Season 2 Episode 3: Tutmania

You’ve probably heard of the famous King Tut. Be it museum exhibits or Tut-themed paraphernalia, it seems like the whole world is obsessed with this boy king. But why does he so enamor us today, and how have our depictions of him created and perpetrated an Orientalist narrative that has had negative consequences in both the past and the present? Listen in to find out!

Featuring: Maryan Ragheb
PhD Candidate,
UCLA

Transcript

Section 1: Introductions (0:00)

ISABEL DAWSON: When you think about Ancient Egypt, who or what comes to mind? Is it the pyramids at Giza? Is it the Nile river? Is it the gods, like Anubis or Ra?

REBECCA DAWSON: If you’re like us, you’ll think of the famous King Tut. You might even picture his golden mask, perhaps one of the most well-known artifacts to ever come out of Ancient Egypt.

ISABEL: But have you ever wondered who Tut really was? How someone who lived and died thousands of years ago continues to influence our world today?

ROWAN DAWSON: And does that mask even belong to him? Well, more on that later.

ISABEL: I’m Isabel Dawson-

ROWAN: -I’m Rowan Dawson-

REBECCA: -and I’m Rebecca Dawson. We’re recording this today in the closet of our home. We’re so excited to be talking about King Tutankhamun today, and we hope you listeners are just as excited to hear about him too.

ISABEL: This is episode 3 of season 2 of Now as Then, an ongoing podcast series about the perception of Ancient Egypt throughout time. Our episode, “Tutmania,” intends to delve deeper than the superficial knowledge most people have of the famous boy king today.

ROWAN: First, we’ll go back to Ancient Egypt in the 18th dynasty to talk about Tut’s reign itself and the political and religious mess he found himself with. His family, and their policies, became pretty important here. We’ll also discuss his immediate legacy…or should I say, lack of it.

REBECCA: Then we’ll jump to the 20th century, starting with Howard Carter’s excavation of his tomb and the Tutmania that swept through Europe to the impacts on the field of Egyptology that these findings held.

ISABEL: Last, and certainly not least, we’ll discuss how we, in the modern day, perceive King Tut. From the souvenirs and movies he’s inspired, to his status as the icon for Ancient Egypt in pop culture…and to how our Western depictions of him ultimately contribute to the harmful idea of Orientalism…there’s a lot to say, and we’ll get to all that. But first, we need to go to the past…

Section 2: King Tut’s Reign (2:26)

ROWAN: So, King Tut must’ve been a pretty good ruler, right? He had that tomb full of treasure, and I’d say he’s the most famous pharaoh now.

REBECCA: Yeah, I saw that movie, uh, The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb? Tut saves all of Egypt. He’s the good guy, the hero. ¹

ROWAN: He also fires lasers and has mechanical golden wings—I wouldn’t count on Hollywood for accuracy…but anyways, he must’ve been pretty influential for his time, right?²

ISABEL: Well, not quite. To understand King Tut’s reign, we have to examine Akhenaten, the pharaoh believed to be Tut’s father. You see, Egypt had this long history of polytheism, and they worshipped a large pantheon of gods, including Amun. Akhenaten, however, changed all this. He moved from the traditional capital Thebes to a new one he created in present-day Amarna which was called Akhetaten, or “the Horizon of Aten.” Instead of worshipping Amun and the gods Egypt had for centuries, he uprooted religious tradition to worship a single god, the Sun Disc Aten. Akhenaten wanted to remove funding from the temples of Amun and to effectively erase the deity from history.³ Now, you can understand this wasn’t a very popular idea. Causing religious upheaval isn’t really the best way to gain the favor of those around you. But let’s get back to King Tut. His reign was spent reversing Akhenaten’s policies. He reestablished the worship of Amun, which can also be seen reflected in his name: originally Tutankhaten, he changed it to Tut-ankh-AMUN, which roughly translates to “all life is in the hands of Amun.” He left Amarna and worked to restore the religious traditions Egypt had been following for centuries.⁴

ROWAN: So why isn’t he the hero, then?

