Posted on 06/16/2005 6:59:26 AM PDT by optik_b
King Tut's skin color a topic of controversy
By Evan Henerson Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - Nobody can be sure exactly what the boy king Tutankhamun looked like. But a group of African-American activists charting the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibition are certain of one thing: He didn't look white.
Following an appearance before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, activists from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Committee for the Elimination of Media Offensive to African People, and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations plan to protest the Tut exhibition, which opens today at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
They claim a trio of busts configured from Tut's corpse and a CT scan depict the ruler as being white, and are, therefore, inaccurate and racist.
"Those images are so critical for our children," says Legrand Clegg, Compton city attorney and a spokesman for the protesters. "We want them to focus not just on rappers, athletes and entertainers but on figures who are high achievers. What could be more elevating than a little boy who ruled the world?"
Three separate teams of researchers reviewing the data from the mummified corpse have concluded that Tutankhamun, who was part of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, was a Caucasoid North African. Clegg contends these conclusions fly in the face of separate research by a New Zealand and British research team that label Tut Negroid.
"The big variable is skin tone," says Terry Garcia, executive vice president for mission programs for National Geographic, one of the exhibition's presenters. "North Africans, we know today, had a range of skin tones, from light to dark. In this case, we selected a medium skin tone, and we say, quite up front, 'This is midrange.' We'll never know for sure what his exact skin tone was or the color of his eyes with 100 percent certainty.
"Maybe in the future, people will come to a different conclusion," Garcia continues. "From what we know, there is no doubt this individual was of North African descent."
That's not good enough for the activists, who demonstrated peacefully before an opening reception Wednesday and planned to protest again at today's opening.
"All we're asking," says Clegg, "is removal of those impostor busts, which have nothing to do with relics.
My point was that just because Eqypt was conquered by Arab Muslim armies did not change the ethic attributes of most Egyptians that much, and therefore most Egyptians and most Coptic Christians will be similarly related to ancient Egyptians but the Coptic Christians not more so.
as an undergrad, i had an egyptian copt for egyptian hierogylphics, coptic, hieratic, and demotic.
he was olive skinned.
he spoke english very poorly.
For most of human history, Northern Africa was much more closely tied to Europe than it was to the rest of the African continent. It wasn't until the two forces of Muhammed and later Charlemagne that people started thinking of North Africa as not being a part of Europe.
I agree....though many people from these armies settled in Egypt and progeny. The Copts were less likely to be descended from these Arab armies and thus the most likely (even more likely that the Jews) to resemble Ancient Egyptians both in appearance and genetically.
That's "had progeny."
Did you see the comments on the righthand portion of the web page?
BIZARRO WORLD.
Actually, I saw a movie from the early thirties. Tut looked like an Englishman named Boris Karloff. Maybe they had the same mum-my.
Which one is the Asian? Two of the four look to have heavy beards and the other two look black.
Liybans have the same incident for red-hair today as the Irish.
So now does this mean that we are going to call King Tut a Celt? Hell, why not? It'd give my boys something to aspire to.
Thanks for posting the picture. I was going to do the same thing. I visited the Berlin museum, which houses the bust. I bought a reproduction.
LOL! I see Karloff on the left but who's that on the right? Tut or Moms Mabley?
de nada.
Should you be posting National Vanguard(white racist) material on FR and is it that credible?
On second thought, the source may be disgusting, but the information I'm looking at I've seen from other sources.
I had no idea what National Vanguard was. I googled the info and this was the first source I came up with, which coincided with what I have read and heard elsewhere. I was actually looking for a Harvard anthropology professor (couldn't recall her name) whom I saw on C-SPAN a number of years ago who debunked some of the myths perpetuated by these African-American studies "history" courses.
I am not a racist nor do I have any tolerance for those who are, white or black. Thanks for pointing this out to me about National Vanguard.
Uh dude, the Caucasus is on the eastern side of the Black Sea, flanked on the other (eastern) side by the Caspian Sea, Greece is the southern end of the Balkan Penninsula, projecting into the Mediterranean Sea.
There are or were Greeks in the Caucasus but to the best of my knowledge those ties go back to Greek traders, pirates and explorers (the distinction wasn't always clear, more a matter of opportunity than anything else) from the Med., ie., from West to East, not from East to West.
No wait a minute didn't Steve "Tut" Martin give his lineage in the Jerk? Maybe he was black after all and these "historians" are on to something!!!
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