King Tut and the sequel

I didn't see the “golden” King Tut exhibit back in the 70's. This tour didn't include so much gold, but more “everyday” sorts of things and artifacts to put Tut's treasure into perspective. There were artifacts from the tombs of his relatives, for instance; an animation (not a cartoon) showing how the shrines and coffins were nested (with almost no room to spare!), and things like his sister's chair and his chair and the coronation regalia (maybe) box.

Usually funerary goods made of wood were fairly shoddy, but the royal furniture was pretty well made. The lid of the regalia box had Tut's cartouche on it—detailed, so the falcon looked like a falcon with feathers, the grid showed a painted checkerboard pattern, ad so on.

One lady near me was comparing the pectoral with the Navaho jewelry—presumably because both involved turquoise. (I bit my tongue when she expressed amazement that the ancient Egyptian work was almost as good as the Indian—I've never seen Navaho jewelry even close to the Egyptian worksmanship.)

We saw many wooden statues. Many were defective, so we could see how they'd been pegged together (not always carefully—they seemed to rely on filler or paint to cover the gaps). The stonework was excellent, though. A cosmetics box had a lion resting on the lid, scenes of predators attacking deer on the sides, the god Bes with his tongue hanging out on two sides, and heads of Nubians and Syrians under the feet of the box. I marvel at the dishonesty of the afrocentrists who claim the ancient Egyptians were black. Not only were they not black, some of their folklore and iconography is pretty racist. Omar Sharif (yes, we bought the audio tour) said this symbolized the victory of order over chaos, but that seems pretty silly—the theme is obviously domination by the “lions,” though I admit I don't quite see how Bes' tongue fits into the picture.

Another item explained as symbolizing “order over chaos” was Tut's mace. The head struck me as odd—it was carved to look like some large bud. Maybe they meant it to look nice, or maybe the bud had some magical/symbolic meaning; or maybe both at once.

The wooden cow heads came along with the story of the divine cow, which I'd completely forgotten. Recently I'd been trying to figure out why the Jews kept making images of calves (Aaron, Jereboam). But if a cow took the gods to heaven, it might be that the cow was an intermediary afterwards, and thus a sort of generic figure to envoke when trying to contact a god/gods.

The exhibit spent a lot of time on the results of the latest CAT scan of Tut, which showed that he hadn't had his head smashed after wall, but suggested that a very recently (days) snapped femur might have had a bearing—infection, maybe. His skull was elongated, though not nearly so far as in the Akenaten caricatures.

I got to see up close details of things I'd only seen pictures of before. I'd not realized before that the black areas on the pectoral weren't black gemstones but paint. Amazing what binocular vision does for you.

Since the Egyptian antiquities people were so heavily involved, I was surprised more wasn't made of Akenaten's monotheism. Perhaps it was still too repulsive for them to focus on. True it wasn't a pantheon, but it did focus on a created thing.

The place was crowded! It took us two hours to get through the exhibits, and at least two school groups went by us.

Of course there was more to see before and after our tour of the Tut show. The younger kids got to finish going through the animal designs/adaptations section; somebody always wants to see the hall of gems (even if part of the lights are out), and we went through the Evolving Earth halls. The Cambrian room had three huge screens playing underwater scenes with trilobites and unpronounceable creatures going about their businesses. Truly weird.

The new dino arrangement is well thought out.

Alas, though our trip to the museum was only marred by an almost near miss and an ominous shudder when trying to park, the return trip proved fraught and expensive. The car didn't want to accelerate, and by the time we were halfway to Oak Park we plainly had transmission problems. I checked the levels at Austin—and unfortunately the fluid seemed OK—ominous news. Before we got to the Harlem exit the engine was racing and we ran to a stop halfway up the exit ramp.

I had to get out several times to wave around drivers who didn't realize what flashers meant. 911 eventually brought a state trooper, who summoned a DOT tow truck to get us off the ramp. (He was very solicitous for our safety, and we're grateful.) AAA eventually arrived, but not before an old Oak Park friend came and fetched the three kids. AAA towed us to a firm that didn't do transmissions—everybody was closed and they couldn't check—and I had to wait around another hour and a half the next morning for another tow. Turns out the fluid had cooled enough to engage first gear again, and I probably could have driven the four blocks.

The middle daughter drove down from Madison and all but I headed back home at 23:00.

I left the car with AAMCO with promised that they'd call with estimates, took the subway to O'Hare and the bus to Madison—but I decided to get off at Dutch Mill rather than try to ride into the gathering crowd for the Halloween party on State Street.

Shave and clean clothes!