REBECCA: Well, despite doing all of this, his name was tarnished because of its association to his father. We know this because of artifacts like the Abydos King List, which was found in the temple of Ramses II, who reigned in the 19th dynasty. See, these king lists weren’t really used to give an accurate, chronological list of all the pharaohs that previously reigned. Instead, they listed the names of kings seen as legitimate—kings the pharaohs of the 19th dynasty, in this case, approved of. In the Abydos King List, the name of Tutankhamun is missing. Actually, the whole Amarna period is missing.⁵ This tells us a lot about how the rulers who came after him wanted him to be remembered. They didn’t want anything associated with the Amarna period and its religious upheaval to be acknowledged. His legacy was all but erased after he died.

ISABEL: Speaking of which, how did he die?

ROWAN: There’s been tons of theories over the years. It could’ve been a number of things that ultimately brought about his early death. No one knows for sure, but it was probably a mixture of a malaria infection and poor health. He had a clubbed foot and probably had to walk with a cane—you can actually find a lot of those in his tomb. There’s also evidence of a leg fracture and infection. Other theories suggest diseased bones or other accidents. A lot of his health problems probably stemmed from the fact that he was a product of incest. His only two daughters were also inbred and were stillborn. Their mummies were found in his tomb, too.⁶

REBECCA: Oh, how sad.

ROWAN: His tomb itself seems to suggest it was prepared quickly—I mean, no one expects a 19 year old to die. For one, it’s much smaller than any other king’s—it was probably meant for an official, but was just repurposed for his use. There’s even brown marks where mold must’ve been on the paintings on the tomb walls. That means that the paint wasn’t even dry yet before the tomb was sealed .⁷ His life was truly too short.

ISABEL: The more I learn about King Tut, the sadder I get. His reign was cut short with an early death at the age of 19, and despite doing all he could to restore Egypt’s religious traditions, his name was tarnished. His story is really very tragic.

REBECCA: Yeah, he wasn’t seen as a hero like in the movies, at least in his time. But all those details don’t make for a sellable narrative, I guess. Anyways, as I mentioned before, Tutankhamun was basically unknown to the world for centuries after his death. That is, until, the year 1922.

Section 3: Tomb Discovery (6:43)

ISABEL: “Friday, October 27, 1922: Left Cairo for Luxor.”

“Wednesday, November 1: Commenced operations in the Valley of the Kings…”

“Saturday, November 4: At about 10am I discovered beneath almost the first hut attacked the first traces of the entrance of the tomb Tutankhamen…”

“Sunday, November 5: Here before us was sufficient evidence to show that it really was an entrance to a tomb, and by the seals, to all outward appearances that it was intact…I was much puzzled by the smallness of the opening in comparison with those of other royal tombs in the valley. Its design was certainly of the 18th Dynasty. Could it be the tomb of a noble, buried there by royal consent? Or was it a royal cache?”

“Sunday, November 26: Feverishly we cleared away the remaining last scraps of rubbish on the floor of the passage before the doorway, until we had only the clean sealed doorway before us…It was sometime before one could see, the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker, but as soon as one’s eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one, with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another. There was naturally short suspense for those present who could not see, when Lord Carnarvon said to me `Can you see anything’. I replied to him `Yes, it’s wonderful.’”⁸

You just heard excerpts from the diary of Howard Carter, the man credited with discovering King Tut’s tomb.

REBECCA: So what “wonderful” things did Carter find?

ROWAN: Plenty of things, and practically everything intact which was definitely rare as many tombs were plundered. One of the reasons Tut’s tomb was so special was because it had only been robbed twice, probably close to his funeral, and almost everything was left behind. This gave us an insight into what a more undisturbed tomb would have looked like. But back to the “treasure:” There were chests, huge alabaster vases holding fragrant oils, animal-shaped couches and stools, jewelry, golden fans, shrines…the list goes on.⁹ The tomb was truly packed with stuff, as can be seen from the excavation photos. Artifacts were piled on top of each other, and there wasn’t much room to work.¹⁰

REBECCA: What was the significance of all these items? What do they tell us about what ancient Egyptians thought about their kings and the afterlife?

ISABEL: They tell us a lot! Inscriptions on the chest Rowan mentioned earlier say Tut will be blessed with all the benefits one can have when they enter the afterlife, like wine and incense.¹¹ The paintings on the walls of the Burial Chamber are also really important artifacts and generally depict the acceptance of the pharaoh into the afterlife. The North Wall shows the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, where Tut is depicted as Osiris and his successor Ay claims legitimacy to inherit the throne. Another scene shows Nut welcoming the deceased king into eternal life. The South Wall depicts the gods Hathor, Anubis and Isis, also holding symbols of welcome.¹² As you can see, these paintings really emphasize the idea of the afterlife as eternal life. Though Tut’s time on earth may have come to an early end, he would still live forever. Even though he was associated with such a controversial period, King Tut was still given a proper burial.

REBECCA: Wow, this all must’ve been a really amazing discovery at the time. I’m guessing news got out fast, huh?

ISABEL: That it did. People came from far and wide to get a peek at Tut’s tomb. Photographers would camp out just to snap shots of the artifacts being taken out.¹³ And this fascination wasn’t just limited to Egypt. By now, the Western world was already obsessed with Ancient Egypt, and the discovery of Tut’s tomb only furthered this. Actually, there’s a lot of interesting advertisements from the early 20th century and even before then, all of them Egypt-themed. You’ve got books like The Kiss of Pharaoh: The Love Story of Tut-Anch-Amen that definitely takes some artistic license, but people loved them because it was riding on this “Tutmania” idea.¹⁴ There’s even companies using imagery of Tut and Egypt-related things to advertise their products. You’ve got things like “King Tut cologne” and “Touth-Ankh-Amon Pharaoh Scent.”¹⁵

REBECCA: Hm, I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to be smelling like a three thousand year old mummy.

ISABEL: Me neither, but it’s for the hype, you know? Anyways, people even wrote songs about him, though the lyrics were pretty inaccurate. This was because this stuff was even happening before the tomb and his body were completely excavated and documented—people didn’t know the facts, but they didn’t need those to let their fantasies and misconceptions about Ancient Egypt run wild.

ROWAN: That’s how you got the early misconception of Tut being an old man. Songs like “Old King Tut was a Wise Old Nut” and drawings always depicting him that way, before they realized the body they were looking at was that of a young adult’s.¹⁶

ISABEL: Even the idea of a curse associated with King Tut’s tomb was spread. That’s because some of the people who were involved with the excavation, like Lord Carnarvon, died.¹⁷ Even though it was of natural causes, people popularized the idea of a curse. Of course, this was totally untrue, but if you just look at the media today, it’s saturated with the idea of a “mummy’s curse.”

ROWAN: I guess they thought it was more interesting to die of a “curse” than an infected mosquito bite.

REBECCA: Maybe so. So we know there definitely was a huge interest in Tut in the early 20th century, and we can extend that to all of Ancient Egypt in general. But why? Why were people so obsessed with Tut? What made him so special?

ISABEL: For that, let’s ask our special guest speaker, Maryan Ragheb! Hello Maryan, it’s so nice to have you speaking with us today. Could you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

MARYAN RAGHEB: So, I’m Maryan Ragheb. I’m an Egyptian Egyptologist/archaeologist. I’m studying archeology at the Cotsen Institute at UCLA, and I’m on my second year now, so I’m supposed to advance to candidacy by the end of this year, so within a month. I, my main focus is Ancient Egyptian archaeology and my topic is related to craft production of body adornments at the time of state formation.

ISABEL: The field of Egyptology was already well known in the Western world even before the excavation of King Tut’s tomb. What made King Tut different from other pharaohs and tomb excavations that caused the people of the early 20th century to be so obsessed with him? Why is there a “Tutmania” but no mania for other findings?

