“Can you see anything?” Lord Carnarvon asked of Howard Carter on November 21st, 1922 as Carter peered into what would be revealed to be the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. “Yes, wonderful things,” Carter replied. The archaeologist would later write of the experience “ At first I could see nothing , but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold-everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment I was struck dumb with amazement.” And in the intervening century many other people have shared a degree of Carter’s amazement when they have seen first hand many of those golden artifacts that he saw on that occasion that were put in the monarch’s tomb to provide him comfort in his journey to the next world and were later placed along with his mummified remains in the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo, Egypt where they remain today. In the recently published “Tutankhamun And the Tomb That Changed the World” Long Island University professor and Egyptologist Bob Brier has told the tale of how his final resting place was discovered and the role that he and the objects found there have played since that time. Among those artifacts was a golden chariot that had a falcon attached to it that the author describes as being “The world’s first hood ornament,” and details how chariots played an important role in the building of the ancient Egyptian empire, and that the tomb also included images of Tutankhamun hunting wild animals from his chariot. “The boy king,” is how the monarch is often described, and Brier details that he was probably not over the age of 19 at the time of his death. His equally young wife Ankesenamun is also featured in many of the images that paid tribute to him that were found in his tomb, and the author points out that they were usually shown touching one another in a manner that indicates a close relationship, and that such closeness was unusual for art of that time that depicted royal Egyptian families. Poignantly, two fetuses were found in the tomb that Brier concludes must have been the result of miscarriages suffered by Ankesenamun. In a chapter entitled “Tutankhamun Superstar,” the Egyptologist explains that “From the very beginning of the tomb’s discovery, people were fascinated by Tutankhamun,” and describes how the first popular song written about him, “Old King Tut Was A Wise Old Nut,” was released in 1923, and how what was described as “Tut-Mania” in the august New York Times, gripped the places that his loaned out artifacts were displayed in the 1970’s in museums in the U.S. including New York City, New Orleans, Boston, and several other places, and that souvenirs depicted the images found in his tomb have also been popular since the discovery of his tomb. The concept of the “museum blockbuster,” the author concludes, was the work of Tutankhamun and Dr. Thomas Hoving of the New York Metropolitan Museum, and tells of how the latter transformed his museum from a “stuffy repository of art,” to “a vibrant museum that became the place to be seen” in New York City. Steve Martin’s song and performance about Tutankhamun on “Saturday Night Live” is also part of his role in our recent popular culture. While Brier doesn’t mention it, the campy television production of the 1960’s “Batman” featured a villain who was an Egyptologist at a university in Gotham City who became convinced he was King Tut after being hit in the head in a student protest and battled Batman and Robin in his efforts to take over the city he thought was his rightful kingdom. The author concludes that in the past century Tutankhamun has gone from an obscure Egyptian king “to the most famous pharaoh of all.”
Against the Grain 