Bindman 2002 and 2023 are important, detailed studies of racial formation in European aesthetics and art history, covering the figures discussed in this chapter and many more. Challis takes the story into the nineteenth century, addressing especially the popular aesthetic and anatomical lectures of figures such as Robert Knox and the impact of racial ideas on early twentieth-century classical archaeology and Egyptology in its entanglement with eugenics. Goldsmith 2020 discusses under the rubric of ‘danger’ how environmental theory and concerns about health informed eighteenth-century Northern European travellers’ behaviours while on the ‘Grand Tour’. Décultot’s extensive body of scholarship on Winckelmann explores many relevant aspects of this topic, including Winckelmann’s reading of ancient and early modern environmental theory and the ethnographic lens of his History of Ancient Art; most readily available in English is Décultot 2018a. For German-speaking readers, Reimann 2017 is a comprehensive study comparable in scope to Bindman’s works, though from a less focused art-historical viewpoint.

Goldhill 2022 is an introduction to the issues of this chapter. On anti-Semitism in antiquity, see Schäfer 1997; for further reading, see the excellent critical bibliography to the much discussed question of anti-Semitism in antiquity in Niehoff 2022 (in German).

On the history of anti-Semitism, from a vast bibliography, see Nirenberg 2013; Julius 2010; and, with a more theoretical bent, on Medieval anti-Semitism, Heng 2018. Specifically on German anti-Semitic scholarship, Weinreich 1946 has proved seminal to much further scholarship, for which Steinweis 2006 provides a guide.

On anti-Semitism in philology, see Olender 1992. On both myth and philology, see Lincoln 1993; on history, see Goldhill 2016. On the intellectual history of Hebraism and Hellenism, Leonard 2012 is excellent.

Despite the massive bibliography on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and the interest in Classics as a discipline, there is surprisingly little material specifically on anti-Semitism in Classics, an absence that raises a question in itself. But Losemann 1977 has much material of relevance, along with Losemann 2006. Most recently, Hafner 2025 discusses the unpublished correspondence of classicists at the review journal Gnomon before, during, and after the Nazi era in Germany, revealing the direct impact of anti-Semitism on the careers on prominent Jewish classicists.

Considerations of Bernal and Black Athena, Afrocentricity, and Black classicists might be served by reading Black Athena (Bernal 1987, 1991, 2006), and by referencing the critics of the thesis: their earliest iterations and, of course, responses to them. Oppositional precursors to the ‘Afroasiatic roots of classical civilization’ can be found as far back as the Enlightenment (see Eze 1997); among the most full-throated is Gliddon and Nott 2002 (original 1854). Their declaration set the stage for more ‘muted’ and ‘rational’ responses of the twentieth century that focus on Bernal and Afrocentricity: Lefkowitz 1996; Lefkowitz and Rogers 1996; Levine 1992; Pounder 1992; Windschuttle 1996. The conflation of Bernal’s thesis with Afrocentricity is illustrated in Howe 1998; Jaroff 1994; Lefkowitz 1996; Levine 1992; and Snowden 1992, 1996. Bernal answers many of his critics (Bernal 1989, 1996, 2001; Cohen 1993). In supportive responses, scholars not necessarily thought to be ‘Afrocentric’ illustrate the historical nature of the debate to centre Africa and its contemporary vigour: Bourgeois 1971; Diouf and Mbodj 1992; Du Bois 2001 (original 1915); Lewis 1993; Keita 2000b, 2002, 2011; Mudimbe 1992; and Wallerstein 1961. Ronnick (1997, 2004, 2011) offers insight into historical and contemporary Black classicism, its institutional moorings in historically Black colleges and universities, and what Ronnick provocatively terms Classica Africana. Among Bernal’s predecessors are a group of African American scholars who Gliddon, Morton, and Nott would find characteristically ‘Nilotic’: Carruthers 1984, 1992 has provided important analyses in regard to Bernal’s argument and those of Black classicists and Afrocentrists. Derbew et al. 2025 offer brilliant new sets of perspectives in the re-reading of the ways in which anti-racist arguments have referenced the Classics throughout modern history.

On the ‘Afric Muse’, Ronnick 2004 illustrates the long tradition of Black classicism as an institutional device, for whom Wheatley is a muse. Schliephake 2016 allows for its evolution. The resurgence of interest in the earliest of Black classicists beginning with Wheatley is aided by Bennett 1998; Carretta 1996; Greenwood 2011; Schields 1980; and Waldstreicher 2017. Volney 1793 can be treated in his own words with reference to Du Bois 2001 (original 1915) and 1965 (original 1947). Greenwood’s review essays (2009a, 2009b) are tours de force as quick, yet highly informative entrees into Black classicism. Along with De Pourcq 2012, Greenwood also offers a cogent understanding of Reception Studies and its potential.

