Ethnicity of Tutankhamun

For Mukasa Afrika, it’s another blow in a continuing assault.

In June 2005 National Geographic magazine featured the reconstructed image of King Tutankhamen on its cover. The headline read: “THE NEW FACE OF KING TUT.” The young pharaoh had light eyes, a pointy nose, thin lips and a golden caramel hue. In the search for King Tut’s true identity, scientists in France, the U.S. and Egypt conducted three separate reconstructions that yielded three different kings: one Caucasian, one African and one Afrika mockingly calls “Arab-Caucasoid.” It’s this one, reconstructed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt under the leadership of Dr. Zahi Hawass, whom Afrika accuses of constantly excising Egypt from Africa, that has become famous, and is now on display at the Franklin Institute Science Museum, the final stop on the king’s current U.S. tour.

Afrika, 32, tells stories from African history and culture with the ease with which most people discuss last night’s American Idol. He speaks in the slow, assured manner of someone twice his age, and there’s no doubt in his mind the boy king was African. “The mummy itself is evidence that King Tut is African,” he says. He adds that paintings found in king’s tomb show he had deep brown skin. Also the king’s 18th dynasty descends from Thebes, located in the southern part of Egypt, making his family lineage African. He also points to the famous golden mask in which the king has almond-shaped eyes, a rounded nose and full lips.