I remember when King Tut was all the rage — the impressive displays of luxury items from Tut’s tomb, the mummy himself, “Walk like an Egyptian”… Well, he’s back in the news, this time in a most 21st century way. This time archaelogists with their cool cool stuff and rugged outdoorsy romanticism aren’t the prime movers. Rather it’s scientists poking away in their
fluorescent lit labs that have shaken things up.
I read the recent (Sept 2010) National Geographic piece some time ago and was struck by a profound discovery. I admit that I’ve been *saving* this thought for a time when I could really do it justice, but I should know by now that such time never comes. So here goes: even though the piece was about how DNA studies have illuminated family relationships between heretofore mysterious mummies, and even though they reveal titillating information about incest in the royal household, the truly remarkable to me merited only a couple of sentences in the article: Akhenaten, now known to be Tut’s dad, was not himself deformed. Wow!
Ok, that may not seem “wow”-worthy to you… yet. But get this: For decades (at least) we’ve been teaching about how Akhenaten, a revolutionary pharaoh who instituted monotheism in Egypt in the mid second millenium BC(E), chose to portray himself in a more natural manner than his deity-claiming predecessors with their testosterone-buff -figured statues had ever done before. In his statues, Akhenaten looks kind of, well, soft and lumpy. Scholars posited all sorts of possible medical conditions that could lead to such effeminate features. Marfan Syndrome led the pack. But recent, highly sophisticated tests put that theory to rest. Akhenatoe was perfectly normal. So why the unflattering portraiture? A good possibility: While he, too, identified himself as the representation of the heavenly sphere on earth, in his case, it was as the representative of the one and only God. That God, being only One and the source of all life, was naturally both male and female. Think Genesis chapter 1. Wow. So much for the “naturalist style” of Akhenaten’s art. His self-image made instead a powerful theological statement.
