From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt

This is the definitive, most solid and balanced book to date on the subject of the Black experience of ancient Egypt, covering even one instance of Egyptian royal slave-raiding on Nubia on a scale that partly depopulated Nubia. The depth and breadth of research shown in Redford's fifty-four pages of endnotes & bibliography indicates a life-time of research. This reviewer's only criticisms are that maps 2 & 3 (pp.25,73) are full of place names ending in -opolis. Such Greek names cannot have been in use by the 8th century BCE, still less by the 17th century BCE. The author should have inserted the real names ancient Egyptians used for them, with their later Hellenic names in brackets. In Figure 25, (p.118) some of the words need to be in bold font or larger size to help legibility. Similarly, map 4 (p.141) should indicate in its key what the dashed underwater lines represent. Keith Gottschalk Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence 2009-2010 Oakland University, Michigan. Political Studies Dept, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa.