The racial identity of Tutankhamun is a question that is debated among those who believe that ancient persons belong to modern racial identities. During the early period of modern archaeology, European scholarship believed that humans could be objectively divided into taxonomic races on the basis of phenotypes, leading early archaeologists and anthropologists to debate the race to which Egyptians belonged. Modern scholarship now largely rejects racialist thinking[1] as a modern construction which would be anachronistic when applied to ancient persons, thus Tutankhamun is not assigned a race by modern Egyptology. Some dissenters continue to place Tutankhamun in various races on the basis of attempts to determine his phenotype, as that phenotype would be understood according to various theories on what constitutes race.
Contents |
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 with plastic moulds created from these—but the Americans were never told who the subject of the reconstruction was.[2] All three teams created silicone busts of their interpretation of what the young monarch looked like.
Some have claimed that Tutankhamun was black, and have protested that attempted reconstructions of Tutankhamun's facial features (as depicted on the cover of National Geographic magazine) have represented the king as "too white".[3]
Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, however, rejects the claims of Afrocentrists that Tutankhamun was black. According to Dr. Hawass: "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it"; Hawass further observed that "[Ancient] Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa."[4] The UNESCO symposium presents another rejection (by many attendees) of the Black Egyptian model. In 1974 Diop presented his "Black Egyptian" theory in Cairo at the UNESCO "Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script", where it was largely rejected by the other delegates.[5][6]
Biological anthropologist Susan Anton, the leader of the American team on the Tut reconstruction project, said that the race of the Tutankhamun skull was "hard to call". She stated that the shape of the cranial cavity indicated an African, while the nose opening suggested narrow nostrils, which is usually considered to be a European characteristic. The skull was thus tentatively concluded to be that of a North African.[7][8]
Cheikh Anta Diop is one of the foremost proponents of an African identity for the Ancient Egyptians. Diop assumes as a scientific fact that humanity originated in Africa (based on genetic studies[9][10] and archaeological evidence[11][12]) and that the "Out of Africa" position best explains the peopling of planet Earth.[13] Diop also posits that, according to Gloger's law, warm blooded mammals, such as humans, living in Africa's very warm climate would have necessarily been brown or black skinned.[14] Furthermore, Diop and others (W.E.B DuBois,[15] Chancellor Williams,[16] John G. Jackson,[17] Ivan van Sertima[18], Martin Bernal[19], and Marcus Garvey[20]) argue that the Egyptian civilization was indigenous to Africa[21] and mostly Black from its origin. Recent excavations at Qustal, near Abu Simbel (and modern Sudan), affirmed that the oldest examples of Egyptian dynastic and monarchial motifs can be found alongside A-group Nubian ceramics in Upper Egypt and Nubia. The Qustul burner, along with other artifacts from the Qustul area, provides the evidence that the "pivotal change" from predynastic to dynastic "Egyptian monumental art" happened in Africa and by Africans[22][23][24]
Since many Ancient Greek historians noted that Egyptians and Ethiopians were black, or dark skinned,[25][26] scholars, such as Diop, believe that it follows logically that Tutankhamun, an Egyptian, was black, or dark skinned. Herodotus affirms in numerous passages that the Egyptians were Black. Herodotus states quite directly that a Greek oracle was known to be from Egypt because she was Black, that the natives of the Nile region are "Black with heat", and that Egyptians were "Black skinned with woolly hair".[27] Due in large part to the testimony of Greek historians, Diop believes that the Ancient Egyptian society was (from predynastic times) an indigenous African and black civilization in all of the non-intermediate periods and up until the onset of foreign rule by the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Roman, Arabs, and Turks.[28]
