Africa?

by Mary Lefkowitz

Modern myth vs. ancient history

Excerpted from her Book Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History

Why I wrote the book. In the fall of 1991 I was asked to write a review-article for The New Republic about Martin Bernal's Black Athena and its relation to the Afrocentrist movement. The assignment literally changed my life. Once I began to work on the article I realized that here was a subject that needed all the attention, and more, that I could give to it. Although I had been completely unaware of it, there was in existence a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science. There were books in circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Egypt. Not only were these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being taught in schools and even in universities.

Ordinarily, if someone has a theory which involves a radical departure from what the experts have professed, he is expected to defend his position by providing evidence in its support. But no one seemed to think it was appropriate to ask for evidence from the instructors who claimed that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt.

Normally, if one has a question about a text that another instructor is using, one simply asks why he or she is using that book. But since this conventional line of inquiry was closed to me, I had to wait till I could raise my questions in a more public context. That opportunity came in February 1993, when Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley's Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial lecture. Posters described Dr. ben-Jochannan as a "distinguished Egyptologist," and indeed that is how he was introduced by the then President of Wellesley College. But I knew from my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would ordinarily describe as an Egyptologist, that is a scholar of Egyptian language and civilization. Rather, he was an extreme Afrocentrist, author of many books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa, how Aristotle robbed the library of Alexandria, and how the true Jews are Africans like himself.

After Dr. ben-Jochannan made these same assertions once again in his lecture, I asked him during the question period why he said that Aristotle had come to Egypt with Alexander, and had stolen his philosophy from the Library at Alexandria, when that Library had only been built after his death. Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he resented the tone of the inquiry. Several students came up to me after the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed by white historians. But others stayed to hear me out, and I assured Dr. ben-Jochannan that I simply wanted to know what his evidence was: so far as I knew, and I had studied the subject, Aristotle never went to Egypt, and while the date of the Library of Alexandria is not known precisely, it was certainly only built some years after the city was founded, which was after both Aristotle's and Alexander's deaths.

A lecture at which serious questions could not be asked, and in fact were greeted with hostility -- the occasion seemed more like a political rally than an academic event. As if that were not disturbing enough in itself, there was also the strange silence on the part of many of my faculty colleagues. Several of these were well aware that what Dr. ben-Jochannan was saying was factually wrong. One of them said later that she found the lecture so "hopeless" that she decided to say nothing. Were they afraid of being called racists? If so, their behavior was understandable, but not entirely responsible. Didn't we as educators owe it to our students, all our students, to see that they got the best education they could possibly get? And that clearly was what they were not getting in a lecture where they were being told myths disguised as history, and where discussion and analysis had apparently been forbidden.

Good as the myths they were hearing may have made these students feel, so long as they never left the Afrocentric environment in which they were being nurtured and sheltered, they were being systematically deprived of the most important features of a university education. They were not learning how to question themselves and others, they were not learning to distinguish facts from fiction, nor in fact were they learning how to think for themselves. Their instructors had forgotten, while the rest of us sat by and did nothing about it, that students do not come to universities to be indoctrinated --at least in a free society.

Was Socrates Black?

I first learned about the notion that Socrates was black several years ago, from a student in my second-year Greek course on Plato's Apology, his account of Socrates' trial and conviction. Throughout the entire semester the student had regarded me with sullen hostility. A year or so later she apologized. She explained that she thought I had been concealing the truth about Socrates' origins. In a course in Afro-American studies she had been told that he was black, and my silence about his African ancestry seemed to her to be a confirmation of the Eurocentric arrogance her instructor had warned her about. After she had taken my course, the student pursued the question on her own, and was satisfied that I had been telling her the truth: so far as we know, Socrates was ethnically no different from other Athenians.

What had this student learned in her course in Afro-American studies? The notion that Socrates was black is based on two different kinds of inference. The first "line of proof" is based on inference from possibility. Why couldn't an Athenian have African ancestors? That of course would have been possible; almost anything is possible. But it is another question whether or not it was probable. Few prominent Athenians claim to have had foreign ancestors of any sort. Athenians were particularly fastidious about their own origins. In Socrates' day, they did not allow Greeks from other city-states to become naturalized Athenian citizens, and they were even more careful about the non-Greeks or barbaroi. Since Socrates was an Athenian citizen, his parents must have been Athenians, as he himself says they were.

