I started wondering if there was any information about some of the Ancient Egyptian clues we've been given which might have been readily available to 1920's investigators . . . turns out there is a little; both Sneferu and Nitocris are mentioned in Herodotus and a number of other well-known Greek and Egyptian historical documents. Here's what little I've found (it is, of course, up to Jon to determine if any of this is true in *his* universe):
Sneferu was an active and capable military leader, a visionary in terms of trade, and a sponsor of construction projects throughout Egypt. He is remembered in myth and story as "an ideally beneficent and good-humored monarch." One popular story has him using his magic powers to recover a servant-girl's lost jade charm, which was taken to symbolize that the Pharaoh was the servant of the people (apparently a break from previous Pharaonic tradition.) He was deified by the Pharoahs of the Twelfth(!) Dynasty, many of whom built their own tombs next to his Dashur complex. Sneferu is remembered for bringing an era of previously unknown wealth and prosperity to Egypt, and over four and a half millenia later the land is still dotted with stone memorials commemorating his works.
One author that might be worth researching is a contemporary of Sneferu's whose works have survived - Kagemni is a writer whose work began *before* 4th dynasty and extended into Sneferu's reign; he is said to have become vizier for Sneferu once the new Pharaoh had established himself. Kagemni wrote, among other things, about "social behavior and correct attitudes towards rulers and fellow human beings" - interesting in light of Sneferu's rumored change of Pharaonic behavior. I do not know if his writing contains hints of life before Sneferu, but he is known to have lived and written during that unfortunate time.
Queen Nitocris (the Black Pharaoh worship-per) proved a bit more elusive. Herodotus and others mention a Queen Nitocris who was the last ruler of the *sixth* dynasty. She was called "the most beautiful and noble woman of her time", and was revered for having avenged her brother's death. Doesn't sound like the woman we're looking for, except perhaps for the fact that Egypt was plunged into a period of chaos and anarchy upon her death, from which it did not recover until the start of the seventh dynasty. I did, however, encounter several elusive hints of something funny going on in the reign of Queen Nitocris. There was an unilluminatingly brief reference to a "split in the priesthood" during her reign which was somehow related something called the "Brothers of Light". Also, she has proved to be a disturbingly frequent subject choice among authors of, well, disturbing fiction. She was a topic in a play by Lord Dunsany, a story by Harry Houdini(!) - and also stories by H. P. Lovecraft (although I doubt we can count those.) Exactly why she was considered to be a hot topic among the early writers of horror fiction in both the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is something I have not been able to determine, although it does seem odd in light of her reputation as "the most beautiful and noble woman of her time".
On the other hand . . . the last ruler of the *twelfth* dynasty, known to the Greek historians as Queen Sobknofru, has good qualifications for the role of Black Pharaoh fan - she was the last ruler of the twelfth dynasty, and after her death Egypt was plunged into a period of chaos and anarchy from which it did not recover until the beginning of the thirteenth (sound familiar?) The Twelfth Dynasty, like the fourth, was a period of great prosperity, art, and Egyptian power (they were the Sneferu-worshippers, too.) It's interesting that all that ended with Sobknofru's reign - Ithink, in fact, her reign pretty much ended "Middle-Kingdom Egypt", and when it got its start again, it was the start of a brand new period of history. All in all, she seems a much better candidate for the post, especially as all our research to date has indicated a twelfth-dynasty queen, and it's possible that the Greeks committed the kind of mix-up they were reknowned for - a historical name mix-up between the sixth-dynasty and twelfth-dynasty rulers, who after all had similarities between their reigns, is a thing is far from unknown in the annals of Egyptology (especially as transmitted by the legendarily inaccurate Greeks.) It might be wise to hypothesize, at least at first, that Nitocris was the twelfth dynasty ruler, and that some of the disturbing aspects of her reign were mistakenly backdated to the sixth dynasty when the names got mixed up. It's a working theory, anyway.
Nephrem-Ka, the Black Pharaoh himself, however, remains . . . elusive.
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