RAGHEB: So the most obvious answer is because Tut’s tomb is the only royal tomb that was mostly intact—not entirely intact—and, so, it’s something that hasn’t been heard of before at the time. Later on they found other royal tombs that have also been intact, but they’re not—they don’t come from this golden era of Tutankhamun and Hatshepsut and that stuff. So that’s an obvious answer, but also I think Carter and Lord Carnarvon did a very good job at publicizing the discovery for so many reasons: to get more like, media attention, and therefore heightening the importance of their discovery, making—having some sort of leverage over the Egyptian government at the time, maybe to advocate their rights, which is very an imperialist thought, but like their right to get the, the, the objects that were found in the tomb. So there were so many reasons why they were so keen on having a lot of important public figures and a lot of press going as they were preparing the tomb and stuff. And that definitely like, heightened things up, and in an unexpected turn of events, because Lord Carnarvon sold the rights to publish about the tomb discovery to the London Times, so other press started publicizing about rumors of the mummy curse, or the Tut curse. So it’s almost like it’s all related. Of course there were, there was no curse or anything.

ISABEL: We were talking about Western depictions of Ancient Egypt in the early 1900s, and the idea of a “mummy curse” came up. What do you think are problems with the idea of a curse associated with Egyptian tombs? How does this paint the Ancient Egyptians to the world in mass media?

RAGHEB: I mean it was definitely a very good subject for movies, and, don’t get me wrong, I love the movies. I think it just heightened the people’s interest in Ancient Egypt, this sort of mysterious culture and mysterious magic and stuff. And for some odd reason, they—even though there is this mummy curse, people always want to see the mummies in the Egyptian Museum for example or in any museum, having a mummy on display is something that is, like a masterpiece for a lot of people.

REBECCA: As Tut gained popularity in the West, so did inaccurate depictions of Ancient Egypt. Whether it was companies using his name to make their products more “mystical,” or books and illustrations depicting him surrounded by women, one thing was for sure: the Western image of who Tut was thought to be—romantic and exotic—was being spread and would continue to influence how people thought of him and Ancient Egypt.

ROWAN: “Old King Tut’s” popularity doesn’t die out yet. Let’s go to the present to see what’s become of him.

Section 4: Tut in the Modern Day (16:50)

ISABEL: You stare into a face of gleaming gold. Two black eyes stare back.¹⁸ The expression seems indifferent, or is it thoughtful? Whatever it is, the mask of Tutankhamun is timeless: created by the Ancient Egyptians centuries ago, and now admired by millions all over the world, centuries later. Currently, the mask is housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but it and other artifacts from Tut’s tomb have traveled all over the world since their discovery in the early 1900s.

REBECCA: In 1977, an exhibition called “The Treasures of Tutankhamun” toured the US. This sparked newfound interest in Egyptology, bringing a somewhat exclusive field into the public eye. Many flocked to see the shiny gold artifacts, leading a wave of “Tutmania”. And of course, good ol’ capitalism wasn’t far behind—plenty of Tut themed paraphernalia was created: from T-shirts to toys to posters, there was everything.¹⁹

ROWAN: Of course, this commodification of Tut didn’t go un-criticized.

In 1978, Steve Martin performed his song “King Tut” on Saturday Night Live. Donning some stereotypical Egyptian garb and accompanied by similarly dressed dancers and musicians, he satirized the newfound popularity of Tut and how this man from thousands of years ago was like a celebrity with people making toys and trinkets about him.²⁰

ISABEL: I think my favorite line from that song is “He gave his life…for tourism.”²¹ To me it really perfectly sums up what Tut became in the public eye. Forget history—people want to see and make bank on this mysterious pharaoh from Ancient Egypt.

REBECCA: And make bank they did. But it wasn’t just mass consumerism that made Tut so attractive. In Melani McAlister’s book chapter “The Common Heritage of Mankind: Race, Nation, and Masculinity in the King Tut Exhibit,” she writes that Tut was also seen as a symbol of Black identity and history for some African Americans. For example, in 1978, LA city mayor Tom Bradley created a King Tut day in February, explicitly linking Tut to Black History Month.²² Tut was no longer just an ancient pharaoh from a distant society—he was a celebration of Black history.