Another reason why I thought it unlikely that Socrates and/or his immediate ancestors were foreigners is that no contemporary calls attention to anything extraordinary in his background. If he had been a foreigner, one of his enemies, or one of the comic poets, would have been sure to point it out. The comic poets never missed an opportunity to make fun of the origins of Athenian celebrities. Socrates was no exception; he is lampooned by Aristophanes in his comedy the Clouds. If Socrates and/or his parents had had dark skin, some of his contemporaries would have been likely to mention it, because this, and not just his eccentric ideas about the gods, and the voice that spoke to him alone, would have distinguished him from the rest of the Athenians. Unless, of course, he could not be distinguished from other Athenians because they all had dark skin; but then if they did, why did they not make themselves bear a closer resemblance the Ethiopians in their art?

Was Cleopatra Black?

Until recently, no one ever asked whether Cleopatra might have had an African ancestor, because our surviving ancient sources identify her as a Macedonian Greek. Her ancestors, the Ptolemies, were descended from one of Alexander's generals. After Alexander's death in 323 B. C., these generals divided up among themselves the territory in the Mediterranean that Alexander had conquered. The name Cleopatra was one of the names traditionally given to women in the royal family; officially our Cleopatra (69-30 BC) was Cleopatra VII, the daughter of Ptolemy XII and his sister. Cleopatra VII herself followed the family practice of marrying within the family. She married her two brothers (Ptolemy XIII and XIV) in succession (after the first died in suspicious circumstances, she had the second murdered). Her first language was Greek; but she was also the first member of the Ptolemaic line who was able to speak Egyptian. She also wore Egyptian dress, and was shown in art in the dress of the goddess Isis. She chose to portray herself as an Egyptian not because she was Egyptian, but because she was ambitious to stay in power. In her surviving portraits on coins and in sculpture she appears to be impressive rather than beautiful, Mediterranean in appearance, with straight hair and a hooked nose. Of course these portraits on metal and stone give no indication of the color of her skin.

The only possibility that she might not have been a full-blooded Macedonian Greek arises from the fact that we do not know the precise identity of one member of her family tree. We do not know who her grandmother was on her father's side. Her grandmother was the mistress (not the wife) of her grandfather, Ptolemy IX. Because nothing is known about this person, the assumption has always been that she was a Macedonian Greek, like the other members of Ptolemy's court. Like other Greeks, the Ptolemies were wary of foreigners. They kept themselves apart from the native population, with brothers usually marrying sisters, or uncles marrying nieces, or in one case a father marrying his daughter (Ptolemy IX and Cleopatra Berenice III). Because the Ptolemies seemed to prefer to marry among themselves, even incestuously, it has always been assumed that Cleopatra's grandmother was closely connected with the family. If she had been a foreigner, one of the Roman writers of the time would have mentioned it in their invectives against Cleopatra as an enemy of the Roman state. These writers were supporters of Octavian (later known as Augustus) who defeated Cleopatra's forces in the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.

Does Racial Identity Matter?

The question of race matters only insofar as it is necessary to show that no classicists or ancient historians have tried to conceal the truth about the origins of the Greek people or the ancestry of certain famous ancient figures. It has been suggested that classicists have been reluctant to ask questions about Greek origins, and that we have been so "imbued with conventional preconceptions and patterns of thought" that we are unlikely to question the basic premises of our discipline. But even though we may be more reluctant to speculate about our own field than those outside it might be, none of us has any cultural "territory" in the ancient world that we are trying to insulate from other ancient cultures.

Did ancient Greek religion and culture derive from Egypt?

The idea that Greek religion and philosophy has Egyptian origins derives, at least in part, from the writings of ancient Greek historians. In the fifth century BC Herodotus was told by Egyptian priests that the Greeks owed many aspects of their culture to the older and vastly impressive civilization of the Egyptians. Egyptian priests told Diodorus some of the same stories four centuries later. The church fathers in the second and third centuries AD also were eager to emphasize the dependency of Greece on the earlier cultures of the Egyptians and the Hebrews. They were eager to establish direct links between their civilization and that of Egypt because Egypt was a vastly older culture, with elaborate religious customs and impressive monuments. But despite their enthusiasm for Egypt and its material culture (an enthusiasm that was later revived in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe), they failed to understand Egyptian religion and the purpose of many Egyptian customs.

