All religion seem to be a "refactoring" of the core moral / ethical / ritualistic "codebase" of previous older religions. This is ofcourse most apparent when you study all the 3 Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). Some historians have even posited that the early ideas of Judaism ("chosen people", monotheism) actually originated from other African countries before finally arriving in Egypt and causing the religious discord in their society that lead to the emergence of Moses as a religious leader, and the birth Judaism. See this interesting Q&A - Were the Ten Commandments taken from the Egyptian Book of the Dead? - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/31534/were-the-... ... (While Egyptian history is popular because of the Roman connection and the fascination for Pyramids, Pharoahs and Moses, the history of other African empires are not quite well known because in many ways imperialism and colonialism still persists there).