Extreme Views of an Antiquity Collector About the Past

Tim Haines' closed-access anti-archaeological Yahoo "AncientArtifacts" discussion group is one of those places where we can see the views of the people who claim they are "educating themselves" and "deepening society's knowledge about the past" by collecting unprovenanced archaeological finds and discussing them among themselves without the participation of archaeologists. Haines a few days ago posted there an article which claims (see warning*): King Tut’s DNA is Western European. A contentious enough claim one would have thought, but look where he found this reading matter, the so-called "European Union Times". Even a cursory glance through the other articles o this website casts some doubt on the judgement of a moderator who thinks it appropriate to post an article from a racist hate website onto his own group.

The article "reveals" that the DNA of the 18th dynasty pharoah is consistent with R1b apparently the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in western Europe. The (anonymous) author of the article concludes: "So much for the Afro-centrists and others who have derided the very obvious northwestern European appearance of a large number of the pharonic mummies. It seems like March of the Titans was right after all..." (for an online version of Mr Kemp's nonsense, see the March of the Titans website, and several refuting the author's arguments). In other words, ?Tutankhamun was white.

The comments on the website are revealing of who else apart from Mr Haines reads it, among them was the one by "Professor Demetrius" from the USA, perhaps another antiquity collector like Haines with his own "hands on" interpretation of ancient history. According to him the very reason why the Egyptian civilization fell was that "it was eventually overrun by Blacks and Semites – if there had been none of those racial groupings present, the white- Egyptian civilization would still be going!". The 25th dynasty "was a colored one – and also, of course, the LAST Egyptian dynasty. This colored dynasty was the result of racial integration which diluted the original White population of Egypt, which then led to the disappearance of the Egyptian culture". Well, I guess if you ignore the 26th and then the other five dynasties its the last before the Ptolemies (wasn't Egyptian culture still surviving then?).

Over on Amazon, we find Mr Haines has reviewed two books, one is about shabti collection (its what Haines collects), and the other is revealing. Its The traveler's key to ancient Egypt: a guide to the sacred places of ancient Egypt by John Anthony West (one of the principal initiators of the "the Sphinx-older-than-Egyptologists-think" theory) which he describes as "For any mind that is even slightly ajar, let alone open...", noting that "West gives an alternative account of the meaning of the monuments and antiquities to be seen in Egypt, [...] and has a different viewpoint to the orthodox school in many cases [...] I felt rather sorry for tourists in groups with official guides, because they seemed to be missing out on at least half of the story, and in many cases the whole point [...] questions which conventional Egyptology has either glibly brushed under the carpet or failed to address at all". Yeah right, like his "analysis of the architecture of the Temple of Luxor, based on the work of Schwaller de Lubicz, [...] once it was pointed out how the whole building maps onto a plan of the human skeleton, I found it very difficult to refute". [Well apart from the fact that the parts of the temple making up that plan are of different phases].

What is interesting about this is that it shows what is happening to all the loose ancient artefacts on the market, they are going to collectors who believe things like this and spread it about. What kind of "learning about the past" has Mr Haines' accumulation of dugup antiquities produced one wonders. What theories is his personal collection required to bolster?

Mr Haines, you probably already know, but there is a LOT of similar DNA based material on the Stormfront website (and no, I am not providing a link) and other White Supremecist resources. They love the spurious "scientific" air that using this material to prove their various theories gives.

As for the DNA "evidence" about Tutankhamun being "white", have a look at Kate Phizackerley's website, expecially the article Was Tutankhamun European? (Consideratons of Haplogroup) .

* Warning Kate Phizackerley says that her anti-virus program warned her that there is some (unspecified) threat on the "EU Times" website, my updated anti-virus program did not detect one. I do not give a link to the "news" website itself however just in case, and click on the article itself at your own risk.