Flight Into Egypt
Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now

Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now traces ancient Egypt’s influence on artists, from Edmonia Lewis’s sculpture The Death of Cleopatra (1876) to the efflorescence of Afrocentric visual art during the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and artistic tendencies of the ensuing decades. This volume explores how Black artists, writers, and musicians—and modern and contemporary Egyptian artists—have employed ancient Egyptian imagery to craft a unifying identity. Authors bring to light the overlooked contributions of Black scholars to the study of ancient Egypt, while statements by contemporary Black and Egyptian artists illuminate ancient Egypt’s continued hold on the creative imagination. The book and exhibition are the first to examine the symbolic importance of ancient Egypt to Black artists and other cultural figures, from the 19th century through the Harlem Renaissance to the present day.

For the jacket, a neon rendition of Nefertit’s famous bust (Awol Erizku, 2018) was used to convey a modern lens of African American pride and empowerment. The book itself is wrapped in Fred Wilson’s “Memories of Egypt” representing numerous sculptures of Nefertiti. Putting it underneath the jacket spoke to the complexity of race within the sensitivities of African Americans looking to Egypt for inspiration, self-identification, as well as skin shade. The publications grid, column proportions, and image scaling were all based on the measurements of the tomb of Luxor. The Pantone spot was in homage to George Washington Carver’s Egyptian Blue 9th Oxidation, also in the exhibition.