As we drove away from Aswan, I could not help but think of my friends and neighbors back home in West Virginia, when I was growing up. They believed that many of the major figures in world history had in fact been black, ranging from Moses's wife and the Queen of Sheba, to all the pharaohs of Egypt and Cleopatra, on down to Beethoven. But here, at the northern end of what was the ancient kingdom of Kush, I had seen the evidence myself-the pharaohs of Egypt's 25th dynasty were black men, who most probably had a hair texture and skin color not all that different from my own. I could not help but wonder what other revelations lay buried beneath the waters of Lake Nasser . . . indeed, beneath the rubble of a thousand African civilizations yet to be excavated.