Professor Robert A. Hill “never planned to embark upon [a study of the Harlem Rennaisance]. It was pure serendipity.” Hill delivered a lecture on Thursday at Craig Auditorium Thursday on the Egyptian influence on the Harlem Renaissance.

Hill is a leading and respected scholar and professor at UCLA. He has published volumes of Marcus Garvey’s papers and is a cutting edge intellectual theorist of Caribbean history. Hill is a prolific writer and has been involved in television and radio publications.

His lecture was titled “The Remains of the Name: The Harlem Renaissance and the Impact of the Egyptian Revival 1922-1924.” He explored what he perceived as the overlooked influence of Egyptian art and culture on the Harlem Renaissance, as well as on worldwide styles like Art Deco (known as Jazz Modern pre-1968), hairstyles (the Egyptian bob), clothing and architecture. Hill spoke with a slow deliberateness, gesturing delicately to emphasize his words.

“Nothing that happened in the 20th century cannot be thought about with out [the] mention of the Harlem Renaissance,” said Hill before delving into the 1922 “discovery” of King Tutankhamen’s tomb, and the influx of archeology in the early 1920s. Hill said that these excavations prompted the fourth period of “Egyptian Revival.” Hill identified five periods of Egyptian Revival, the first dating back to Greek civilization, the second during the Renaissance in Europe, the third ocurred with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt during which he commissioned scholars to study hieroglyphics, the fourth during the opening of the Suez Canal which inspired operas with Egyptian influenced story-lines, and the fifth during the Harlem Renaissance.

“Egypt has been the common denominator of these cycles of cultural productionthe animating impulse of cultural idea,” he said. Hill questioned when the term “Harlem Renaissance” came into being and who coined the term. The period, commonly hailed as 1925 through the 1930s, was labeled the Harlem Renaissance in 1948. He calls this a retroactive reconstruction placed on an event of the 1920s from a 1940s perspective.

The neglect of Egyptian influence on the Harlem Renaissance was the crux of Hill’s argument. Much of Hill’s discussion of the Harlem Renaissance is grounded in the work of Howard professor and Oxford graduate Alain Locke, who was the editor of The New Negro and the dominating scholar during the Harlem Renaissance. Locke, who many would hail as one of the pioneers of the Harlem Renaissance, dismissed Egyptian cultural influences despite his visit to Luxor and its evident impact on the 1920s cultural movement. Lock, according to Hill’s research, neglected this influence because of the popularity of what, in the 1920s, was deemed as the more “primitive” forms and styles of African art, which influenced the “high art” of European artists like Picasso.

Hill left one thinking about perceptions of historical period and the way they live in the imagination. His scholarship and the bold questions that he posed provoked students to investigate things that often go unquestioned.