During yesterday's TODAY Show, a reconstruction of Queen Nefertiti decked in her traditional royal regalia was revealed. A team of historians, artists and other professionals, led by Expedition Unknown's Josh Gates, painstakingly worked on the portrait bust in order to ensure its accuracy. However, the final product has left many people dumbfounded with one very peculiar choice; the colour of Nefertiti's skin.
Queen Nefertiti was once the queen of Egypt, and mother to the legendary King Tut. She would have had a noticeably dark skin tone similar to residents of the African empire. In the reconstruction, Nefertiti appears to be slightly sun-kissed, and is rendered with an uncharacteristically rosy pout.
The general consensus when describing the physical appearance of an Egyptian queen would be that she would have had brown skin that did not look like a tan acquired on a vacation in the tropics. The most well-known artistic representation of Queen Nefertiti is a portrait bust from 1345 BC, which was created by a sculptor by the name of Thutmose. This most famous version of the monarch, which is now housed in Germany's Neues Museum, is rendered in a darker shade of brown, while her lips are coloured a deep cranberry.
After the bust's grand reveal, people took to Twitter to express their outrage or utter confusion at what they had just seen.
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