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Tutankhamen's succesful rise to ancient superstar status inspired Americans to write about the boy king. Americans created their own illusions about Tut in trying to get their audience to relate to what they were reading. Archie Bell's 1923 novel about King Tut (Bell, Archie. King Tutankhamen: His Romantic History. Boston: St. Botolph Society, 1923.) offered Americans a romantic history: a fictionalization of the king's life. It's interesting to note that the book focuses more on Tut's love interest than it does him--in fact, he doesn't even get named as Tutankhamen until half-way through the book. He also dies rather quickly, as a mysterious plague suddenly strikes the court. |
The title page reveals the focus of the story: King Tutankhamen, His Romantic History Relating how, as Prince of Hermonthis, he won the love of SENPA PRIESTESS OF THE TEMPLE OF KARNAK and through her interest achieved THE THRONE OF THE PHAROAHS The book begins with Tut's father-in-law, who has just turned the kingdom to a monotheistic religion, due to the influence of Mesu (Moses) on the king. Tut later returns the kingdom to its worship of many gods and Bell explains that Tut and his Queen hated Moses. |
Poems Many readers of the New York Times took the time to contribute odes to King Tut. Here are a few samples that were published. Puportedly written before his tomb was found (in 1922). April 2, 1921, Published on Jan. 4, 1923 (p. 18): TUT-ANKH-AMEN Tut-Ankh-Amen, thy face benign, So true in contour and in line, So I erect thee this frail shrine Published Feb. 9, 1923 (p. 14): TO TUT-ANKH-AMEN Tut-Ankh-Amen, Tut-Ankh-Amen, Tut-Ankh-Amen, Tut-Ankh-Amen, Tut-Ankh-Amen, Tut-Ankh-Amen, Tut-Ankh-Amen, J.W.C. (More works cited, better text available on 5/10).
Tutankhamen and Social Mores Tutankhamen also created a starting point for Americans to think about religion in
America. Since Tutankhamen had returned the Egyptians to a polytheistic society, some
Americans thought he could be the persecutor of the Jews described in Exodus.(102) A
novelization of Tutankhamen's life in 1923 by Archie Bell put forth the idea that Moses
(Mesu in the book) had influenced his father, Akhenaton, to worship one God.(103) The
connection between religion and art during Tutankhamen's reign also influenced people to
look again at spirituality. After all, Egypt in part held such fascination with Americans
because of its place in the Bible.(104) The arts and crafts of Egypt held lessons of "spiritual
worth" as well as "material value." Dudley Corlett argued that "the mighty lesson that Art
founded on Religion endures forever"--as opposed to, say, art founded on machinery.(105)
T. George Allen agreed that the freedom from deities in Tutankhamen's father's period
mimicked a freedom in art.(106) Allen viewed the find as a recreation of the earliest
achievements in "spiritual and artistic freedom."(107) In this portrayal of Tutankhamen as a religious find, some shaped the story of
Tutankhamen's religion to their own ends. One Rabbi wanted people to look at Moses,
rather than the richer Tutankhamen.(108) In yet another view, Dr. Kaufman Kohler
suggested that we look on the lesson of Tutankhamen's father: "no man on earth, however
wise and powerful, could invent a new religion and impose it on the people…religion must
emanate form the soul of a people."(109) Tutankhamen had become the latest bible lesson.
When a reporter asked Thomas Edison, then 76, about Tutankhamen, a staff member said
"'now wait a minute…You are not about to ask Mr. Edison any questions about
religion.'" Edison said it was good that the ancients were being talked about in papers,
but newspapers should also look at the work of modern scientists.(110) While there wasn't a direct response to Edison, at the least the newspapers
addressed the modern even as they examined the old--or they recorded the modern
interpretations everyday readers made about Egyptians. Objects from Tutankhamen's
tomb "'helps us to visualize,'" Carter wrote, "'that the young king must have been very
like ourselves.'"(111) Coverage of the tomb shows that Americans very much tried to
identify with the characters of ancient Egypt. Princeton Egyptologist David Paton
compared General Allenby's Egyptian campaign to an ancient Egyptian king's campaign.
"He shows that the actors and events were much like those of our own time."(112) Other
connections to the past were more innocuous. One New York Times story reported
finding the first evidence of "Pharaonic underwear." "It probably fitted loosely, else he
was hugely built," the Times correspondent wrote.(113) This kind of everyday detail
appealed to the everyday reader; he too was like the pharaoh. Americans could be kings
in their own rights, if not through wealth, then through the progress of civilization. Still
other comparisons showed the social tensions of the 1920s. "A man's social position
might be measured by the magnificence of his coffin"(114)--or car--then and now.