Classical scholars tend to be skeptical about the claims of the Greek historians because much of what these writers say does not conform to the facts as they are now known from the modern scholarship on ancient Egypt. For centuries Europeans had believed that the ancient historians knew that certain Greek religious customs and philosophical interests derived from Egypt. But two major discoveries changed that view. The first concerned a group of ancient philosophical treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; these had throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance been thought of as Egyptian and early. But in 1614 the French scholar Isaac Casaubon demonstrated that the treatises were actually late and basically Greek. The second discovery was the decipherment of hieroglyphics, the official system of Egyptian writing, completed by 1836. Before decipherment, scholars had been compelled to rely on Greek sources for their understanding of Egyptian history and civilization. Once they were able to read real Egyptian texts, and could disregard the fanciful interpretations of hieroglyphics that had been circulating since late antiquity, it became clear to them that the relation of Egyptian to Greek culture was less close than they had imagined. Egyptian belonged to the Afroasiatic language family, while Greek was an Indo-European language, akin to Sanskrit and European languages like Latin.

On the basis of these new discoveries, European scholars realized that they could no longer take at face value what Herodotus, Diodorus, and the Church fathers had to say about Greece's debt to Egypt. Once it was possible to read Egyptian religious documents, and to see how the Egyptians themselves described their gods and told their myths, scholars could see that the ancient Greeks' accounts of Egyptian religion were superficial, and even misleading. Apparently Greek writers, despite their great admiration for Egypt, looked at Egyptian civilization through cultural blinkers that kept them from understanding any practices or customs that were significantly different from their own. The result was a portrait of Egypt that was both astigmatic and deeply Hellenized. Greek writers operated under other handicaps as well. They did not have access to records; there was no defined system of chronology. They could not read Egyptian inscriptions or question a variety of witnesses because they did not know the language. Hence they were compelled to exaggerate the importance of such resemblances as they could see or find.

On the Origins of the Egyptians Recent work on skeletons and DNA suggests that the people who settled in the Nile valley, like all of humankind, came from somewhere south of the Sahara; they were not (as some nineteenth-century scholars had supposed) invaders from the North. See Bruce G. Trigger, "The Rise of Civilization in Egypt," Cambridge History of Africa (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), vol I, pp 489-90; S. O. Y. Keita, "Studies and Comments on Ancient Egyptian Biological Relationships," History in Africa 20 (1993) 129-54.

Did the theory of the transmigration of souls come from Egypt?

Because he tended to rely on such analogies as he could find, Herodotus inevitably made some false conjectures. Herodotus thought that Pythagoras learned about the transmigration of souls from Egypt, when in fact the Egyptians did not believe in the transmigration of souls, as their careful and elaborate burial procedures clearly indicate. Herodotus tells us that he wrote down what the Egyptians told him; but when they spoke, what did he hear? Since he did not know Egyptian, his informants could have been Greeks living in the Greek colony of Naucratis in the Nile Delta, or Egyptians who knew some Greek. How well-informed were his informants? On the question of origins, at least, it seems that neither group had any more than a superficial understanding of the other's culture. Perhaps someone explained to him about the Egyptian "modes of existence," in which a human being could manifest itself both materially, or immaterially, as ka or ba or a name, and that death was not an end, but a threshold leading to a new form of life. Belief in these varied modes of existence required that bodies be preserved after death, hence the Egyptian practice of mummification. Greeks, on the other hand, believed that the soul was separated from the body at death, and disposed of bodies either by burial or cremation. In any case, there is no reason to assume that Pythagoras or other Greeks who believed in transmigration, like the Orphics and/or the philosopher-poet Empedocles, got their ideas from anyone else: notions of transmigration have developed independently in other parts of the world.

Did Plato Study in Egypt?

