Cairo mural row: Tutankhamun, Nefertiti depicted with dark skin sparks controversy

A 66-metre mural in Cairo’s Tahrir Square showing Pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Nefertiti with dark skin has been painted over after the Cairo mural controversy ignited a fierce debate online. Commissioned as one of 40 artworks to beautify the city for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit, the mural was accused of reviving Afrocentric claims about ancient Egypt’s heritage. The Cairo governorate ordered it covered just before the president’s arrival.

Painted in five days for Xi Jinping’s visit

The mural was one of 40 commissioned by Cairo authorities to smarten up the capital for Xi Jinping’s two-day state visit on September 1–2, 2026 — his first trip to Cairo in a decade. The volunteer youth group Rasmet Basma says it completed the 66-metre artwork in just five days, using AI tools, including ChatGPT, to generate the designs.

What was meant as a celebration of Egypt’s pharaonic heritage quickly became something else entirely once photographs of the finished mural began circulating online.

The Cairo mural controversy erupts

Images of the dark-skinned Tutankhamun and Nefertiti spread rapidly across social media, where critics accused the artists of pushing an Afrocentric agenda — the contested theory that ancient Egyptian civilisation was Black African in origin and population. The mural’s position a few steps from the Egyptian Museum, the flagship collection of Egyptian antiquities, intensified the anger. International coverage of the row, citing i24NEWS and Al Arabiya, described the murals as gone within days of the backlash.

The Cairo governorate, which had initially approved the design, asked the group to paint over the mural. The whitewash was completed just before the Chinese president’s arrival.

The artist’s explanation: lighting, not politics

Ahmed Moussa, the 22-year-old founder of Rasmet Basma, said the dark appearance of the figures was an unintended effect of the team’s artistic choices. According to Moussa, a golden-bronze tone used in the painting cast deep shadows at night, making the faces look dark-skinned in photographs.

Moussa insisted the group had no intention of making a political statement about race, but acknowledged a clear mistake: the team had not consulted archaeology or art specialists before painting two of Egypt’s most recognisable historical figures in such a prominent public space.

Hawass weighs in on the identity debate

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former antiquities minister, said the public outrage was justified and criticised the mural’s creation without expert oversight. He dismissed claims linking ancient Egyptian civilisation to sub-Saharan Africa as unfounded, pointing to temple carvings that show Egyptian kings alongside captives from Africa, Libya, Syria and Palestine — with the kings themselves not depicted as dark-skinned.

The dispute taps into a long-running and sensitive argument over how ancient Egyptians should be represented, and who gets to define the country’s heritage. For more on Egypt and the wider region, see our world news coverage.

A recurring controversy

Egypt has been here before. In 2023, Netflix’s docudrama Queen Cleopatra cast a Black actress as the Ptolemaic queen, prompting an outcry in Egypt, where the antiquities ministry called it a falsification of Egyptian history. The Tahrir Square episode suggests the sensitivity around depicting ancient Egyptian figures has only grown — the British Museum’s guide to Tutankhamun traces how the boy king’s image has been reinterpreted ever since his tomb was discovered in 1922.

Conclusion

The Cairo mural controversy shows how quickly a beautification project can become a national argument about identity. The artists blamed lighting and haste; their critics saw a political statement; the authorities chose the paint roller. Until Egypt settles how its ancient figures should look in public, consulting experts at the design stage — rather than facing outrage after the fact — may be the only way to keep history on the wall.