Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now

The first publication to examine the symbolic importance of ancient Egypt to Black artists and other cultural figures, from the nineteenth century through the Harlem Renaissance to the present

From the late nineteenth century onward, Black Americans looked to ancient Egypt as evidence of a preeminent ancient culture from the African continent. Flight into Egypt traces ancient Egypt’s influence on artists, from Edmonia Lewis’s sculpture The Death of Cleopatra (1876) to the efflorescence of ...