Like Volney, Walker and Douglass are best served by consulting the sources directly: Douglass 1854; Walker 2011 (original 1829). Thorpe 1971 provides scope on Black historiography and use of the Classics and ancient source interpretation. Rankine 2019 and Hanses 2019a, 2019b illustrate the importance of Du Bois’ work as exemplary of the Black scholarship of the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. The historiographic segue is witnessed in Houston 2007 (original 1926) and Keita 2011.

The emphasis on Ethiopia, beginning with Milton through Wheatley, culminates in the works of Hansberry 1921, 1944, 1960; Snowden 1970, 1976, 1983; and Harris 1974, 1977. The overt challenge to the centring of Europe and the globalization of the classical/ancient world is witnessed in Angel 1972 and Cook 1971, 1974. These culminate with Diop 1974 and scholarship’s most popular notions of Afrocentricity and the resurgence of Black classicism.

For the background to German historical writing in the nineteenth century, the work of Suzanne Marchand is crucial; see especially Marchand 2009. McCaskie 2019 offers a reading of Hegel’s philosophy of history from the valuable perspective of a historian of Africa. Allen 1994 provides an excellent account of anti-Irish racial oppression. Scheerlinck et al. 2016 explore Cumont’s racial politics clearly and helpfully. Pierre Briant has analyzed Droysen’s work and the nineteenth-century reception of Alexander the Great with exceptional skill across a series of works: see, for example, Briant 2009. The appendix to Svenbro 2007 is a personal and affecting account of Nilsson’s articles on race.

For discussion of Dorian/Aryan issues in the nineteenth century, see Weidemann 2017. For the use of the Greek and Roman pasts in Nazi racial theories, see Chapoutot 2016 and Leoussi 2017. See Trubeta 2013 on eugenics and race science in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Greece, and Lefkaditou 2018 on Britain. The chapters in Varto 2018 explore the use of ancient Greek and Roman ideas in the development of the discipline of anthropology in multiple national traditions, especially as relates to race and ethnicity. Wheeler 2000 discusses the use of classical climate theory in the eighteenth-century development of racial theories. McMahon 2021 provides a good discussion of typical ‘national race’ maps before the First World War in Germany ascribing Germanic roots to ancient Greeks and Romans.

Aligning with wider trends in Classics and ancient history, papyrologists have consistently preferred to use the term ethnicity rather than race in describing ancient societies and people. McCoskey 2002 is clear on the reasons and ambiguities of the choice. Bagnall 1997 and Bowman 2002 are important for understanding mainstream (British and American) papyrology’s positioning on the colonial and postcolonial debate at the time of their publication.

For cultural histories of Egypt under European colonialism, Mitchell 1988, Reid 2002, 2015, and Colla 2007 remain essential; Trafton 2004 focuses on the American perspective and Jakes 2020 is centred on economic history.

Although limited in their scopes, Keenan 2009 and Cuvigny 2009 offer some critical introductions to the history of papyrology and papyrus discovery. In this chapter, I took a different path of enquiry, because I am convinced that it is the relationship between archaeological objects, experts, and Egypt (meaning the country and its people) that shows how racial hierarchies underpinned the creation and development of papyrology. Archives of papyrus collections and similar institutions are the places where anyone interested in similar topics and questions should look: Nongbri 2018, Haug 2021, and Wigand 2024 are excellent examples of research in such archives; Mazza 2024 offers a contemporary case study and its ideological background.

Good starting points on modern appropriations of ancient Egypt are Reid 2002 and 2015, Quirke 2010, Riggs 2021, and the work of Egypt’s Dispersed Heritage. To situate these dynamics within the broader context of Egypt’s modern history, the work of Timothy Mitchell 1988 and 2002 and Omnia El Shakry 2007 is essential. Recent work on multiculturalism, ethnicity, and racecraft in ancient Egypt includes Booth 2005, Brooke Anthony 2017, Matić 2020, Schneider 2010, and Smith 2003. As for how modern racecraft influenced Egyptology, see notably Challis 2013, Davies 2018, Reid 2017, and Riggs 2021. The bibliography on Cleopatra is immense. An essential reading list is provided in Blouin and Kennedy 2023. Foundational readings on Afrocentrism are Diop 1974, Bernal 1987, 1991, and 2006, and see further readings listed in Chapter 14 in this volume. For an accessible overview, listen to Haley 2024 and watch Reid 2017 and Smith 2020.