Plato never says in any of his writings that he went to Egypt, and there is no reference to such a visit in the semi-biographical Seventh Epistle. But in his dialogues he refers to some Egyptian myths and customs. Plato, of course, was not a historian, and the rather superficial knowledge of Egypt displayed in his dialogues, along with vague chronology, is more characteristic of historical fiction than of history. In fact, anecdotes about his visit to Egypt only turn up in writers of the later Hellenistic period. What better way to explain his several references to Egypt than to assume that the author had some first-hand knowledge of the customs he describes? For authors dating from the fourth century and earlier, ancient biographers were compelled to use as their principal source material the author's own works. Later biographers add details to the story of Plato's Egyptian travels in order to provide aetiologies for the "Egyptian" reference in his writings. The most ironic anecdote of all is preserved by Clement of Alexandria: Plato studied in Egypt with Hermes the "Thrice Great" (Trismegistus). This is tantamount to saying that Plato studied with himself after his death. The works of Hermes could not have been written without the conceptual vocabulary developed by Plato and Aristotle, and is deeply influenced not just by Plato, but by the writings of Neoplatonist philosophers in the early centuries AD. In any case, whoever these teachers were, Plato seems never to have learned from them anything that is characteristically Egyptian, at least so far as we know about Egyptian theology from Egyptian sources. Instead, Plato's notion of the Egyptians remains similar to that of other Athenians; he did not so much change the Athenian notion of Egyptian culture as enrich and idealize it, so that it could provide a dramatic and instructive contrast with Athenian customs in his dialogues.

Was there ever such a thing as an "Egyptian Mystery System?"

Even after nineteenth-century scholars had shown that the reports of Greek visitors to Egypt misunderstood and misrepresented what they saw, the myth that Greek philosophy derived from Egypt is still in circulation. The notion of an Egyptian legacy was preserved in the literature and ritual of Freemasonry. It was from that source that Afrocentrists learned about it, and then sought to find confirmation for the primacy of Egypt over Greece in the fantasies of ancient writers. In order to show that Greek philosophy is in reality stolen Egyptian philosophy, Afrocentrist writers assume that there was in existence from earliest times an "Egyptian Mystery System," which was copied by the Greeks. The existence of this "Mystery System" is integral to the notion that Greek philosophy was stolen, because it provides a reason for assuming that Greek philosophers had a particular reason for studying in Egypt, and for claiming that what they later wrote about in Greek was originally Egyptian philosophy. But in reality, the notion of an Egyptian Mystery System is a relatively modern fiction, based on ancient sources that are distinctively Greek, or Greco-Roman, and from the early centuries AD.

In their original form, ancient mysteries had nothing to do with schools or particular courses of study; rather, the ritual was intended to put the initiate into contact with the divinity, and if special preparation or rituals were involved, it was to familiarize the initiate with the practices and liturgy of that particular cult. The origin of the connection of Mysteries to education in fact dates only to the eighteenth century. It derives from a particular work of European fiction, published in 1731. This was the three-volume work Sethos, a History or Biography, based on Unpublished Memoirs of Ancient Egypt, by the Abbé Jean Terrasson (1670-1750), a French priest, who was Professor of Greek at the Collège de France. Although now completely forgotten, the novel was widely read in the eighteenth century..Of course Terrasson did not have access to any Egyptian information about Egypt, since hieroglyphics were not to be deciphered until more than a century later.

Why claim that Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt?

Perhaps the most influential Afrocentrist text is Stolen Legacy, a work that has been in wide circulation since its publication in 1954. Its author, George G. M. James, writes that "the term Greek philosophy, to begin with is a misnomer, for there is no such philosophy in existence." He argues that the Greeks "did not possess the native ability essential to the development of philosophy." Rather, he states that "the Greeks were not the authors of Greek philosophy, but the Black people of North Africa, The Egyptians." It is not hard to understand why James wishes to give credit for the Greek achievement to the Egyptians, even if there is little or no historical foundation for his claims. Like the other nationalistic myths, the story of a "Stolen Legacy" both offers an explanation for past suffering, and provides a source of ethnic pride.

But although the myth may encourage and perhaps even "empower" African-Americans, its use has a destructive side, which cannot and should not be overlooked. First of all, it offers them a "story" instead of history. It also suggests that African-Americans need to learn only what they choose to believe about the past. But in so doing, the Afrocentric myth seeks to shelter them from learning what all other ethnic groups must learn, and indeed, face up to, namely the full scope of their history.

