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.
So, in 2000 years they dig up the perfectly perserved corpse of Jacko and display it. He is white!! The NAACP thugs protest!
But, I do like the idea that since a black African-Egyptian was pharaoh and pharaoh enslved many peoples, black African-Eqyptians are responsible for the slavery of black African-Americans.
Naa ... Elizabeth Taylor was born in England and Richard Burton was Welsh.
Rakkasan1 wrote:
"judging by all the TV coverage, a former black child who became a white adult who sleeps with children is more exciting..."
--And apparently, he walks on water!
At first it was assumed because his hair was dyed red, that it was really black, but French scientists using electron microscopes determined that his natural hair color was indeed red.
They had probably dyed it red because he was old and grey and wanted to look youthful.
Oy vey. These people have been on about this for years. The ancient Egyptians are Hamitic people....yes quite a bit darker than Europeans, but not just like West African Negoes (where African Americans have their origins). It's part of the fantasy that these folks would like to believe they are descendents of King Tut and Queen Nefertiti. OK then I am a descendant of King Niall of the Nine Hostages (4th century Ireland) or Romulus and Remus. Give me a break. How far do you have to go to fake self esteem.
Every time I consider replacing this tagline, more cr@p like this rears its ugly head...
"Condi Rice is a great example of a black person that is successful and respected."
Ahhh, but that doesn't fit the victimhood model that Jesse Jackson, Louis Farahkan, et al. wish to perpetuate. So, those black people who are successful due to hard work and self reliance are "acting white", and Uncle Toms. They aren't really black don't you know?
Makes me sick that people are so stupid and greedy. But, I see it in daily life. Black people rely on the race card because it's been taught to them, and it works. Blacks need to develop self reliance, but non-blacks need to grow some cahones.
Mr. Clegg is ignorant of ancient Egyptian custom and culture.
Egypt was called the 'black land' not because of the people but because after the yearly inundation of the land by the Nile the country was literally black with the rich soil thus deposited. The Egyptians refered to the southern people of Nubia as being black. Lightness of skin was an indication that a person didn't spend much time in the sun. To see the face of the king was a rare occurance. Most audiences with petitioners were conducted with a screen between the king and the people. He was considered to be a god and to gaze upon the face of god without permission could mean death.
That was Martin Luther King, Jr, not Martin Luther King Tut.
Aside from what you already said about the Egyptians knowing what they looked like, many of the wall paintings portray sub-Saharan Africans (among others that the Egyptians encountered in their long history), and it's plain that the Egyptians were perfectly capable of noticing and reproducing the different appearances of different people.
(left to right, Libyan, Nubian, Syrian, Bedouin, Hittite)
After all, these loonies have previous contended, with all seriousness that Egyptians invented human flight and had airplanes.
They also reserved the worst form of castration for blacks as well. Blacks entire genitalia was removed and it was necessary for them to urinate using a stick. Eunuchs of other races were allowed to retain the appendage.
That you know of.
I hate to break this to them, but Tutankhamun ruled a couple hundred miles of the Nile River Valley. And given that he died so young, I think "ruled" is being used very euphemistically here.
Role models? Try George Washington Carver. Benjamin Bannaker. Frederick Douglass. Colin Powell. We at least *know* they were black.
Good morning.
"These folks need to get a life."
This one needs to get a job that the taxpayers don't pay for.
Michael Frazier
Please educate me to the base of knowledge of humankind that they have contributed...
Scientific discovery, philosophy, medical, engineering or architectural would be a great place to start...
It represents a racist idea about what is "African" as if only people of negroid attributes ever widely populated any part of Africa.
(1) Historically, most of North Africa facing the Mediterranean Sea was never predominately populated by people with negroid attributes. All the ancient great city states on the coast of Africa, from Egypt to Carthage were not populated predominately be people with negroid attributes.
(2) Egypt, from ancient times, was a cosmopolitan nation, like the U.S. is today, where people came from and were a mixture of people all around the Middle East. But Egypt did have a dominant stock, and it was not negroid.
(3) The people who have the closest genetic likeness to most Egyptians are the Jews, particularly those Jews whose families never migrated to Europe and back. In truth, someone is not antisemitic when they think they are being antisemitic, for if they were they would be as intolerant of Egyptians as they are of Jews (genetically speaking). While even greater truth, is the fact that Arabs are actually semitic as well, although they are not as closely related to Jews as are Egyptians.
(4) Until Moslem armies conquered Egypt, they never considered themselves Arabs and they never in all their history considered themselves related to Africa south of Egypt as much as to the Mediterranean peoples and others north of Egypt in the Middle East.
Modern African Americans, in their honest pursuit of looking for some lost greatness that slavery stole from them, often latch onto the greatness of Egypt and claim it as their own. It is an understanable process for people whose past is based on a great crime against them and the shame of that crime. Yet the African ancestors of most African-Americans never lived in Egypt nor were ever part of Egyptian culture. They had existed for millenia on and near the western coast of Africa. The area had little cultural intercourse with Egypt, as reflected in the absence of Egyptian influences in the cultures of the area. Most African-Americans have about as much claim to Eqyptian heritage as 99% of Americans do to an Eskimo heritage. But it makes for great mythologies.
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