(wasn't there a thread about this a few months ago?)
Posted on 12/18/2005 12:08:30 PM PST by Rebelbase
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A "King Tut is back and he's still black" placard drew the gaze of visitors making their way to view the acclaimed exhibit at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale Saturday.
Across from the entrance, about 25 demonstrators donning T-shirts marked with various pro-black slogans held up the placards. Waving the red, black and green African flag, at times moving to the beat of djembe drums on the sidewalk, they asked drivers in passing cars to honk in support of their goal: reminding people not to take the lighter-skinned portrait of King Tutankhamun on display as an accurate depiction.
"We're visual people, so whatever they throw at us, we're going to take it as a fact, when in reality it's just a theory," said demonstrator Asante Waa. "We're afraid of the implications that this recreation is going to have on kids, especially on black kids."
Particularly controversial in "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" are computer-generated busts of Tut with a skin tone that critics say make him look Caucasian.
"For the Image of the Living God (as Tutankhamun represents) to be replaced with anything else but a black man's is a slap in the face," said Alicia Milligen, a Lauderhill, Fla., nurse.
Demonstrators passed out fliers with information about the Boy King who reigned over Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. They hope to educate others about King Tut by visiting schools, churches and libraries, said demonstrator Evie Iles.
"It's our history," said Iles, who viewed the exhibit and thinks the lighter skin tone may be a marketing strategy. "We encourage people to go and see the authentic artifacts and to challenge what's inauthentic."
Mary Lefkowitz, a retired classics professor and author of "Not Out of Africa: How `Afrocentrism' Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History," said Saturday that the demonstrators had a point.
"Ancient Egyptians from Memphis (Egypt) would have had to go to the back of the bus in Memphis, Tennessee, during the days of segregation," the Wellesley, Mass.-based author said in a telephone interview. "The Egyptians were kind of copper-colored."
Museum of Art officials say they are talking to historians with different viewpoints about planning a forum on the topic, but no date has been set.
"It's an interesting conversation that needs to be held," Lynn Mandeville, director of community affairs, said.
Museum visitors said they know the ancient Egyptians were not white, but the demonstration did put the race question at the forefront of some people's minds.
Danielle Dyer, a West Palm Beach, Fla., mother who brought her two biracial daughters along, said she found herself looking more at the shape of the eyes, nose and other features.
"You have to be reaching pretty far to find anything racial about it," Dyer said.
(wasn't there a thread about this a few months ago?)
Sounds like a severe case of Too Much Time On My Hands...
He's my favorite honkey!
OMG!!!! ROFLMAO!!! Timing is everything!!!
Morgan Freeman has it right. We have a race problem because people talk about race too much. As far as I'm concerned, the only racists I've known in the past 25 years have been blacks shouting about how people of one particular race are just no good.
This is silly. A simple look at hierogplyics (sp?) shows that 1. They had black pigement for their painting, and 2. They did not use the pigment for painting themselves.
He's a dead polytheist.
Dear Mr. Waa. The reason everyone appears "black' to you is because you are suffering from a terminal crainial/rectal inversion. Of course everybody looks black then.
There are Egyptian scultpures of black Nubian slaves from Africa that are... painted black. There are also sculptures of Egyptians that aren't. The whole thing is another mythological, racist attack on scholarship undertaken by the seething racial proletariat.
These guys need to get a life. Who the heck (except them) cares what color Tut's skin was?
Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia.
Perhaps Tut was just heavily tanned...
(And the young Barbra Striesand looked just like Queen Nefertiti. Does that make the ancient Egyptians Jewish?)
King Tut's death mask: 
The computer-generated likeness is pretty true to the mask, and looks like it could be an actual modern-day Egyptian. I don't see that the protesters have anything to complain about.
I thought ancient Egypt was a real melting pot - a place (like Brazil) where people were content to simply be Egyptian, not African-Egyptian, Euro-Egyptian or Asian-Egyptian...
I will refrain from saying one word about the living god lawn jockey down the street who is now white.
Now when he was a young man he never thought he'd see (King Tut)
People stand in line to see the boy king (King Tut)
How'd you get so funky (funky Tut)
Then you'd do the monkey
(Born in Arizona moved to Babylonia King Tut)
Now if I'd known the line would form to see him (King Tut)
I'd take up all my money and buy me a museum (King Tut)
Buried with a donkey (funky Tut)
He's my favorite honky
(Born in Arizona moved to Babylonia King Tut)
Dancing by the Nile
Ladies loved the style (waltzing Tut)
Rocking for a mile (walking Tut)
He ate a crockodile
He gave his life for tourism
Golden idol
He's an Egyptian!
They're selling you
Now when I die now don't think I'm a nut
Don't want no fancy funeral just one like old King Tut (King Tut)
He coulda won a grammy (King Tut)
Buried in his jammies
(Born in Arizona moved to Babylonia
Born in Arizona got a condo made of stone-a (sic) King Tut)
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