What people on earth have had a completely glorious history? While we point to the great achievements of the Greeks, anyone who has studied ancient Greek civilization knows that they also made terrible and foolish mistakes. Isn't treating African-Americans differently from the rest of humankind just another form of segregation and condescension? Implied discrimination is the most destructive aspect of Afrocentrism, but there are other serious problems as well. Teaching the myth of the Stolen Legacy as if it were history robs the ancient Greeks and their modern descendants of a heritage that rightly belongs to them. Why discriminate against them when discrimination is the issue? In addition, the myth deprives the ancient Egyptians of their proper history and robs them of their actual legacy. The Egypt of the myth of the Stolen Legacy is a wholly European Egypt, as imagined by Greek and Roman writers, and further elaborated in eighteenth-century France. Ancient Egyptian civilization deserves to be remembered (and respected) for what it was, and not for what Europeans, ancient and modern, have imagined it to be.

What is the evidence for a "Stolen Legacy?"

James's idea of ancient Egypt is fundamentally the imaginary "Mystical Egypt" of Freemasonry. He speaks of grades of initiation. In these Mysteries, as the Freemasons imagined them, Neophyte initiates must learn self-control and self-knowledge. He believes that Moses was an initiate into the Egyptian mysteries, and that Socrates reached the grade of Master Mason. In his description of the Greek philosophy, he emphasizes the Four Elements that play such a key role in Terrasson's Memphis and Masonic initiation ceremonies. He speaks of the Masonic symbol of the Open Eye, which based on an Egyptian hieroglyph but in Masonry has come specifically to represent the Master Mind. As in the University/Mystery system invented by Terrasson, Egyptian temples are used as libraries and observatories.

What then are the Greeks supposed to have stolen from the Egyptians? Are there any texts in existence that be found to verify the claim that Greek philosophy was stolen from Egypt? How was the "transfer" of Egyptian materials to Greece accomplished? If we examine what James says about the way in which the "transfer" was supposed to have been carried out, we will find that that few or no historical data can be summoned to support it. In fact, in order to construct his argument, James overlooked or ignored much existing evidence.

Did Aristotle raid the Library at Alexandria?

No ancient source says that Alexander and Aristotle raided the Library at Alexandria. That they do not do so is not surprising, because it is unlikely that Aristotle ever went there. Aristotle was Alexander's tutor when Alexander was young, but he did not accompany him on his military campaign. Even if he had gone there, it is hard to see how he could have stolen books from the library in Alexandria. Although Alexandria was founded in 331 BC, it did not begin to function as a city until after 323. Aristotle died in 322. The library was assembled around 297 under the direction of Demetrius of Phaleron, a pupil of Aristotle's. Most of the books it contained were in Greek.

Did Aristotle plagiarize Egyptian sources?

If Aristotle had stolen his ideas from the Egyptians, as James asserts, James should be able to provide parallel Egyptian and Greek texts showing frequent verbal correspondences. As it is, he can only come up with a vague similarity between two titles. One is Aristotle's treatise On the Soul, and the other the modern English name of a collection of Egyptian texts, The Book of the Dead. These funerary texts, which the Egyptians themselves called the Book of Coming Forth by Day, are designed to protect the soul during its dangerous journey through Duat, the Egyptian underworld, on its way to life of bliss in the Field of Reeds. Both Aristotle and the Egyptians believed in the notion of a "soul." But there the similarity ends. Even a cursory glance at a translation of the Book of the Dead reveals that it is not a philosophical treatise, but rather a series of ritual prescriptions to ensure the soul's passage to the next world. It is completely different from Aristotle's abstract consideration of the nature of the soul. James fails to mention that the two texts cannot be profitably compared, because their aims and methods are so different. Instead, he accounts for the discrepancy by claiming that Aristotle's theory is only a "very small portion" of the Egyptian "philosophy" of the soul, as described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. On that basis, one could claim that any later writer plagiarized from any earlier writer who touched on the same subject. But why not assume instead that the later writer was influenced by the earlier writer, or even came up with the some of the same ideas independently, especially if those ideas are widespread, like the notion that human beings have souls?

James also alleges that Aristotle's theory of matter was taken from the so-called Memphite Theology. The Memphite Theology is a religious document inscribed on a stone tablet by Egyptian priests in the eighth century BC, but said to have been copied from an ancient papyrus. The archaic language of the text suggests that the original dates from sometime in the second millennium BC. According to James, Aristotle took from the Memphite theology his doctrine that matter, motion, and time are eternal, along with the principle of opposites, and the concept of the unmoved mover. James does not say how Aristotle would have known about this inscription, which was at the time located in Memphis and not in the Library of Alexandria, or explain how he would have been able to read it. But even if Aristotle had had some way of finding out about it, he would have had no use for it in his philosophical writings. The Memphis text, like the Egyptian Book of the Dead, is a work of a totally different character from any of Aristotle's treatises.

