I'm looking for riff-filled Death/Black bands which focus on ancient history or ancient mythology. Ideally, I'm looking for something which sounds like Sarpanitum, but incorporates ethnic instruments. Nile is the obvious example, but I'm looking for stuff more along the lines of Rudra, who use chanting and traditional Indian percussion in their later albums. Orphaned Land and Amaseffer also come to mind, although both are less focused on death metal and more proggy than what I'm looking for.

Other good examples are Melechesh, Kronos, Lair of the Minotaur (meh), Melektaus, and Absu. Please, no Viking metal, and no folk metal unless it's brutal folk.

Rudra is awesome.

Scarab, Bilocate, Funeral in Heaven, Kampfar, Nervecell, Cthonic, Raaksha, Stigmata.

I hope you can find something you like in here.
Some of these are unheard, just reccs from some global friends

Arkan for melodic death metal with north african influences. Their lyrics deal with ancient north african civilizations and stuff like that. There is a track sung in Arabic with the Oud as an instrument.
You can try Litham too.

Narjahanam are an oriental black/death metal band about ancient middle-eastern history. They sing in Arabic and sometimes use ethnic percussion instruments (like the Darbouka).

Al-Namrood are basically the same thing, except for the death metal part. They use the flute in a very middle-eastern way from time to time.

Seeing you already like Sarpanitum, I guess you'd also like Necronomicon (Can) and Apophis.

You might also like Arallu. They're basically a black metal version of Melechesh.

Lykathea Aflame suit your request musically, they use a lot of Egyptian melodies in their music (they even use the main melody of an old Egyptian TV series' soundtrack called "Layali al Helmeyya" on the track On the Way Home).

Not actually typical black/death hybrid, more black metal than death, but I think it will suit you. Blut Aus Nord mastermind's side project CHILDREN OF MAANI. Cool progressive black with some deathish elements + egyptian mythology

Negura Bunget - http://www.myspace.com/negurabunget
Black Metal with a good helping of folk instrumentation and lyrics about the mythology and folklore of Transylvania. It's all in Romanian, though, lol.

How about The Chasm? One of the themes they cover is Aztec mythology. Can't recommend the band enough, by the way; it's the same with many other users - they're just completely awesome.

Is that death AND black metal bands or death/black metal bands? If the former, then Blood of Kingu should work well. Side-project of Roman Saenko from Drudkh/Hate Forest that focuses on Sumerian and Egyptian mythology. Very riffy and atmospheric black metal with really interesting vocals as well as incorporating a bunch of different traditional instruments in some songs.

I should have been more clear: death OR black metal bands which satisfy the criteria.

I've listened to Blood of Kingu before, but I actually thought they were instrumental.

Thanks to everyone else for the recs. I'm starting off with Scarab, which seem pretty awesome so far. Belial: I must have seen another thread you made recs in, since all of those bands you suggested are queued up in my myspace-bookmarked bands (except Lykathea Aflame, who I already listen to very often).