Source: The Dying and rising god in the New Year festival of Ife (Ancient Kingdoms of West Africa: African-Centred and Canaanite-Israelite Perspectives) 2004 A.D.
This source provides an in-depth breakdown into the New Year Festival of Ife. This source also shows how Phoenician culture spread from the northern regions of Africa to areas below the Sahara, which reinforces the idea that peoples did indeed penetrate the Sahara. This is important because it adds cultural context that Israelites/Jews were able to come from the northern regions of Africa down to parts of Africa below the Sahara and that peoples from sub-Sahara Africa were able to cross over into the northern regions of Africa.
Sources like this are important and should be used in conjunction with Dr. Dierk Lange’s other work which focuses on the physical migration of Assyrian refugees into West Africa. When this conjunction is done, one realizes that peoples from the Middle East like the Yoruba, Kanuri, Soninke, and Hausa peoples were simply interacting with their kin (Phoenicians were comprised of Israelites and Canaanites) in the northern regions of Africa whom they had long become disconnected with. In my opinion, the Assyrian refugee work that Dr. Lange puts fourth is the single most important link between the ancient near east (ANE) and Africa while works like the one this post focuses on support the fact that peoples could come from above or below the Sahara Desert. To reemphasize, this aids in helping one to conceptualize Israelites/Jews coming from the northern regions of Africa into sub-Sahara Africa.
We also have numerous sources that detail that up to 20% of ancient Carthage was composed of negroid people and that their elite were “black” people such as the priestesses of Tanit.
and then