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| digital illustration by Christopher Shortby |
When the King Tut roadshow rolled into London last year, the organizers didn’t book space at the National Gallery or the British Museum. Instead, they turned to a snazzy entertainment complex on the eastern fringes of the city.
When we arrive, the O2 Center is plugging concerts by Tina Turner, Barry Manilow, and Elton John. Fans in rhinestone dresses and pink cowboy hats are flocking to see Dolly Parton strut her stuff onstage. If you know a man by the company he keeps, then Tutankhamun, the boy king from Ancient Egypt, must be a relic with mass appeal.
King Tut (he even has a nickname) has always been much more than an historical figure. The discovery of his treasure-stuffed tomb in 1922 was pure Hollywood. After years of searching in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, archaeologists finally stumbled on a staircase buried beneath the sand. They dug their way down to a doorway that had remained sealed for 33 centuries. With his fellow tomb-hunters holding their breath behind him, Howard Carter, an English archaeologist, punched a hole in the plaster, lit a candle, and peered inside: “At first I could see nothing … but 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.”
In an instant, King Tut became a household name and the world fell in love with Ancient Egypt. Tales, rituals, and imagery from the land of the pharaohs filtered into novels, fashion, architecture, and advertising. Mummy movies became a Hollywood genre. The riddles and conspiracy theories swirling around King Tut added to the frisson: was the handsome pharaoh murdered at the age of 19? Did a curse placed on his tomb later kill off members of Carter’s team? When his treasures hit the international exhibition circuit, millions came to gawp.
Now, 30 years after the last outbreak of Tutmania, the comeback tour arrives in Dallas. And this time the boy king has brought his family. “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” uses artifacts spanning a century to tell the story of the 18th dynasty that ruled Ancient Egypt at its peak. The questions are: can 130 relics, however exquisite and historically resonant, seduce a public hooked on the showier thrills of video games and the Internet? And is this exhibit, as its critics suggest, more about consumerism than education?
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| TREASURE NOTE: (from left) King Tut; a chest; a painted wood torso of Tutankhamun; calcite vessel with lion atop and four enemies of Egypt trapped at the base, represented only by their heads. photography courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art |
Clearly the Tut brand is still strong enough to pull in the crowds. More than 1.2 million people attended the exhibition at the O2 Center. On a sunny afternoon in July, families, seniors, tourists, college students, and courting couples are waiting in line. You can feel the buzz. There is something about Ancient Egypt—the pyramids and sphinxes, the cobras, falcons and scarabs, the kohl-eyed pharaohs in their ornate headdresses, the secret treasure and cursed tombs, the hooks that remove the brain through the nose before mummification—that gets the pulse racing. A young woman in front of me squeezes her partner’s arm. “This is so exciting,” she says. “I’ve always loved Ancient Egypt.”
The exhibition opens with some razzmatazz: a 90-second film featuring gilded coffins, moody pharaohs, and photographs of Howard Carter looking dashing in the desert. The narrator is Omar Sharif, whose rich, portentous voice sends a tingle down the spine. “Wow,” whispers a little boy beside me. “It’s like Tomb Raider.”
Or is it? When the large black doors slide away silently, the first room of the exhibition turns out to be as far from PlayStation as you can get. No screens or interactive displays, no flashing lights, loud bangs, or CGI effects. Just a single granite statue of Tutankhamun resting on a plinth—cool, elegant, a breathtaking work of art.
This sets the tone for the whole show. The organizers have chosen to let the objects speak for themselves. Explanatory notes are short and to the point. Carpeted floors create a welcome hush. The lighting is low, warm, and intimate, making this very unromantic venue feel almost like a sacred place. Even the cheesy Egyptian music tinkling in the background stops being a distraction after a while.
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| A sarcophagus with inscriptions. photography courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art |
My 9-year-old son Benjamin and his friend Davy are with me. Both are delighted to discover that on the back of that first granite statue the name of Tutankhamun has been rubbed out and replaced with that of a later pharaoh.
