King Tut's Treasure and the Limits of Imagination
Long ago there was a boy who found himself on the throne during a time of turbulence. He reigned about a decade and did not distinguish himself in any particular fashion. This Tutankhamun is no empire builder, no son of the god Montu to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies. His portraits often show him as soft and effeminate or just wistfully beautiful. He appears tainted by a decadence for which he was not responsible. Tutankhamun dies very young without an heir to succeed him. He is neither lauded nor reviled, then shortly forgotten. Soon the memory of Tutankhamun, though a king of Egypt, is not even a faint echo in the vast canyon of time. He seems fated to be cheated of the immortality conferred upon other kingly names. He is no Ozymandias to inspire a poet of any age.
But this unsung young man manages, instead, to cheat time. In a way, it seems he was just biding his, waiting for a man named Howard Carter to be born. And, truly, it does seem as if Carter was born to do just this one thing--reclaim Tutankhamun from the depths of obscurity. Coming forth once again into daylight with the same blaze of gold with which he descended 3,000 years before, the pharaoh dazzles our century. But it is not just the lavish use of precious metal and the wonderful treasures that fascinate us. It is also something captured by a genius of a goldsmith in a portrait. Thanks to him we have to perceive Tut as being perfectly immediate, human and vulnerable. Gold was thought to be the flesh of the gods and, in the way that great art has of being more real than life, we can only view the withered face of the dead boy as an artifact beside such artistry. On the other hand, we are oddly certain that no artist, however great, could have given us portraits of men such as Seti I and his son, Rameses, that could have the impact on us that their own dead faces have achieved.
However, various fateful combinations of factors made King Tut, more fortunate in death than in life, the most famous Egyptian ruler ever. Still, his fabulous tomb, while revealing to us the extent of the wealth and beauty surrounding the kings of Egypt, tells us nothing much about Tut, himself. As with all superstars, though, rumors, gossip and theories arose concerning his origins, life and death. He has even been imbued with the ability to avenge himself upon those who dared to disturb his anonymous slumber. And so King Tut, such as is known about him personally, and the circumstances surrounding his re-discovery became a kind of industry for three-quarters of a century. But, lo--just when one was sure the young king would keep all his secrets forever, 75 years to the dot later, it looks like he will tantalize us by revealing a bit more about himself to a whole new generation, all those who initially dealt with his resurrection themselves being dead.
A French archeological team has recently uncovered a new tomb at Saqqara, a few kilometers west of Cairo. It belongs to one Maya, the wetnurse of the pharaoh, Tutankhamun. From this tomb, it is hoped that Egyptologists will finally discover who the actual parents of the boy-king were, as this has been hotly debated for seven decades. This is Tut flexing his powers, proving himself, indeed, the Master of Time--or perhaps just timing.
Many people, indeed, are attracted to the "mysterious" aspect of ancient Egypt. They search after secrets connected with this ancient land in the heavens and even imagine holes beneath the earth leading to chambers that contain the wisdom of the Ages. Little do they realize that ancient Egypt is really one big mystery and that even what we think we know about it probably isn't much like the reality. I learned this from studying an old photograph taken in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Of all the photos in all the books about Egypt, this is the one that speaks to me with the most eloquence. What it says is this: YOU DON'T KNOW THEM AT ALL.
We are convinced that the ancient Egyptians have left us quite a legacy of art and writing, some of it great. We are even priviledged to look upon the actual faces of these people who lived so long ago. We have so many books about them with so many pictures in them that we feel certain that we have been able to get a good idea of how they lived. But do we really? Did the ancient Egyptians merely leave us a tank full of red herrings from which we have tried to make a meal? Were they a nation of artists and scribes so hide-bound by convention that all they portrayed, every sentence they wrote lagged so far behind the reality of their actual culture that they might have been depicting their own ancestors instead of themselves and mimicking their language instead of writing their own? We already have a good idea that the written language didn't necessarily resemble what was spoken in the streets of Thebes , in the fields or even in the court of the pharaoh. As for the rest--just look in the box shown in the photo taken in the tomb of the young pharaoh.
In case you haven't seen it, I will describe the contents of the chest to you. The photograph was taken just as it was opened. Not long afterward, much of the contents crumbled into dust. Beautiful things were carelessly thrown into this chest, probably disarrayed by the robbers who stole an unknown quantity of the tomb furnishings and treasures. Wonderful wearing-apparel of the ruler of all Egypt is stirred together in that box as in a washing maching. One can make out an entire marvelous sandal so intricately fashioned that it is at once apparent that shoe-making in the 18th Dynasty was as highly evolved an art as gold-smithing. In the box, the sandal is still near-perfect. On whose foot in all of ancient Egyptian art do we ever see a shoe such as this one? In one corner of the chest are some large beads such as I own, myself, and are usually seen hanging about the necks of Bedouin women in "National geographic". Next to them lies a strange bit of gear that I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to what it was--but it looks for all the world like one of the skimpy bras that constitute the top half of modern bikinis. Whatever this is, I've never seen it on an Egyptian of antiquity. There is a lot of cloth--never tested so we don't know for sure what sort--at that time still encrusted with sequins--some in the shape of stars, some discs and some squares. Some of the material is as heavily sequined as some evening dresses of today and edged with beading like garments that are manufactured in modern India. Absolutely no different at all. One of the interesting items in the chest was an imitation cheetah pelt like priests and "heirs" of dead monarchs are shown wearing with a wooden head attached to it and spots made from sequins.
The contents of this box tell me that we have no real idea at all how Tutankhamun and his court dressed in spite of all the paintings, statues, whatnot. No sequins there--not a one. Yet that one box alone contains enough sequins to make Liberace drool. The sandals in the picture you couldn't buy for less than $500 on Rodeo Drive. The furniture in the tomb is of such craftsmanship as to be completely beyond pricing. Even the Nieman-Marcus Christmas Catalogue wouldn't know how much to ask for one chair. There were people in the 18th Dynasty making such items--without machinery of any kind--and who knows what else that we can't even imagine! That, I think, is the trouble right there. Imagination. When I look into that box I know that we can't even imagine how ancient Egypt really was because our imaginations are limited. And we have been mislead by the art into thinking that all was streamlined simplicity and white pleated linen when it could all have been as roccoco as a French queen's boudoir. We are shown rows upon rows of people, their faces half-obscured by heavy wigs, but there are mummies of women with hair past their shoulders and once-beautiful men with hair as long as a rock star's. We have a royal lady with neatly-arranged, upswept sausage curls--some hairdresser's last effort before the bandages were carefully wound around the creation. Where do things like this fit into our conception of ancient Egypt? Where are the other paintings of red leather gloves such as we are allowed to see but once (and never, ever such wonders of glove-making as King Tut wore ) and where are all the green shoes (yes shoes, not sandals and green was the favorite shade) that have come down to us?
That's why, every once in awhile, I look into that disordered box. It's just to remind me that the image I have of ancient Egypt isn't real. It's fascinating, it's fun--but it's false. The truth was in that box--but most of it has become dust. Actually, we still have one of Tut's embroidered shirts or "dalmatics" It looks nothing like anything he's wearing in any of his portraits. In fact, it's the same shirt men wore in western civilization up to about the 15th Century AD and are still wearing in some parts of the world today. Probably, the people of King Tut's time would have shocked us had we been able to see how contemporary they actually appeared, how different from the pictures we have formed in our minds. Outside of those few things from the boy-king's tomb, a whole way of life is lost to us. Of this I feel quite sure.
Marianne Luban