ISABEL: This claiming of Tut as Black stemmed from the Afrocentric approach to Egyptology—the belief that Egypt was a Black society. Let’s go back to the Atlantic slave trade, where Black people were stripped of their cultures and written off as “uncivilized” and “childlike” by Western powers in order to justify putting them into slavery. After years of being fed this propaganda that they were somehow inferior, knowledge of Ancient Egypt came along. Finally, there was a “civilized” Black society—or at least one that even white people recognized as “civilized,” whatever that means.²³

REBECCA: Many Black scholars advocated for this idea of a Black Egypt. It was a way to uplift their communities after centuries of cruelty and inequality. It showed that Black people did have an impactful culture and put African history on equal terms with white history.²⁴

ISABEL: But even the idea that African history needs to somehow get on the same level as white history is so incredibly racist. Why does Europe and North America get to “set the bar” here? Unfortunately, that was the society people were—and still are—living in. Anyways, many of these Afrocentric beliefs did not go uncriticized. Many Egyptologists have said that some claims, like Egypt being the source of all African culture, are inaccurate. Or that certain Afrocentric theories just don’t add up.²⁵ But criticism can be controversial and biased—especially in the context of Black oppression in America and the predominantly white field of Egyptology.

ROWAN: So what would the Ancient Egyptians say? Well, back in Tut’s own time, labels like “black” or “white” didn’t hold the same connotations that they do today. But let’s think back to those early depictions of Tutankhamun and Egypt that appeared decades earlier. The illustrations that went along with things like the “Touth-Ankh-Amon fragrance” and the “Old King Tut” song depicted him and the Ancient Egyptians as light-skinned, or with very western European features.²⁶ And it’s important to note these depictions are either Western in origin or catering to Western audiences.

ISABEL: What is the significance of Tut becoming a symbol of Black history, especially considering how so many depictions of him and Ancient Egypt have been whitewashed? Maryan weighs in.

RAGHEB: That is also a very sensitive subject. Claiming Tut as Black is something that a lot of African Americans do and it’s their identity, they identify with this culture so that’s perfectly fine. And the reason they’re taking Tut as a symbol is because he’s a symbol of Ancient Egypt in general, like a lot of people, they don’t know anything about Ancient Egypt except Tut and the pyramids. And gold, again. So that’s understandable. The way Hollywood depicts Egyptians, or Ancient Egyptians, is, as you said, is very whitewashed. I never thought that Jaime Lannister would ever be Horus, who would’ve thought? But the problem is that if you want to do something more accurate, you have to kind of give up this Western idea of race and ethnicity because it’s different in different parts of the world. So in, in most parts of the world, people, like we don’t consider ourselves white, so why are you putting that person in? You could put someone whose more Middle Eastern. You can put even someone whose Black, that’s a very valid portrayal of Ancient Egypt because there were a lot of Nubians, there were a lot of people from different cultures, but not European white…that is, yeah…but, um, I don’t know, like I don’t necessarily see it as “Black” or “white,” it’s just not just white. Like you can put in a lot of ethnicities and it will still be an accurate portrayal.

REBECCA: Regardless of whether Tut was actually Black by modern standards, there is no doubt that he, and by extension Ancient Egypt, are powerful symbols of identity and achievement for a group of people that have been historically ripped from their cultures and denied recognition or equality in white societies.

ROWAN: And rather than just a symbol of Black history, King Tut has become one of the most well-known symbols of Ancient Egyptian culture to the world.

ISABEL: Yeah—Tut’s popularity in pop culture nowadays has allowed many people to be introduced to Ancient Egyptian culture through his depictions in books, film, and art. But how accurate are these depictions? What sorts or misconceptions do they create about King Tut and Ancient Egypt?

RAGHEB: Um, most of them are not that accurate, although there has been some attempts to make some sort of accurate depictions. But I would say that most of the movies about Tut and Ancient Egypt in general are not that accurate. I mean, The Mummy is one example, and Gods of Egypt, don’t get—don’t get me started talking about Gods of Egypt! But, yeah, so, they not only depict a lot of the historical facts wrongly, but they also, their depictions of modern Egypt is not accurate either. It—it’s kind of stereotyped, in a way. I mean for Ancient Egypt it’s, it’s just the way they dress is very exaggerated. Uh, the cities, sometimes they kind of mix things, like the, they put up a set that looks like a marketplace from, I don’t know, a Persian or an Islamic period kind of marketplace instead of an Ancient Egyptian one. So these kinds of things are very, um, I would say it sends this idea of all these exotic people who are backward, or, or just like evil, because they own some un-understandable magic, or, yeah.

