Why is there so much speculation about skin tones when there is so much evience in statues, paintings and reliefs. Not to mention the sarcophagi, papyri and sketches. I recall a statue I saw in the Cairo Museum of Prince Ramose and his wife (Nofret I think), a couple from the Old Kingdom. The Princess was very pale, almost white in her complexion and Ramose was a tanned ochre colour. I know it is merely one example but there seems to be more primary evidence to show that Egypt was not as different then as it is now, with a mix of European, Arabic and African blood. Surely testing the mummies we have would put lay to all this dispute. Can it be so hard to determine if Tutankhamun was a Black African, or a fair skinned European.
To be honest I think there is a little more behind this argument than just historical significance. One reply was written in Capital letters, and read quite aggresively in places which I feel takes this out of historical context and much more to do with black rights in the modern era. From my experience of Egyptian History in School my teacher never sat down and said "Tutankhamun was white", just as I was never told that Jesus had long blonde hair and blue eyes. Both are just images that have built up over time. At least for the Egyptian matter we have a lot of evidence showing that many of the Egyptians simply were not black. No racism at all here but if we took a black man and a white man and swapped the colour of their skins one could still tell the difference in facial features. Black men tend to have much broader noses and more defined features, whereas caucasian and Middle Eastern men tend to have slimmer, longer noses and softer features. Rarely do we see a person in a flesh tone deeper than an ochre in men or a very light brown in women.