From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt

by Donald B. Redford

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In From Slave to Pharaoh , noted Egyptologist Donald B. Redford examines over two millennia of complex social and cultural interactions between Egypt and the Nubian and Sudanese civilizations that lay to the south of Egypt. These interactions resulted in the expulsion of the black Kushite pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty in 671 B.C. by an invading Assyrian army. Redford traces the development of Egyptian perceptions of race as their dominance over the darker-skinned peoples of Nubia and the Sudan grew, exploring the cultural construction of spatial and spiritual boundaries between Egypt and other African peoples. Redford focuses on the role of racial identity in the formulation of imperial power in Egypt and the legitimization of its sphere of influence, and he highlights the dichotomy between the Egyptians' treatment of the black Africans it deemed enemies and of those living within Egyptian society. He also describes the range of responses―from resistance to assimilation―of subjugated Nubians and Sudanese to their loss of self-determination. Indeed, by the time of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, the culture of the Kushite kings who conquered Egypt in the late eighth century B.C. was thoroughly Egyptian itself. Moving beyond recent debates between Afrocentrists and their critics over the racial characteristics of Egyptian civilization, From Slave to Pharaoh reveals the true complexity of race, identity, and power in Egypt as documented through surviving texts and artifacts, while at the same time providing a compelling account of war, conquest, and culture in the ancient world.

Genres: Egyptology, History, Nonfiction, Egypt

232 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 2004

About the author

Donald Bruce Redford was a Canadian Egyptologist, archaeologist, and Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Pennsylvania State University; he retired in 2024. Redford directed a number of important excavations in Egypt, notably at Karnak and Mendes.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has some truly fatal flaws. It assumes that any 'more advanced' culture must automatically be contemptuous of any 'lesser' cultures, and conquer them. While Redford says that there were no significant racial dividing lines between Nilotic cultures, the subtitle implies that the Egyptians weren't black. Bullshit. The Egyptians did depict themselves as having slightly lighter skin than those living south of them, but darker than Libyans or Asiatics. Our modern notions of race don't really transfer to ancient cultures, who had very different standards that often depended more on language and religion than skin colour, per se, but by our North American standards, the Ancient Egyptians were black, and any dancing around that smacks of Eurocentrism and racism.

[Fraser Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a bit academic, so perhaps not for everyone, this is a strong examination of an important culture from our ancient past.

[Silvio Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essentially a short history of political relations between Nubia and Egypt, starting from the Old Kingdom but giving most space to the Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt, which consisted of Nubian rulers who invaded Egypt and restored classical Egyptian culture, which at that point existed in Nubia with less change than in Egypt itself. If Redford has any bias, it is probably against the part-Libyan elite that ruled Egypt during the Third Intermediate Period until the Twenty-fifth Dynasty defeated them, and of which he writes quite negatively. I was most interested in the explanations of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty's international rivalries with Assyria and other empires.

[Ashley Kempkes]

Juvenile, a scattered dissertation with no clear focus.