According to one report, mummies often had to be moved because crooked builders told
robbers about the location of treasure, or even robbed it themselves. The "crooked
building contractor is one of the earliest figures in history or fiction."(115) When explaining
how the undertakers rushed the job, the reporter wrote they "failed to supervise their men
with the result that as often happens today in similar cases of lack of control the work was
rushed."(116) Here the Times betrayed its conservative readership: only a superior could
groan about the inferiority of a rushed job. In a report that mirrored the obsession with
the stockmarket for Americans of the 1920s, a Johns Hopkins math professor estimated
what the Tutankhamen tomb's treasures would be valued at had they been "put in safe 6
per cent. bonds and compounded" from 3,400 years ago to the present day.(117) Even before Tutankhamen was making headlines, Americans looked to the past for
answers to the controversy surrounding the 1920s "new woman." A French Egyptologist
revealed in June 1922 that the "skirt controversy" was over 40 centuries old. He had
found statuettes that showed two dress lengths.(118) In April, Scientific American, writing
about the latest American excavation, described "a young queen who would look all right
today with her bobbed air and her pet dog sitting under her chair." Ancient Egyptian
women's bobbed hair became nothing less of an obsession for Americans, as the media
portrayed it. As a woman visited the Metropolitan Museum to examine the artifacts, she
exclaimed, "'So they had bobbed hair then, too!'"(119) In a poem published in The New York
Times, the author wrote "Tut-ankh-Amen,/Still our life here/Goes on much the
same…That dear child-wife--/Was she heavenly fair?/Did she want to dance a wild
life?/Would she bob her hair?"(120) Tutankhamen's widow's attempts to get remarried soon
after his death also struck a chord with 1920s Americans: "She was hardly a widow before
she wanted a new king," said one Times article.(121) Another article quoted an expert that
said that divorces were quite usual in ancient Egypt. The press coverage allowed those
fearful of the new woman to think that after all, nothing was new about her. In this way,
Americans could relieve some of their anxiety about their current social problems through
realizing that even an ancient people had to deal with such issues. While many of the articles in the New York Times attempted to equate aspects of
Egyptian culture with American culture, the Los Angeles Times ran an entire feature on
the similarities between Hollywood--one city--and Egypt. The title of the article, "Ancient
Egypt Lives Again in Hollywood: Even the Bobbed Hair Reincarnated From the Flappers
Who Lived When Tombs Were Built"(122) explains a lot of what the story claimed. Grace
Wilcox wrote, "Is modern Hollywood with its bobbed-hair beauties linked in some mystic
bond with ancient Egypt in the days when King Tutankhamen walked the earth in stately
splendor?"(123) In the article, Wilcox interviewed Dudley Corlett, an agricultural expert for
the British government in Egypt and India. Corlett claimed that there were similarities
between the "artistic colony" of Hollywood and ancient Egypt. Wilcox theorized, "It will
probably show us that, without knowing it, we have taken up the torch thrown down by
dead and forgotten leaders of ancient thought in ways that we do not dream of."(124) In his
interview, Corlett rattled off a number of similarities supposedly unique to Hollywood and
Egypt: sun worshipping, wearing scarab jewelry, bobbed hair, similarly colored makeup,
fashions, nutrition and architecture. Corlett even claimed that the faces of people in Egypt
reminded him of those in Hollywood. Wilcox wrote: "We are apparently [mimicking
Egyptians] just through sheer instinct--obeying a strang [sic] mystic impulse that we only
half understand."(125) In the land of dress-up, Hollywood dwellers wanted to feel as if they
played the part of the Egyptian. While not as dramatic as the Los Angeles Times story would have described it,
Tutankhamen's tomb presented a battleground where the modern and ancient civilizations
could meet. Standing at the door of Tutankhamen's tomb, American Egyptologist James
Henry Breasted looked at the seals on the door: "Only the soft rays of the electric light
suggested the modern world into which these amazing survivals from a past so remote had
been so unexpectedly projected."(126) When Carter was confronted with the paradox
between the ancient and modern world, he saw the ancient world as superior. "We find
that culture in the way of intellectual development, and the arts in general, were in those
ancient times, in many ways, higher than they are today."(127) Americans struggled to
bridge the gap between the Egyptian "high" culture and their own culture, and even
attempted to bring the excavation closer to home. Full paper and footnotes.
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Uncovering Tutankhamen I The Boy King I Buried Treasure I Metropolitan Connections I Cinematic Contributions I Stop the Presses I Literary Illusions I Fashion is King I Americans Abroad I Main |