ROWAN: Speaking of misconceptions, know what’s really interesting about King Tut’s mask?

REBECCA: What?

ROWAN: New studies show that it didn’t even belong to him in the first place. If you look at it closely, you can see there’s a place where another name was scratched out. That’s the name of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s co-ruler and wife.²⁷

REBECCA: Wow, really?

ROWAN: There’s more evidence, too. While initially covered with gold foil, the ears on his mask have piercings, which could mean it was supposed to be depicting a woman. The other materials in his tomb were also probably repurposed Nefertiti goods.²⁸

REBECCA: It’s so strange to think that the mask practically everyone associates with King Tut wasn’t even originally his at all, nor was it depicting his likeness. It’s like everything that’s popularized in the mainstream media about him is just a…misconception.

ISABEL: I think you’re getting it here. So many of the ideas we have about Tut and Ancient Egypt just…aren’t true. And more things are discovered and more ideas refuted all the time, as the field of Egyptology grows.

REBECCA: You know, I agree that it’s probably important for Egyptologists to know details about King Tut, like his mask and stuff, but why would the average person be aware of these things? Why is all this ancient stuff still relevant? Why should we care?

ISABEL: I agree that maybe the average person doesn’t need to know all the details of all the paintings in Tut’s tomb. I think things like his mask, though, represent just the tip of the iceberg on misconceptions about him and Ancient Egypt. The impact of these misconceptions aren’t just that the average person doesn’t know about these details. These depictions of King Tut have much more far-reaching and long-term consequences, one such being the idea of Orientalism, named so by professor Edward Said.

ROWAN: Orientalism is the lens through which the West—Europe and North America—view the Middle East. Historically, it has been used as a tool to justify imperialism and colonization in these regions by painting the Middle East as a place that couldn’t take care of itself and needed to be controlled. Orientalism homogenizes, demonizes, and “others” groups of people.²⁹ Middle Eastern women are shown as submissive yet sensual, and Middle Eastern men are shown as barbaric. And just like the early depictions of King Tut that we have, Orientalism isn’t based on any real facts—it stems from and is perpetuated by Western imagination.

ISABEL: So how does this all connect back to Tut and how he’s portrayed in Western pop culture?

RAGHEB: So, modern Orientalism kind of puts Egypt within this context of this backward country, where, it’s, the Europeans are going there to excavate and to find the ancient Egyptian stuff, which, yes, there are a lot of European or Western archaeologists working in Egypt, but that also undermines a lot of the work that Egyptian scholars are doing. So in these movies or in these media, it’s always the Westerners excavating and then just the Egyptians are the workers who are carrying the stuff. And although this was true at the time of Lord Carnarvon and Carter, but that has changed over time. So if you’re depicting a movie um, like uh what was it I think it was The Pyramids? It was this low-budget horror movie at some point and it was about this excavation team digging an unheard of pyramid before and they just got in and they all get killed inside the pyramid. But the whole set up of these, of these, of this excavation team is just wrong—it’s not a depiction of reality, and it only reinforces certain ideas about Egypt being all desert, all uneducated people, and for that movie for example, this event happened supposedly during the time of the 2011 revolution which was a political revolution that occurred in Egypt quite recently, and they’re showing it as completely chaotic and everything…and it’s just, it kind of…it’s a superficial way of dealing with the complexities of modern Egyptian societies as well as Ancient Egyptian societies. Uh, when we’re talking about movies that are strictly Ancient Egypt, you always find a lot of gold, just so much gold, and a lot of evil characters, and it’s just, it’s, it’s not letting people in on the real complexity of the culture in Ancient Egypt and in modern Egypt. Yeah, so I think that it reinforces this idea of Orientalism. However if we’re talking about exaggeration as something to attract the public and make them more interested in Ancient Egypt, that definitely works, unfortunately, it works.

ROWAN: Tut represents our fascination with Ancient Egypt and wanting it to be all these things it just…isn’t.

