Inside The Book Jacket, It Says...

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It displays a slick picture of Socrates wearing a Malcolm X hat, symbolicof Ms. Lefkowitz' theme that African historical revisionists are puttingan African hat on white European images in history....

JACKET DESIGN BY ROBERTO DE VICQ DE CUMPTICH
PHOT0GRAPH BY JIM HOLLOWAY

Was Socrates black? Did Aristotle steal his ideas from the library in Alexandria?Do we owe the underlying tenets of our democratic civilization to the Africans?Hardly a week goes by when an article does not appear in a newspaper ormagazine by an Afrocentrist writer making such allegations. But so far,no one has responded fully to these `Afrocentrist claims or explained whythese strange ideas are being circulated, and indeed taught, in Americanschools and universities.

Not Out Of Africa is the first book to refute these spurious claims.Mary Lefkowitz examines the ancient evidence and shows how it was misunderstoodboth in antiquity and in modern times. She explains how we know that Socratesand Cleopatra were Greeks and that Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophersdid not steal their ideas from Egyptian sources. Lefkowitz, a distinguishedclassicist, demonstrates that there has been no modern conspiracy amongscholars to conceal the debt of Greece to Egypt and that some of the misconceptionsarise from the ancient Greeks' own misunderstanding of Egyptian religions.

Not Out Of Africa explains by revisionist histories of the ancientworld are being written now-and perhaps always will be. Modern Afrocentricwriters are following a long-established pattern in which peoples, particularlyif they regard themselves as having been deprived of a history, seem keento acquire a glorious past. Lefkowitz explains how the notion that Greekreligion and philosophy were derived from Egypt was preserved in the ritualand mythology of Freemasonry, and how extreme Afrocentrists came to allegethat what they supposed to be an Egyptian legacy was not just borrowed butactually stolen by the ancient Greeks. This book will be of interest toeveryone who cares about the ancient world and its traditions, and to allwho believe that our civilization has preserved some of the Greeks' besttraditions, such as democratic government,- freedom of speech, learning,and discussion.

MARY LEFKOWITZ is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at WellesleyCollege. She is the author of many books on ancient Greece and Rome, includinglives of the Greek Poets and Women in Greek Myth, as well as articles forthe Wall Street /ournal and the New Republic. She is the co-editor of Women'slife in Greece and Rome and of the forthcoming Black Athena Revisited.