In contrast to other viewpoints, Diop believes that it is possible to scientifically ascertain the skin color of an Ancient Egyptian through microscopic analysis of skin samples from their mummy.[29] Diop posits that melanin can be found in the mummy's epidermis and melanocytes of the derm and analysis of the melanin present (or lack thereof) can yield definitive racial identification of a given mummy.[30] Cheikh Anta Diop also argues that if the term "Black" is defined with the same level of racial homogeneity as "White", the Brown race, Mediterranean race, and Dark Red race would be placed within the broader category of Blacks from Africa. This is akin to Northern Europeans with pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes being grouped with Southern Europeans with olive skin, brown hair, and brown or black eyes.[31]
It is commonly accepted that King Tut's father, Akhenaten, and his mother, the Younger lady, were brother and sister. Therefore, both of Tut's parents were the offspring of Amenhotep III and Tiye. Chancellor Williams asserts that Queen Tiye, Tutankhamun's grandmother, was Black and that her offspring were Black.[32]
Although modern technology can reconstruct Tutankhamun's facial structure with a high degree of accuracy based on CT data from his mummy,[33][34] correctly determining his skin tone and eye color is impossible. Although there is no scientific consensus on Tutankhamun's skin tone, contemporary paintings of him all portray him as having dark reddish brown skin and dark eyes. Nubians are generally depicted with black paint, but the skin pigment used in Egyptian paintings to refer to Nubians can range "from dark red to brown to black."[35] This can be observed in paintings from the tomb of the Egyptian Huy, as well as Ramses II's temple at Beit el-Wali.[36]
Scientific examination of the remains of Tutankhamun have revealed that the boy king was: 1) significantly dolichocephalic, or long-headed; 2) had enlarged incisors; and 3) had a pronounced alveolar prognathism, resulting in an overbite and a concomitant receding chin.[37] Although various experts have pointed out that skull shapes etc., are not a reliable indication of ancestry,[38] in the fields of forensic criminology and forensic anthropology these characteristics are believed by some to indicate a Negroid person.[39]
The dolichocephalic aspect is not unique to Negroid peoples, but is also a feature of the Mediterranean race, as originally labeled by Carleton Coon and Earnest Albert Hooton. Although its existence as a "race" is disputed by some, this "Mediterranean race" includes many of the peoples of northern Africa, western Asia, southern Europe and the Levant.[40][41][42][43][44][45][46]
Swiss scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy centre, iGENEA, reconstructed DNA profile of Tutankhamun, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel, which showed that Tutankhamun has Haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more then 50% of European men belong.[47] However, this DNA group also shows up in parts of northern Africa, particularly Algeria, where tests have found it in 11.8% of subjects.[48] The R1b haplogroup is also found in central Africa around Chad and Cameroon,[49] but the Chadic-speaking area in Africa is dominated by the branch known as R1b1c (R-V88).[50]
In December 2011, DNA Tribes released an analysis, based on 8 forensic autosomal STR markers, of the Amarna Pharaohs concluding that "Results indicated the autosomal STR profiles of the Amarna period mummies were most frequent in modern populations in several parts of Africa." [51]
| World Region MLI | Thuya | Yuya | KV35EL | Amen-hotepIII | KV55 | KV35YL | Tut | Average |
| Southern African | 359.72 | 34.48 | 20.73 | 108.53 | 174.9 | 71.17 | 1,519.03 | 326.94 |
| African Great Lakes | 233.49 | 35.53 | 20.87 | 222.53 | 381.3 | 44.58 | 1,328.01 | 323.76 |
| Tropical West African | 142.84 | 8.91 | 6.93 | 37.43 | 53.03 | 22.99 | 314 | 83.74 |
| Horn Of Africa | 14.65 | 0.79 | 5.17 | 12.03 | 4.54 | 22 | 44.35 | 14.79 |
| Sahelian | 39.14 | 0.74 | 5.76 | 2.97 | 4.4 | 16.85 | 30.41 | 14.33 |
| Levantine | 0.4 | 1.56 | 0.66 | 10.3 | 6.07 | 8.4 | 21.08 | 6.92 |
| Aegean | 0.12 | 0.35 | 0.87 | 9.06 | 7.05 | 20.16 | 9.85 | 6.78 |
| Arabian | 0.12 | 0.42 | 0.7 | 5.58 | 2.83 | 21.41 | 10.91 | 6 |
| Northwest European | 0.21 | 0.28 | 1.26 | 3.99 | 10.41 | 15.01 | 5.33 | 5.21 |
| Mediterranean | 0.08 | 0.23 | 0.74 | 4.54 | 5.81 | 16.8 | 6.04 | 4.89 |
| North African | 2.22 | 0.21 | 0.75 | 3.39 | 3.25 | 12.63 | 6.55 | 4.14 |
| Mesopotamian | 0.06 | 0.41 | 0.63 | 6.24 | 2.69 | 11.54 | 5.27 | 3.84 |
Top MLI (Match Likelihood Index) scores for Amarna mummies based on the world regions identified by DNA Tribes® STR analysis. Each MLI score identifies the likelihood of occurrence of an STR profile in that region versus the likelihood of occurrence in the world as a whole.
|
||||||||||||||