Saturday, May 27, 2006

King Tut exhibit: BCE trumps BC

Hmmm....Yet another King Tut post, the fourth in three days.

Saturday's entry into the King Tut journal documents the strangling weed smothering our society, political-corrrectness.

The dates accompanying the artifacts in the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs at Chicago's Field Museum use the designations BCE, short for Before Common Era. Instead of BC--Before Christ.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

The changes -- showing up at museums, in academic circles and in school textbooks -- have been touted as more sensitive to people of faiths outside of Christianity.

The terms BC and AD were created in the 6th century by the Roman Catholic monk Dionysius Exiguus.

The use of BCE and CE have rankled some Christians. In 2000, the Southern Baptist Convention criticized the use of BCE and CE, calling them "the result of secularization" and "political correctness."

A Field spokeswoman said the museum uses both the old BC and AD and the new BCE and CE designations in other exhibits.

Keep in mind that BC has been used for centuries, the full designation, Before Christ, is almost never written in full or spoken out loud.

Political correctness run-amok again.

Related post: Political correctness at Chicago's Adler Planetarium

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