The Memphite text describes the creation of the world as then known (that is, Upper and Lower Egypt). It relates how Ptah's mind (or "heart") and thought (or "tongue") created the universe and all living creatures in it: "for every word of the god came about through what the heart devised and the tongue commanded." From one of his manifestations, the primordial waters of chaos, the sun-god Atum was born. When Ptah has finished creating the universe, he rests from his labors: "Ptah was satisfied after he had made all things and all divine words."

In form and in substance this account has virtually nothing in common with Aristotle's abstract theology. In fact, in Metaphysics Book 11, Aristotle discards the traditional notion of a universe that is created by a divinity or divinities, in favor of a metaphysical argument. If there is eternal motion, there is eternal substance, and behind that, an immaterial and eternal source of activity, whose existence can be deduced from the eternal circular motion of the heavens. The source of this activity is what is called in English translation the "unmoved mover."All that this theory has in common with the Memphite theology is a concern with creation of the universe. On the same insubstantial basis, it would be possible to argue that Aristotle stole his philosophy from the story of creation in the first book of Genesis.

Is there a diversity of truths?

There are of course many possible interpretations of the truth, but some things are simply not true. It is not true that there was no Holocaust. There was a Holocaust, although we may disagree about the numbers of people killed. Likewise, it is not true that the Greeks stole their philosophy from Egypt; rather, it is true that the Greeks were influenced in various ways over a long period of time by their contact with the Egyptians. But then, what culture at any time has not been influenced by other cultures, and what exactly do we mean by "influence"? If we talk about Greek philosophy as a "Stolen Legacy," which the Greeks swiped from Egyptian universities, we are not telling the truth, but relating a story, or a myth, or a tall tale. But if we talk about Egyptian influence on Greece, we are discussing an historical issue.

In historical and scientific discussions it is possible to distinguish degrees, and to be more or less accurate. As a classicist, I may overemphasize the achievement of the Greeks because I do not know enough about the rest of the Mediterranean world; Egyptologists may be inclined to make the same mistake in the opposite direction. We recognize that no historian can write without some amount of bias; that is why history must always be rewritten. But not all bias amounts to distortion, or is equivalent to indoctrination. If I am aware that I am likely to be biased for any number of reasons, and try to compensate for them, the result should be very different in quality and character from what I would say if I were consciously setting about to achieve a particular political goal.

Drawing a clear distinction between motivations and evidence has a direct bearing on the question of academic freedom. When it comes to deciding what one can or cannot say in class the question of ethnicity or of motivations, whether personal or cultural, is or ought to be irrelevant. What matters is whether what one says is supported by facts and evidence, texts or formulae. The purpose of diversity, at least in academe, is to ensure that instruction does not become a vehicle for indoctrinating students in the values of the majority culture, or for limiting the curriculum to the study of the history and literature of the majority culture. That means that it is essential for a university to consider developments outside of Europe and North America, and to assess the achievements of non-European cultures with respect and sympathy.

It is another question whether or not diversity should be applied to the truth. Are there, can there be, multiple, diverse "truths?" If there are, which "truth" should win? The one that is most loudly argued or most persuasively phrased? Diverse "truths are possible only if "truth" is understood to mean something like "point of view." But even then not every point of view, no matter how persuasively it is put across, or with what intensity it is argued, can be equally valid. The notion of diversity does not extend to truth.

Students of the modern world may think it is a matter of indifference whether or not Aristotle stole his philosophy from Egypt. They may believe that even if the story is not true, it can be used to serve a positive purpose. But the question, and many others like it, should be a matter of serious concern to everyone, because if you assert that he did steal his philosophy, you are prepared to ignore or to conceal a substantial body of historical evidence that proves the contrary. Once you start doing that, you can have no scientific or even social-scientific discourse, nor can you have a community, or a university.

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Mary Lefkowitz is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Wellesley College. She is the author of many books on ancient Greece and Rome, including Lives of the Greek Poets and Women in Greek Myth, as well as articles for the Wall Street Journal and the New Republic. She is the co-editor of Women's Life in Greece and Rome and Black Athena Revisited.