ABSTRACT
Modern Egyptian intellectuals never describe themselves as African, but selfidentified people of African descent have for some time claimed to be, at least historically, Egyptian. Black Athena may have been a watershed in the formation of the Egypt in Africa movement but this concept was explored well before Bernal's work notably by Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop. The Napoleonic Expedition to Egypt was a major contributor to European and western understanding of ancient Egyptian culture, however flawed that understanding might have been. The archaeology of the disenfranchised is a paradigm that countenances the assembled beliefs, associations, perceptions and theories about the past formed by minorities and formerly subjugated peoples. Implicit is the assumption that the right of a people to define their own past should feature as part of those human rights that we so often defend, a right that often results in opposing western traditions.
