A 66-metre-long mural in Cairo's Tahrir Square has been painted over after a fierce public backlash over its depiction of the pharaoh Tutankhamun and Queen Nefertiti with dark skin. The work was one of forty murals commissioned to beautify the city ahead of a state visit by the Chinese president, but it vanished under fresh paint just hours before the dignitary arrived. The mural was the project of Rasmet Basma, a volunteer youth collective founded by the 22-year-old Ahmed Moussa. Working in just five days in late August, the group generated its design concepts using the artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT, then painted the digital blueprints onto the city walls by hand. According to Moussa, Cairo's deputy governor and the district head visited the site during the process and were impressed by the murals, until controversy began building on social media. Critics, including citizens and scholars, read the aesthetic choices as an endorsement of Afrocentrism, the contested theory asserting that ancient Egyptian civilisation was exclusively black African in origin. One online commentator asked whether anyone involved had even looked at what Nefertiti actually looked like, while others accused Afrocentric groups of appropriating the images. The prominent Egyptologist Zahi Hawass criticised the project for lacking specialist oversight. Moussa said the group had used a golden-bronze tone that cast shadows on the faces at night, making them appear dark-skinned, and acknowledged that the team should have consulted specialists in archaeology and art. He confirmed that the Cairo governorate asked the collective to paint over its work. The episode has become a flashpoint in the long-running debate over how ancient Egypt is visually represented, and over the risks of using generative AI in public art commissions without expert review.