Notes From Under the House

King Tut’s face is revealed.

This reminds me of the King Tut exhibit we saw last year at LACMA.  In all honesty, I have no interest in Egyptology.  I do not like Egyptian art or artifacts or African art, for that matter.  It’s too gaudy and the masks are ugly and garish. I think all that gold is…obscene.  The tickets were a gift and I did have a slight (minute) interest in the boy king.   I did not get to see the exhibit the first time ‘round (ten years ago?), where apparently they had the death mask and his mummy.  This time, they couldn’t exhibit his mask as it was too damaged to travel and I don’t know what was up with his coffin. Instead, they had a facsimile of his mummy.  They showed a film of the multi-layered (nine) shrine that he is buried in (reminded me of those Russian matryoshka nesting dolls).  That was interesting as was the mini film they had (which I swear I had seen on the History channel) speculating on the circumstances surrounding his death. It wasn’t from a blow to the head, but perhaps, a knee fracture that got severely infected days before he died.  They had on display a woman’s coffin, I can’t remember whose it was – maybe Tut’s mom, I don’t know.   Another visitor overheard us talking about it and she said that the coffins were not really made of solid gold like we’ve always thought, but a gold leaf.   I just viewed the displays, read the plaques and moved on.  When I’m interested in something, I can remember all kinds of stuff about it.  Most of the stuff I heard or saw was fleeting from my mind.  However, a few things did stick: 

On one of the plaques I read, it stated that the dark colour of their skin “may represent the black soil.”  I may have interpreted that wrong, but I don’t think so. There were too many references to the skin colour and description of their features (broad nose, protruding lips, wide-set eyes, etc.).  For instance, never did I see or hear mention that Nefertiti was a black woman.  In every book I’ve read on African, African American, Caribbean, and even some South American history, Nefertiti is depicted as a black woman; in every African American bookshop I’ve ever been in, there is always, in all sizes, a reproduction of the bust of Nefertiti (to the point of irritation, too) and she is shown as a Nubian queen.  I remember in high school we had to study Egyptian mythology (as well as Greek, which I preferred) and Nefertiti was always described as having a short rounded hairstyle like a fro - when she wasn’t wearing that bride of Frankenstein headdress - that was modeled after the Nubians, and that her lips were “full.”  Even Tut’s dad, Akhenaten (sp?), was described as having an elongated chin, pronounced lips and slanted eyes.  Some said he had a genetic disease (because of his Negroid features), and because of this was said to be infertile. Huh?  

I guess people make their own reality. 

I remember a beautiful wood walking cane they had on exhibit and the handle curved into the body of a Nubian.  I read on the plaque that the bottom of Tut’s sandals had drawings of Nubians, Libyans and Asiatics – so that every step the boy king took would crush his enemies.     We viewed scarabs, cartouches, vessels in the shape of ankhs, elaborate jewelry (again, I don’t like all that gaudy stuff); a replica of the papyrus boat that would take them into the afterlife (they were obsessed with death); constant references to spells from the Book of the Dead.  I didn’t see any cat statues as I expected or wanted. Cats were highly regarded as sacred in Egyptian lore.  The only display I saw was of a leonine goddess named “Sekhmet.”  And she was a lion, not a cat.  

All in all, the exhibit was okay.  I was disappointed that we didn’t get to view the mummy, which was the whole reason for going, but I understand.  I get to see pictures of his face now .