Even today, the history of ancient Egypt is often understood independently of that of Africa, Egyptologists having long tended to link this territory to the Middle East more than to the African continent.
However, the geographical evidence is there:Egypt is African! And it is all the more so since the Nile is the only river axis that connects the Sahel and the Mediterranean by crossing the Sahara.
Caravans and maritime expeditions
Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that Pharaonic Egypt was not unaware that the river made it possible to penetrate the continent to the south. From the III th millennium BC. AD, Egyptian caravans thus headed for the oases of Fezzan, in southern Libya, and for distant Lake Chad.
On the side of the Red Sea, the same phenomenon of enlargement of the Egyptian space towards the south takes place:the Egyptians launch maritime expeditions towards the Horn of Africa, at the mouth of the Red Sea. This allows them to trade directly with the local populations, in order to buy frankincense from them without going through the Nubian intermediaries installed upstream of the Nile.
At I st millennium BC. J.-C., the diffusion of the dromedary in Egypt makes it possible to strengthen the links with the Saharan oases.
The role of the Nubians
If goods circulate between the Egyptian country and its African peripheries, men do the same. The pharaonic power being unable to exercise strict control over all of its territory, the borders of the kingdom are permeable.
Archeology thus teaches us that Saharan populations settled, sometimes permanently, in Egypt. Another foreign population plays a big role in its history:the Nubians.
Coming from present-day Sudan, many of these dark-skinned men settled in Egypt permanently in the II e millennium BC. The Nubians then participated greatly in the life of Egypt, fighting in its armies, forging matrimonial alliances and even giving several pharaohs to the kingdom.
Ancient Egypt is therefore not a world apart:it fully participates in the history of Africa.