Beyoncé as Nefertiti at the Leiden Museum: Egypt decides to ban Dutch archaeologists

After the Netflix-Cleopatra controversy, it is the choice of singers Beyoncé and Rihanna as Queen Nefertiti, American rapper Nas as Tutankhamun and actor Eddie Murphy as Ramses, taken by the National Museum of Leiden, dedicated to history ancient, which is triggering a new cultural controversy between Egypt and Holland. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Fagr opened the hostilities by writing in its pages that “this exposure is provocative and requires an explanation.”

This first salvo was only the tip of the iceberg since, according to The Times, the Egyptian authorities immediately took a first retaliatory measure by prohibiting Dutch archaeologists from henceforth returning to Egypt.

The Leiden Museum tried to defend its approach by stating that the Kemet (literally Black Earth) exhibition had the sole purpose of “exploring the significance of ancient Egypt and Nubia in the work of diaspora musicians African." Before adding to justify their choices of personification, “In Egyptology, the science that deals with ancient Egypt, Egypt has long been studied mainly within the framework of the Mediterranean region… but many musicians with African roots point out that ancient Egypt is an African culture.” A pro domo plea that strangely echoes recent statements, controversial to say the least, by rapper Gims.

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According to Hossam Zidan, the specialist in archeology of the Al-Fagr newspaper, the arguments of the curators of the Dutch exhibition are not very convincing: “They should have specified that the exhibition concerns non-Egyptian African musicians. This is consistent with history, reality and logic, because they were not and will not be Egyptians”.

While waiting for the supporters of these two visibly antagonistic parties to understand each other, the banishment of Dutch archaeologists will have a consequence which could prove unfortunate because it is the researchers of the national museum of Leiden who played, in particular, a major role in the work during the Sakkara excavations. The investigations carried out on this vast necropolis, located near Memphis, have revealed for half a century many testimonies of daily life in the time of the pharaohs.