Commentary

Science Museum should portray King Tut as the African he was

by Les Lester

Last week I attended a lecture at the Science Museum of Minnesota by Molefi Asante, a leading figure in African-American studies and a professor at Temple University. His talk centered on the African heritage of King Tut and the history of what has become known as Egyptology.

Kudos to the museum and Prof. Asante for a job well done. But we must go further in explicating the truth of the black Egyptians, and here's why: There are untold multitudes of youth, black and white and every shade in between, who won't get to see the exhibit, or hear the lecture.

This is a golden moment for the museum to capture. Why not present an authentic likeness of King Tut on TV and billboard advertising as the exhibit comes to a close?

Black youth, and any youth, do well at what they're lauded for. Today, however, African-American youngsters are lauded primarily for three things, namely: singing, dancing and athletics. Why not celebrate them by lifting up their ancestors "who built the first great nation-state," as Prof. Asante outlined, and "laid the foundations for geometry, architecture and medicine?"

The whitewashing of the pharaohs has a long history. But Asante's observation that the Arab community didn't arrive in Egypt until 639 A.D. is a point worth noting, as is the fact that the pharaohs arose 3,000 years before Greece and Rome. British and New Zealand scientists did a CT scan of King Tut in 2002 and corroborated the ancient source depictions of Tutankhamun as a black man, as his tomb wall painting and throne depictions indicate. National Geographic, however, the convener of the current exhibit at the Science Museum, countered in 2005 with a Caucasian-looking image of King Tut that has become part of its brand. Today, a 12-year-old who enters "King Tut" in a search engine will get the inaccurate National Geographic depiction.

The National Geographic Society, and National Geographic magazine, have in effect become obstructionists to understanding, which is problematic because the organization wields great influence with antiquity officials in Egypt. Interestingly, other media organizations had begun to tell the truth, just a few years ago. In "Egypt's Golden Empire," PBS depicted ancient source images of King Tut and Rameses the Great (also known as Rameses II) in its documentary treatment of the New Kingdom of Egypt. And scores of archeologists, just a few years ago, had begun to depict the pharaohs accurately. Besides a short period of the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, which ended around 1560 B.C., and local Persian and Libyan skirmishes, the Egyptians were a black nation leading up to the Greek and Roman incursions by 332 B.C.

In my trip to Egypt last June, I observed that most of the current inhabitants of Luxor, which sits on the site of ancient Thebes, were black people.

My disappointment with the Science Museum exhibit is the duplicity that emerges from a display that is archeologically sound but surrounded by media that are at best neutral and, in the case of material from National Geographic, pure fallacy. The accompanying film, "Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs," depicts all of the pharaohs as European-looking. In reality they were men of color. Science Museum officials should seize the opportunity to independently point out the obvious. In America, there needs to be some due diligence in telling the truth about black classical history.

As a corrective action, the Science Museum on its own authority should show a depiction of the black pharaoh King Tut as he really appeared. The exhibit's tomb wall painting would be as good a template to follow as any.

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Les Lester is communications chair of the Saint Paul NAACP and author of the novel "The Awakening of Khufu."