[CPProt.net] Africa: New face renews an old debate. Artistic assumptions skew what science and history tell us

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

New face renews an old debate 

Artistic assumptions skew what science and history tell us
  
 
By Niara Sudarkasa

December 5, 2005


With the coming opening of the King Tut museum exhibit, busts of the king's
"new face" are on sale in the malls and shops throughout the area. Besides
making money, this mass marketing strategy surely aims to convince people
that King Tut's "new face" is his "true face." 

Many African and African-American scholars resoundingly disagree. They see
King Tut's new image as a renewed attempt to rewrite history by falsely
depicting the king as a "Caucasoid," closely related to the "true
Caucasians" (i.e. "whites"), who originated in Europe. 

The "racial" identity of the ancient Egyptians was a source of controversy
throughout the 20th century. In 1974, UNESCO attempted to resolve the issue
in a symposium, held in Cairo, to which 20 prominent Egyptologists were
invited. By all accounts, the seminar was dominated by Professor Cheikh Anta
Diop from Senegal, author of The African Origin of Civilization, Myth or
Reality, published in French in 1955, and translated into English in 1974.
Allied with Diop was his protégé and colleague, Dr. Theophile Obenga from
the Republic of Congo (and now a professor at San Francisco State
University).

Diop and Obenga's "painstakingly researched contributions," based on
evidence from history, archeology, ethnology, linguistics and the physical
sciences, demonstrated that ancient Egypt was peopled by indigenous
Africans. They had migrated from the large area to the south, then known as
Ethiopia. Diop and Obenga also presented evidence that Egypt remained a
predominantly African civilization, physically as well as culturally, from
the Pre-Dynastic period beginning about 5500 B.C., through the Dynastic or
Pharonic periods, until the Persian conquest was consolidated around 340
B.C. 

No one at the Cairo symposium refuted Diop and Obenga's conclusions. There
was no support for the proposition by one professor that the ancient
Egyptians were a "white population with dark or even black pigmentation." 

Today, three decades later, we find a different set of experts claiming a
new scientific basis for resurrecting "Caucasoids" in ancient Egypt.

By hailing King Tut's new face as a forensic reconstruction, the secretary
general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, along with the National
Geographic, want to convince the public that this reconstruction is an
unassailable scientific achievement. 

Yet, we know that forensic reconstruction is not an exact science. As
Professor Manu Ampim has written, CT scans "chart the contours and
topography of the skull," enabling the creation of a detailed
three-dimensional likeness of the skull. However, "in constructing an image,
forensic artists [who actually put the flesh and other features on the
bones] have to give a `guesstimate' of the person's nose, lips, ears, hair,
ethnicity and skin color." These depend on the "overall working assumptions
that the artists are using." 

The National Geographic's press release on the reconstruction admitted that
"despite the solid scientific information used, it is impossible to know for
certain everything about how King Tut looked -- the shape of the top of his
nose, the shape of his ears, the color of his eyes and skin -- as they are
not determined by the shape and proportions of his skull." I ask: Are those
not the very features one considers in deciding whether King Tut looks like
a "Caucasoid" or an African? And in this reconstruction, as in others, we
are drawing conclusions based solely on physical attributes.

The National Geographic's press release said that "one of the world's
leading anthropological sculptors" was hired to "combine the science with
art to create the most accurate, lifelike face of Tut ever." After
describing this creative process, the press release stated: "Skin tone,
which could have varied from very dark to very light, was based on an
average shade of modern-day Egyptians." 



Even assuming that the sculptor had some scientific basis for determining
"the average" skin color of modern Egyptians, what would that have to do
with the skin color of the Egyptian population when King Tut was alive, some
3,300 years ago? The Egyptians we see most often today are Arabs whose
ancestors invaded Egypt about 2,000 years after the death of King Tut.

The reconstruction of King Tut's nose also was based on pre-existing
assumptions. The size of his "narrow nasal opening" was automatically
considered to be a "Caucasoid trait." Did the French forensic team know the
range in the size of the nasal openings in indigenous African populations?
Surely, that range overlaps that of "Caucasoid" populations. Why then is the
size of King Tut's nasal opening considered a "Caucasoid" trait? And, given
the size range for King Tut's nose, how did the sculptor decide on the
actual size and shape? She knew that she was reconstructing King Tut as a
"North African Caucasoid." Was that the determining factor in reconstructing
the nose?

Despite the continuing efforts to attribute Egypt's greatness to
"Caucasoids" from outside of Africa, the historical evidence points in the
opposite direction. Consistent with that evidence, Egypt must be allowed to
take her rightful place in history as the African state that gave rise to
what Europeans claim to be "Western Civilization."

Niara Sudarkasa, Ph.D. is an anthropologist and Africanist, who is the
scholar-in-residence at the Broward County African-American Research Library
and Cultural Center.


South Florida Sun-Sentinel