Like an exile from the Politburo, Tut was airbrushed out of Egyptian history, which explains why his tomb lay untouched while those of other royals were looted. “I think you can see the scratch marks where they changed the hieroglyphs,” Benjamin says. Other children jostle to get a better look and deliver their own verdict. Lara Croft seems like a distant memory.
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| Gilded statuettes hold the symbols of kingship: the crook and the flail. photography courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art |
The early rooms put Tutankhamun in historical context. At the age of 9, he inherited a vast kingdom stretching from the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in the south almost to the Euphrates River in the north. Strategic marriages had brought peace and unimaginable riches but it was also a time of turmoil. Akhenaten, Tutankhamun’s predecessor and probably also his father, unleashed a cultural revolution in the kingdom by moving the capital to Amarna, rewriting the rules of art and architecture, and imposing monotheism on a people used to worshipping many gods. Little is known about how Tutankhamun handled this explosive legacy but the consensus is that he was a minor pharaoh who was excised from the annals of history as punishment for his father’s heretical reforms.
Without getting bogged down in the politics, the exhibition paints a vivid picture of life in Ancient Egypt in 14th century B.C. Everything revolved around the Nile. The great river routinely flooded and then receded, leaving behind fertile fields. Papyrus plants growing near the shore supplied paper for writing. Mud and stones from the riverbed were used to build houses. The Nile was also the main artery of transport. A 7-foot wooden boat taken from the tomb of a Tutankhamun relative stops us in our tracks. It is intricately painted with gods and amulets in a riot of colors. The owner is carved as a sphinx trampling his enemies. “I can’t believe that’s more than 3,000 years old,” Davy says, peering through the glass case. “How cool is that?”
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| A wooden mirror case, formed in the shape of an ankh, the Egyptian word for “life.” photography courtesy of the Dallas Museum of Art |
There are gorgeous ivory, granite, and obsidian statuettes of Tutankhamun’s relatives, but it’s the everyday artifacts that really bring Ancient Egypt to life and bring us closer to the people who used them. Jugs, animal figurines, perfume bottles, drinking bowls—all handsomely crafted and some bearing the scuffs of ordinary use 3,000 years ago. You can almost imagine a pharaoh slipping the sturdy leather dog collar round the neck of a favorite pet. Reaching for the wooden unguent spoon made in the shape of a nude woman swimming. Dipping a hand into the cosmetic cream stored in a pot shaped like a slave carrying a basket on his shoulders. Or fondling the lapis lazuli pomegranates that would eventually be placed in his tomb.
Death runs through the exhibition like the Nile through the heart of Egypt. Tutankhamun and his contemporaries devoted much time to building tombs and performing rituals that would ensure a smooth passage to an eternal afterlife in the Fields of the Blessed. Mummification, which took about 70 days and involved burying internal organs in separate canopic jars, was meant to preserve a person’s identity in the spiritual world. The exquisite coffinette that housed Tutankhamun’s liver is a real showstopper. It stands open on a plinth, glittering gold inlaid with red, black, and blue, the carved face of the young king noble and serene. It is like a cross between a Rodin and a Fabergé egg. If I could take home one thing from the show, this would be it.
Any object placed in a tomb was believed to accompany the deceased to the afterlife, so no expense was spared. Witness the staff with the handle carved to resemble a Nubian slave, the snaking cobra diadem, the exquisite dagger found beside Tutankhamun’s mummified corpse—everywhere the glint of gold, as Carter said. The pharaohs expected to lead an afterlife of leisure, too, so their tombs were also stuffed with shabtis, deliciously carved figurines charged with doing any work the monarch might be called upon to perform on the other side. “I wouldn’t mind having a shabti to do my homework,” Benjamin says.
Critics have given the exhibition mixed reviews. Some find the sand-colored columns and the blacked-out coffin room too gimmicky. Others feel cheated that iconic artifacts, such as the gold mask of Tutankhamun’s mummy, have been left in the Cairo Museum this time around. To manage expectations, the organizers have placed at the entrance an apologetic sign explaining that Tut’s mummified corpse is too fragile to travel outside Egypt.
Yet such criticism seems like nit-picking. Most of the people around us at the O2 Center appear to be enchanted. If you take the time to commune with the artifacts, to unravel their stories, they will serve up the magic and majesty of Tutankhamun and the 18th dynasty.
