African Civilization - Nok Culture

Egyptologists aren't likely to focus on these groups any time soon. They were not in any sort of regular contact; if they knew of each other, it was as a very distant, perhaps semi-mythical, land - the same as the Romans knew of India, but you wouldn't look to a Roman scholar to tell you about ancient India. 

The basic problem with alot of these African civilizations is that it is very, very difficult for archaeologists to do their work in these countries. With non-literary cultures, the history starts with the archaeological work and if there is no funding and the sites are not secure, very little of that work is going to get done. If the archaeologists can't do their work, there is very little material to draw from for historians and thus you will have very few specialists in these fields. That's the situation we have today, and it is very unfortunate, but it cannot be expected that the Egyptologists can solve it! What's needed is more funding and better conditions for archaeological work in Africa. When that's achieved, the work will give rise to specialists in these cultures who can establish them as interesting in their own right (and not via tenuous connections with better-known cultures like Egypt). 

Think, for a moment, about all the interest in the Celtic phase of Iron Age Europe. There's been alot of archaeological work, there are many specialists, the art and many facets of the culture are widely known in the general public, and the Celts are regarded as interesting in their own right (and not because of some connection to a foreign culture). Like the Nok, they were skilled in art and ironwork; but they built few great monuments (Newgrange and Stonehenge belong to earlier peoples), no great cities, they did not have a written language, did not document their way of life in stone carvings or the like, etc. Archaeologically speaking they are a very similar case. What I'm saying is that cultures don't need to build pyramids or conquer vast empires or have great cities to generate scholarly and public interest. Amazing art, rich culture, and skilled craftsmanship are sufficient, and the Nok have it all in spades; but they don't have the funding or the conditions for good archaeological work to establish more for historians to discuss and publish.