REBECCA: It’s just like that movie I was talking about—The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb. It hits all the marks—Tut is more godlike than human, the actual history of his reign is basically nonexistent, and “big name” gods from the Ancient Egyptian religion are just cherry-picked to make the story more dramatic.³⁰ This depiction is similar to the ones we’ve already seen so many times before—it’s told from a Western perspective. The story is told from the point of view of a white man who is the main character and the hero. Tut’s played by a white actor, too! And I get that it’s Hollywood and we should expect some fantastical elements, but these depictions aren’t doing much to help the West’s perception of Tut or Ancient Egypt.

ISABEL: The whole idea of Tut is romanticized. Popular media doesn’t know and doesn’t really care about his real story, how he fits into the Ancient Egyptian world, or what we can learn from his reign and erased legacy. They care more about the superhero Tut, the shiny, mysterious Tut with a tomb that might curse you. They care about the fantasy Tut that can sell the most souvenirs and make the most movies. And unfortunately, this image of Tut contributes to Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism, which romanticizes, generalizes and exotifies Egypt. As long as Tut is this mystical figure rather than the tragic boy king he really was, this Orientalist view of ancient Egypt will be perpetuated.

Section 5: Conclusion (32:36)

ISABEL: King Tutankhamun’s short reign was spent trying to reverse his father’s policies and restore religious stability to Egypt. Despite his efforts, he died young and his legacy was all but erased after his death, the next dynasties not wanting to remember the controversial Amarna period. Tut went unknown for centuries until his tomb was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922, and this discovery helped fuel the already exploding infatuation with Ancient Egypt. Tut-themed ads, consumer goods, and songs were spread in popular media, as well as the inaccurate and often harmful portrayals of an “exotic” Egypt.

REBECCA: And the hype didn’t stop there. King Tut became even more popular in the 70s, when millions came to see the artifacts from his tomb as they toured the US. Just like in the 20s, the pharaoh was romanticized, sensationalized, and commercialized for the consumption of the masses. For some, he also became a symbol of Black history and identity—a significant movement in the Western world which had often depicted Tut and Ancient Egyptians as white.

ROWAN: Today, the boy king that had an arguably insignificant reign and legacy has become the most famous pharaoh and icon of Ancient Egypt. This can be seen in pop culture—especially movies—that favor fantastical narratives that feed into stereotypes, rather than accurate portrayals.

REBECCA: Knowing all this, how should we move forward? The depictions of King Tut we’ve had thus far may have been entertaining to some, but ultimately, they’ve contributed to the harmful romanticization and exotification of Ancient Egypt that still paints the Middle East as “different” today. On a larger scale, these ideas have been used to justify colonization, racism, and stereotyping. So now what? Do we denounce these films and books? Should we put disclaimers before every one? I think it’ll take a lot more than that to undo decades of misrepresentation.

ISABEL: If anything, having conversations like these is a good start. There’s a lot to unpack with Orientalism, and Western perceptions of King Tut just barely graze the surface. Going forward, when we look at these depictions of figures from societies that are not our own, we should be aware of who is telling the story and what their motives are. Is it a company trying to get you to buy some fancy, “exotic” item?

REBECCA: That can really change things. And we hope you all—the listeners—take this sentiment with you in your daily lives.

ISABEL: We want to thank everyone who made this episode possible: our guest speaker Maryan, who gave us such insightful information on King Tut; Deidre Whitmore for tips and tricks on recording audio; Martin Brennan for navigating copyright; Simon Lee, Jet Jacobs, and Katherine Kapsidelis for giving us research resources; our teacher Robyn Price for guiding us in this project, and our listeners for showing interest in King Tut himself! This was Isabel-

ROWAN: -Rowan-

REBECCA: -and Rebecca, and we hope you enjoyed “Tutmania.” Make sure to check out the next episode, “The Purpose of Isis,” too. Thanks for listening!

Works Cited

Abydos King List. 1250BC. The British Museum, https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=177487&partId=1.

Benderitter, Thierry. “TUTANKHAMUN-KV62.” Edited by Jeremy Steele. Translated by Jon Hirst, Osirisnet, Osirisnet, osirisnet.net/tombes/pharaons/toutankhamon/e_toutankhamon_01.htm. Accessed 15 Apr. 2020.

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