On the eve of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s state visit to Cairo last month, municipal workers covered a 66-metre-long mural in Tahrir Square that portrayed the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Nefertiti with dark skin. The painting, created by the volunteer youth group Rasmet Basma, was one of 40 murals commissioned to spruce up the city ahead of the official visit.
Authorities said the murals were part of an effort to beautify key areas for the incoming dignitary. The removal of the Tutankhamun and Nefertiti image came after criticism that the depiction revived long-running Afrocentric assertions about the racial origins of Egypt’s ancient rulers — a debate that has proved politically and culturally sensitive within the country.
The episode touched on wider tensions over national identity and the portrayal of Egypt’s ancient past. Historians, activists and commentators across the region have for decades contested how to characterise the ethnicity and appearance of pharaonic figures; in Egypt, those discussions are often intertwined with modern political and social fault lines.
The mural’s location in Tahrir Square — the symbolic heart of Cairo and the focal point of the 2011 uprising — added to the attention it attracted. While city officials moved quickly to remove the image from the ceremonial route, the incident highlighted how preparations for high-level state visits can prompt swift interventions when public art collides with contested narratives about history and heritage.
The painted-over work and the debate it generated underscore the sensitivities around cultural representation in public spaces. The larger programme of murals around the capital continued as planned, but this case has renewed public discussion about who gets to define Egypt’s past and how those choices are displayed in the modern urban landscape.