The Face of Tutankhamun

[Brian G Turner]

The face of one of Egypt's most mysterious ancient rulers, the boy king Tutankhamun, is being put on public view for the first time on Sunday.

His mummy is being displayed in a climate-controlled case inside his tomb in Luxor's Valley of the Kings.

The event comes exactly 85 years after the site was discovered by the British explorer Howard Carter.

Only about 50 people are thought to have seen his face since then though thousands have seen his sarcophagus.

The face remained intact because of the mummification process and will continue to be protected from heat and humidity.

Source: King Tut's face unveiled to world

 

[The Ace]

Sheesh, literally face-to-face with history.

 

[Talysia]

This sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime event. I wish I could see it.

 

[Curt Chiarelli]

A three thousand three hundred year old teenage boy king! I wouldn't miss meeting him for the world!

 

[Allegra]

Wow... that face got to be the closest thing to gods!

 

[j d worthington]

Fascinating stuff, the mummification process.... and with the pictures and the video on this, this is a wonderful bit of news. Thanks, Brian!

 

[Connavar]

Is that a data pic? Will he look similer if you go see him?


It is unrespectful to make a show of someone like this IMO. Specially now that he is uncovered,you can see his face. Like what they did to Lenin.

 

[Foxbat]

I visited Lenin's Mausoleum and am inclined to agree with Connavar. The whole thing left me somewhat disturbed that we gawp at another individual's remains. It's difficult to explain but I felt that I was intruding on another's privacy. In saying that, viewing the body of a deceased loved one is common in many cultures (including Scottish).

I suppose there is arguably much more scientific value to be gained from this....but it still leaves me feeling somewhat uneasy.

 

[Connavar]

Nothing Scientific about making a show of him. Its egypt they wanna milk their history as much as they can.....

You can study someone like this without doing something like this.

Viewing the body of a deceased loved one and this thing is so far from eachother that its like comparing hell to heaven.....

 

[JDP]

To be honest, given that most pharoahs spent the majority of their time having their likenesses chiselled into things for peons like us to gawp at, I doubt anyone's turning in their sarcophagus. It's not like they've got a puppeteer jerking him around for cheap laughs.

I don't see how this can be considered worse than yanking him out of his tomb in the first place.

 

[Connavar]

Cause when they are in sarcophagus covered it was simple relic of a historic coffin.

Now it feels like he is naked for everyone to see. Displayed like he was a stuffed animal.

It makes me feel uneasy and it is too disrespectful for my taste.

But thats only me.

 

[Delvo]

Is that a data pic? Will he look similer if you go see him?

It's computer-generated; they scanned his bones to get a 3D "model" of them in a computer, and used standard established methods for calculating flesh depth based on bone shape, a technique which has been in use for years as a tool for depicting what dead people would have looked like alive. Its main prior use has been in identifying people who died recently, for murder investigations. It's also been used to reveal the faces of fossilized individuals of some extinct related homonid species from much longer ago than King Tut's time.

What his body actually looks like now is very different. He's a mummy, and mummies deteriorate slowly, so, "in person", he looks as deteriorated as any other mummy would under the same circumstances.

 

[j d worthington]

In the link Brian provided, you can see pictures of his actual mummy, including video of where they're lifting him out of his sarcophagus to place him in more secure surroundings -- apparently the mummy was suffering some damage with the high number of visitors to the tomb.

Myself, I don't find anything disrespectful at all about this (or similar things). To me personally, it provides an emotional feeling of connectedness to the person rather than just an historical figure; I can feel more empathy than I can for an abstract, if you will. It makes them more human and less a name or a sculptured image. There is also the element (trite though it may be) of the old epitaph of "As you are now, so once was I / As I am now, so shall you also be."

 

[Allegra]

Myself, I don't find anything disrespectful at all about this (or similar things). To me personally, it provides an emotional feeling of connectedness to the person rather than just an historical figure; I can feel more empathy than I can for an abstract, if you will. It makes them more human and less a name or a sculptured image. There is also the element (trite though it may be) of the old epitaph of "As you are now, so once was I / As I am now, so shall you also be."

My sentiments exactly, J.D.

 

[clovis-man]

Now it feels like he is naked for everyone to see. Displayed like he was a stuffed animal.

It makes me feel uneasy and it is too disrespectful for my taste.

I'll add a bit of trivia. Sometime between the unearthing of the tomb/remains and the year 1968, his penis disappeared. When it was rediscovered recently, it was quite newsworthy. I wouldn't joke about something like this. See the article: News in Science - Found! King Tut's penis - 04/05/2006

Years ago, respected British anthropologist, Raymond Firth wrote a large monograph called "We, The Tikopia" about a group of Pacific islanders. One of the lines from the book is: "The feet of the natives are large." Does this sort of thing advance our understanding of humanity in any meaningful way? Somehow, the whole thing strikes me as ludicrous and I'm an anthropologist by education. On the one hand there is "science" and on the other there is the "Gee, aren't people quaint?" view of humankind. Too much of the latter these days for my taste.

FWIW

Jim

 

[Foxbat]

Frankly, I'm wondering how long it is before we dig up Elvis and stick him in a display cabinet. Then again, what about Winston Churchill, Roosevelt, etc. Where does it all end?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It makes them more human and less a name or a sculptured image.

The question arises of whether or not an Egyptian pharoah would have wished to be seen as "more human."

 

[Delvo]

"As you are now, so once was I / As I am now, so shall you also be."

Isn't that what the Shiny Sparkly Dudes said to Starbuck when Apollo died?

The question arises of whether or not an Egyptian pharoah would have wished to be seen as "more human."

...along with its corollary: whether we care and why we should...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm not sure what you mean, Delvo. Whether we care what he would have wanted, or whether we care to look at him to make some sort of connection between him and us?

 

[j d worthington]

The question arises of whether or not an Egyptian pharoah would have wished to be seen as "more human."

To be honest -- most likely not. But then I was voicing my own reaction as to whether I felt it was "respectful" or not....

Delvo... I really couldn't say... I only saw the first season and scattered episodes of the second with the new BG, and only the pilot of the original (which I simply couldn't stomach beyond that point... the only reason I gave the new version a chance was because a friend posted in the Middle East asked me to keep him apprised of what was going on with it while he was gone....)