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.
They think they're Arabs.
Lets put this in the proper light. I am not suggesting that white is more evolved than black. What I was and am asking is what happened. The Egyptions built the Pyramids they had boats that sailed all over the known world at the time. If they were black what happened in a thousand years that they stopped progressing and regressed?
That is astounding.
Great catch parrot!
Ramses II had red hair.
Wasn't thee a big flack a while ago when a white person born in South Africa insisted on being identified as African-American?
Tut, like most Egyptians today is mediteranean descent. The black color of the skin is due to the oils and spices applied during mummification. There were black rulers of ancient Egypt -- the Nubians. The Nubian empire conquered Egypt and ruled it for about 200 years and there are certainly people of black descent in Egypt today. For all of their politically correct wishful thinking Tut is not black and black Egyptians did not have wings and fly around the pyramids. Get a grip you twits out there. A large part of indigenous africans are white/olive skinned mediteraneans like the Egyptians, Moroccans, Algerians, Lybians whose ancestors have ALWAYS lived there.
Didn't we go through this nonsense a year or two ago?
Well, I for one like things to be historically accurate to the greatest extent possible. Of course, if the racist PC elitists have their way, any access the population has to truth will purely accidental.
Stunning likeness.
Yup. And if memory serves, the final response on the matter was that they weren't "African" because their ancestry was Dutch.
Actually, ol' Tuttie is much cuter than Babs...dontcha think???
(make note to save barf animation for later...:)
He was from Egypt.
He wasn't black you stupid idiots.
He was brown.
Oh. Sorry for misunderstanding your post.
Those people are idiots.
The Copts were fair skinned. This is silly.
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