The amazing King Tut Birthday! :) [1 of 2]

For my birthday in October, my wonderful housemate took me to see the display on King Tutankhamen at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. It was, quite simply, amazing. Not only were the precious items quite breathtaking, but the information which accompanied the display was fascinating. There was some history on King Tut, including probable parentage and some of the beautiful items interred with his relatives, and a bit of time devoted interestingly to the mystery of his sudden death. I had a fantastic time! :)

While wandering happily through the displays and listening to the audio tour, I found a few things which piqued my interest and caused me to take some notes for later research. These are the notes here, typed in so I can find them easily later; hopefully they’ll be of some interest to you all as well. Also, a big hug and thank you to both housemates, who made an effort to make my birthday a delight — you’re both wonderful!

The first thing that made me raise an eyebrow was a funerary statuette of Resi, one of Tut’s female relatives. Amusingly, she was referred to as part of the then-pharaoh’s “harem,” which is rather the misnomer, as Egyptian women had far more agency and personal power than later Arabic women. Was this a poorly chosen word by a male curator, perhaps? Also, the statuette’s left arm was covered, while the right arm and breast appeared to be bare. I found this interesting because it reminded me of some of the carvings I’ve seen of both Inanna, and her high priestess, Enheduanna. Is that clothing style perhaps formal wear for priestesses and high ranking women? If so, does that mean Resi was perhaps more nobly born or high ranking a priestess than modern scholars had initially believed?

I was also quite captivated by the chair of Princess Sitamun, who was (if I’m remembering correctly) Tut’s sister. From the chair’s height, I’d guess the princess was only slightly shorter than I — or perhaps she had a foot stool as well, so her feet didn’t dangle? That would make her about 5’6″ or so at most — I’ll have to see if the height of her mummy is noted anywhere. But anyway: most of the chair was pretty much as one would expect: lion-footed, with a tiny wooden head/bust of the crowned princess on each side of the seat where the arms met the seat, and with the original woven string seat still in place. It was decorated with what I think is the classic Egyptian art style, i.e. everyone is in profile, outlined in black, and depicted somewhat in a silhouette shape; slightly tilted and sloe shaped eyes; long fingers and toes; wide mouths with generous lips, etc. Further, it had the usual colorfully decorated vulture wings and cobra heads carved protectively into the top of the chair’s back.

Other decorations on the inside arm panels and inside back of the chair consisted of women in long skirts and decorative pectorals, wearing tall headdresses of lotus flowers (does that indicate they are priestesses?) as they brought the princess bowls of offerings of what looked very much like… big round doughnuts! Or maybe bagels — who am I to say? ;) The priestesses were depicted promenading along the inside arm panels of the chair, four on each side, towards the inner back of the chair, and there were more priestesses on the inner back as well. These were slightly different, in that they were each offering what looked like a bowl with three piled and decorative pectorals on it.

Interestingly, the artist had drawn a mental line down the center of the inner back of the chair, and repeated the design with the princess facing out to the left on the left side, and out to the right on the right side. It wasn’t just a mirror image — even the skirts on each priestess were slightly differently patterned. I was a bit surprised to see the princess depicted twice on the inside back of the chair, though — isn’t that unusual? She was, of course, taller and more elaborately attired than her priestesses. Even her headdress was taller and had more lotus flowers in it.

Here’s what really fascinated me about the chair, though: the art on the outside arm panels of the chair was nothing like “classic” Egyptian art, and I found myself wondering with amazement how they’d gotten there! The outer side panels of each arm were decorated in what looked like an almost Grecian style, with three similar but strange entities on one side, and two of the entities escorting the hippo goddess on the other side.

These, um… people? -creatures? -had round ears and manes like lions; were spotted and had long, un-tufted tails like cheetahs; were bipedal… and wore some sort of clothing! It was either knee-length shorts or tightly wrapped Egyptian style skirts or kilts, I think — they had a separate front panel like the short kilts on some of the statues of the pharaohs. Even those were decorated with a sort of mixed stripe/spot pattern, and quite snug. The faces of the cat-men had somewhat exaggerated facial features with what looked a bit like either scarification or baboon-like lines around the nose and mouth. Was this a somewhat xenophobic interpretation of Nubian features?

Also very cool was that the cat-men were (at least to me) clearly dancing! Their legs were either bent at the knee or raised, they were leaning forward slightly, and their arms were raised. On the side with the hippo goddess between two of the cat-men, the lead man had a large tambourine he was holding up and playing, while the trailing man had two short, curved, single-edged swords he appeared to be dancing with. On the other side of the chair there were two tambourine players and (again) one knife dancer. Perhaps most startling: the central figure is facing the viewer — and is sticking his tongue out! Is this a visual sign to connote singing, or joy? I’ve never seen such a thing in Egyptian art before — I find it quite excitingly unprecedented! I suspect one of my companions was likely right when he laughingly guessed the princess had gotten a lovely, “exotic” bit of art imported for her.

I was quite interested to see how clearly the Egyptians depicted varying ethnicities. For a long time I’d thought the usual classic Egyptian art was rather limited when it came to humans, making them all look pretty similar, and in the same standard handful of poses, but I don’t believe that any more. As an example, there was a lovely long funerary boat (about 6′ long) with high-standing panels at the prow — and carved and painted on the panels were depictions of the pharaoh as a sphynx, stomping some brown-skinned enemies underfoot, and with dangerous looking, perhaps protective monsters or deities lurking below!

Painted along the actual sides of the boat were even more amazing renditions of various ethnicities — clearly recognizable ones, although they were all male, so I presume by that and their submissive positioning that they were enemies of the pharaoh. There were examples of Black men, Arabic men cloaked in spotted red, a white-wrapped man with more Northern features — which made me wonder excitedly if perhaps these were the Asian equestrian nomads I currently study for my thesis. I do know there was at least one pharaoh who paid off the Scythians to keep them from invading, after all.