Notwithstanding the recent attempt to portray the young king tut as racially black, we now have the most accurate forensic data to reconstruct what the boy-king actually looked like--and surpise, he's caucasoid! Of course, this has nothing to do with racism, this has to do with hard facts. I know there are some people, especially in african american communities, who would like to represent the ancient Egyptians as black, but this is a fallacy. There's no doubt that some ancient Egyptians WERE indeed black, but as a general rule, Egyptians were more caucasoid than anyting.

So finally, the authorities have stepped in, conducted the most accurate scans to date and reconstructed the REAL face of Tutankhamun.

THE INACCURATE RECONSTRUCTION:


VS

THE FACT:




Using the CT scans… French forensic anthropologist Jean-Noël Vignal determined the basic measurements and features of Tutankhamun's face. Vignal deduced that Tutankhamun had a narrow nose, buck teeth, a receding chin, and Caucasian features. Such features are typical of European, North African, Middle Eastern, and Indian peoples.

This is the most authoritative though.

By the way, I can't figure out why there's so much talk about Tut not being the "good looking king" that everyone has assumed he was. I think he was a pretty good looking chap according to this reconstruction. The only problem with his looks is the slightly elongated head.

Arrrgh! Please don't argue about racial colouring. The French team had a skull to work on. They cannot possibly deduce skin tone from that. Besides which it is completely irrelevant.

The skin tone is deduced by the clear caucasian features. Again, this has nothing to do with racism, this has to do with historical accuracy.

That slightly annoys me as well...I've seen too many forums that were locked because of the whole "racial war", and that scared me. I'm not concerned with Tut's race, all I cared about was his face. Hey, that rhymed! (That is to say, his facial features and such. ^_^; ).



Let's choose our words carefully, though...and is history really EVER accurate? Some facts may never be explained thoroughly, but we do what we can to research and such. As for the racism issue, let's not even start with that, because it's too dreadfull in the world as it is...

Let's just say we "TRY" to be historically accurate . We may not be right on the money, but we can achieve near accuracy.

Hmm.... The French reconstruction of Tutankhaten's face looks remarkably .. French. The lips and the cheek are what remind me of an atypical French face, or at least from what I know from French textbooks and my own family's facial features.

The new reconstruction looks like they took someone's head, added some makeup, and a bulge to the back of the cranium, for a mysterious, "authentic" feel.

I know it's wrong, and a stupid theory, but I believe this face was highly biased on French facial features. There are some very patriotic French, just as there are very patriotic Americans, or English. Is it possible that, even if on a subconscious level, Jean-Noël was striving for the glory of his country through the resemblance of the famed Tutankhaten to a standard, French face? I don't know... but that face just looks eerily familiar..!!

Actually...it looks more like Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce...

Cordially,

Niankhkhnum

You know, come to think of it....it really DOES look French-ish...hmm... ^_^; On a patriotic level, Unas, you may be right. The three Tuts look rather different, as I've said before, and the French really DO make it more, shall we say, "beautiful"? So they took Tut and turned him into a pretty-boy with a cute baby-face?! .... Hehehe...and that was funny, Niankhmun, about Joan Crawford--the makeup is almost juuuuust the right amount!

Notice that the parts of the face that suggest a French or Caucasian Tut are the parts of the skull that (comprising originally of cartilidge) have to be reconstructed by guesswork. These parts of the body include lips, nose, ears, eyes and brows.

What is perceived as "French" could be highly subjective. To me, this new reconstruction looks enormously Egyptian.

Again, this reconstruction is based on the latest scans that we have of the King, and it is sanctioned by Hawass, head of Egyptian antiquities in Cairo.

Some guesswork will be involved, invariably, but we can also rely on statuary, masks and busts of the king to deduce a fairly correct portrait.

The fact is, the mummy showed clear caucasian features, and therefore, to implement these features in the areas that guesswork must be performed, it only makes sense to correspond with the data, unlike other reconstructions which have arbitrarily endowed royal Egyptian figures with negroid features.

Your predispositions on the matter would probably make more sense if this was solely a French effort at reconstruction. But this can quickly be understood as a misguided conclusion when we realize that this was a collaborative effort, largely by the Egyptian team with key scientific help from French and American teams.

As stated here: http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/05/ct_scans_show_w.php

"The three teams created their reconstructions separately—the Americans and French working from a plastic skull, the Egyptians working directly from the CT scans, which could distinguish different densities of soft tissue and bone.

The French and Egyptians knew they were recreating King Tut, but the Americans were not even told where the skull was from, yet correctly identified it as a Caucasoid North African, the council said in a statement.

'The results of the three teams were identical or very similar in the basic shape of the face, the size, shape and setting of the eyes, and the proportion of the skull,” Hawass said.'"

So just because we are unable to achieve perfect accuracy is not sufficient reason to belittle the merit of this authoritative reconstruction.

Here is the completely unbiased reconstruction of the face:


"The American team’s reconstruction. The Americans refused to assign King Tut a skin color because it could not be known."

Therefore, the skin color was deduced from the plain caucasoid features.