Ancient Egypt is not a location (a country based in the continents of Africa and Asia) or a time period (one separated from us now, in the early 2020s, by thousands of years). Ancient Egypt is a historical concept. And, like any historical concept, any attempt to pin it down—to speak of it as it might have been back then or there—goes against its very grain.
As a concept, ancient Egypt could be likened to a photograph. One that at first look appears to have captured an event, frozen it in time, laying it bare for someone to look at, to study, and extract knowledge from, but which on closer inspection reveals itself to be a ruse—a mirrored sphere with an infinite number of faces. It is a photograph continuously relating little to the one it just was, with what has been interpreted as its essence, its content, its punctum, seeming to have disappeared—either to have never been there or to have been replaced by a completely different essence, content, and punctum.

Iman Issa (Egyptian, born 1979). Heritage Studies #7, 2015 Wood, painted steel, and vinyl text, H. 715/8 in. (182 cm), W. 421/2 in. (108 cm), D. 83/4 in. (22.2 cm) Courtesy the artist and Sylvia Kouvali
It is perhaps the nature of all photographs to present dormant elements that at different moments in time are awakened, or awaken for reasons no one can fully articulate or comprehend. Elements taking turns, some shining brightly while others are hiding, seemingly dead, but actually only receding from view while breathing heavily, waiting their turn (at some other point in time) to take over their frame, dominating it clearly and completely, giving birth to a singular and definitive reading of themselves and by extension to the container in which they are housed.
Yet, just as this happens, someone, somewhere, realizes that actually the photograph at hand is not the right one. That there is another, better copy of it with a brighter or fainter shadow, or a different color palette, or a blurrier or sharper subject matter—one that, unlike the one at hand, can truly present its referent.

Iman Issa (Egyptian, born 1979). No Title—No Date, 2025. Photograph, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Sylvia Kouvali
And as the copies start to multiply, the twenty or more versions collapse into one—one in which little attention is now paid to the nature of the shadows, or color palette, or sharpness of its depicted elements. This is how an ahistorical version of the photograph is born. A version that may or may not be related to itself, waiting to be pointed out by someone, somewhere, at some point in time, as the fraud it is. And so the story goes.

Gallery view of Flight into Egypt with Iman Issa’s Heritage Studies #7, 2015
This essay is adapted from the catalogue Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt 1876–Now, which accompanies an exhibition on view through February 17, 2025.