Cairo Painted Over the Pharaohs Before Xi’s Visit

Hours before Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Cairo for a state visit, city authorities had a 66-meter mural painted over in Tahrir Square. The volunteer youth group Rasmet Basma created the work as one of 40 commissioned murals intended to beautify the capital. Its portraits of Tutankhamun and Nefertiti appeared dark-skinned, prompting accusations that the artists were promoting Afrocentric claims about ancient Egypt.

Ahmed Moussa, the 22-year-old founder of Rasmet Basma, said the Cairo governorate instructed the group to remove the mural. The team had generated designs with ChatGPT and completed the painting in five days. Moussa said a golden-bronze tone created shadows that made the faces look darker at night, and he acknowledged that the group had not consulted archaeology or art specialists. He also said the deputy governor and district head had visited the work before the social-media controversy grew.

A state visit changes the visual tempo of a capital. Walls brighten, flags multiply, and the motorcade route becomes a moving frame through which the government presents a finished version of itself. The mural was commissioned as part of that display, then erased from it. The timing reveals diplomatic choreography, but it does not prove that Xi’s presence supplied the sole motive for removal.

The faces carried more than paint

The historical question cannot be settled by assigning ancient people a single modern racial category. Ancient Egypt lasted for millennia, interacted with neighboring African and Mediterranean populations, and represented human bodies through artistic conventions as well as observation. Former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass argued that surviving temple scenes do not support portraying Egyptian rulers as sub-Saharan African and said a site as important as Tahrir Square required expert oversight. That criticism deserves engagement, not conversion into an automatic verdict on every shade an artist might use.

The commission itself complicates the official response. Artistic license can simplify history, and public art at a nationally significant site warrants informed review. Yet officials reportedly watched the project develop before the backlash, leaving basic questions about approval unanswered. Who reviewed the designs, who accepted the color palette, and who signed the removal order matter because the painters were volunteers working inside a government beautification program, not unaffiliated artists claiming a wall overnight.

Fresh paint has ended the immediate spectacle without resolving the civic argument. Cairo authorities can still publish the original brief, explain the review process, and say whether Rasmet Basma’s mural will return, move elsewhere, or remain visible only in photographs. The better possibility is not a wall exempt from disagreement. It is a public wall whose disagreements are allowed a public record.