About halfway through the show, we come face to face with the boy king in all his glory. A stunning life-size wooden torso, the tunic and hat painted yellow, the face reddish brown, stands alone like a ghostly hologram in a darkened room. The earlobes hang low as if stretched by heavy jewelry. The face is oval, cherubic, hopeful, with a hint of steel. He is utterly compelling, his eyes holding the gaze like those of the Mona Lisa. Spend some time in the room, gazing at his face from different angles, and you start to imagine how he could survive on the throne for a tumultuous decade. Whether the torso was a tailor’s dummy, a figure used in rituals, or a mannequin for storing robes and jewelery, it captures the splendor of Tutankhamun.
The exhibition also gives a feel for the man behind the mythology by displaying objects that he cherished and wished to take with him after death. It is a marvelous and sometimes moving inventory: a child’s chair and footrest made of ebony with inlays of ivory; a cosmetics jar with a lion resting on the lid; model boats to help him travel, fish, and play in the afterlife. We spend a long time ogling the two-sided wooden board game with its tiny drawer for pieces. “I know what Tut was thinking with this one,” Davy says. “I’d want my Game Boy in the afterlife with me, too.”
Nearby sits a small shrine delicately engraved with images of Tutankhamun and his queen in everyday moments—she anoints his skin, he pours her wine, their hands touch tenderly. It is a touching, intimate portrait of the boy behind the golden mask. But perhaps the most poignant piece in the show is the gilded death mask made for a stillborn baby. Tutankhamun sired no children but was buried with two fetuses. The small mask bears a puzzled, sad expression.
The final room brings the Tut story up to date. Short films explain how modern scanning technology has filled in some of the gaps. We now know that Tutankhamun was a shade under 5 feet 6 inches and still growing when he died. He had no cavities but a badly impacted wisdom tooth. He had broken his ankle and several ribs, possibly during a chariot race. It is also clear now that he was not killed, as some thought, by a blow to the head. This sets the boys off on a frenzy of morbid speculation.
“I think they got him with a poisoned dart, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Benjamin says.
Davy shakes his head. “No way,” he says. “I bet he tried to enter another pharaoh’s tomb and got killed by the curse on it.”
To round things off, we get a glimpse of the real Tut. Videos show his mummified remains being laid back to rest in a stone sarcophagus in the original burial chamber in Egypt. He looks desiccated yet strangely at peace.
Suddenly, the exhibition veers into shameless kitsch. In the shop tacked on as the final room, King Tut morphs into King Tat. Everything from teddy bears, t-shirts, and tea towels to calendars, cups, and cards is on sale with a Tutankhamun theme. In a slightly gruesome nod to the art of mummification, there is even a sarcophagus-shaped tissue dispenser where you pull out the Kleenex through the nose.
“I like that,” Benjamin says. “Can we get one?” I pretend to be too fascinated by the limited-edition papyrus paintings to hear. At the back of the shop are shelves of pretty shabtis. Are they destined to nestle in a 21st-century coffin? Or will their final resting place be a dusty self-storage unit or a box in an attic?
Coming out of the exhibition into the retail section of the O2 Center delivers a shock, like surfacing from a dream. Suddenly the reverential hush, the quiet communion with the distant past, gives way to a modern cacophony of mobile phones, Muzak, and McDonald’s. But the spell is not completely broken. The boys are pumped. Davy says he wants to be an archaeologist. Benjamin is already lobbying for a vacation in Egypt. It seems, after all, that silent rooms full of ancient relics can seduce the iPod generation.
As we pick our way through the throng of Dolly Parton fans, a final question comes to mind. Three thousand years from now, who is more likely to fill our descendants with awe and wonder? The evergreen pop stars pulling in the crowds at the O2 Center? Or the most famous pharaoh of them all? My money is on the Tut.
SAVE THE DATE
“Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” is at the Dallas Museum of Art October 3 through May 17, 2009. Call 214-922-1803.
Carl Honoré lives in London and is the author of two books: In Praise of Slow and Under Pressure.
