Was the legendary King Tut black or african american?
In 2005, three teams of scientists (Egyptian, French, and American), in partnership with the National Geographic Society, developed a new facial likeness of Tutankhamun. The Egyptian team worked from 1,700 three-dimensional CT scans of the pharaoh’s skull. The French and American teams worked plastic moulds created from these—but the Americans were never told who the subject of the reconstruction was (there was a special reason for not revealing this to them). All three teams created silicone busts of their interpretation of what the young monarch looked like. Supporters of Afrocentrism have claimed that Tutankhamun was black, and have protested that attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun’s facial features (as depicted on the cover of the June 2005 National Geographic Magazine) have represented the king as “too white”. Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, however, rejects the claims of Afrocentrists that Tutankhamun himself was Black. According to Dr. Hawa
