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The Mycenaean Greeks are likely to have been the ones that created the Medusa myth, and at that time the Egyptian Old Kingdom that built the pyramids had collapsed 500 years before the very beginning of Mycenaean Greece. There would have been multiple Egyptian eras of which Egypt would have been in an era of unity. , The Mycenaean Greeks are documented in a letter to have had diplomacy with Egypt, and Mycenaean pottery was found in Egypt suggesting trade between the two regions.

With all that being the case, Africans wouldn't be some mythical creature due to the power and influence of ancient Egypt in that era, and it seems much likely the Medusa just follows the Greek tradition of chimeras combining different animals or animals and people to allegorically represent different parts of the human experience....

Another thing about the legend of Medusa is that she starts as a beautiful woman and angers the gods, being turned into a hideous beast with snakes for hair. This directly contradicts the core idea of the picture, suggesting that some people need to learn the legends they're trying to appropriate before they try to do so.

A potential counterpoint to my argument could be the minotaur, which we now know was derived from the Greek contact with the Minoan civilization. However, I think this actually proves my point -- the Minotaur didn't look like a bull/man hybrid because the people of that civilization looked like bulls, it was a representation of the bull icons the Minoans placed everywhere in their complex architecture.

Anyway, I know, nobody asked but it bugged me...