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Arts

Golden boy

A King Tut exhibit in Fort Lauderdale is nothing short of enthralling.

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published January 8, 2006

[AP photo]

A visitor is silouhetted as he looks at the 'The Faces of Tutankhamun" at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

	[AP photo]
	Bust of Tutankhamun, carved and painted wood The statue may have served as a dummy on which garments of the king could be draped or his jewelry displayed. Its youthful, realistic facial expression is a departure from more stylized depictions of Egyptian kings.
	[AP photo]
	Viscera coffin, gilded wood Designed to hold the king's mummified internal organs.

FORT LAUDERDALE - Americans have always been fascinated with royalty, especially young royals. But none has ever gripped the public imagination with such lasting fixation as King Tutankhamun, the Egyptian boy king who died in 1323 B.C.

In the late 1970s, almost 8-million people thronged U.S. museums during a tour of artifacts from his tomb, creating a King Tut craze in popular culture and setting a standard for subsequent blockbuster exhibitions.

Twenty-five years later, Tut has returned, in a magnificent show at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale. This is its second stop in a four-city tour and the only one in the Southeast. During its stay at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the show attracted almost 1-million visitors. Before it opened in Florida, museum director Irvin Lippman said more than 300,000 tickets had been sold.

Though King Tut's life has been shrouded in uncertainty, his appeal is no mystery. When his tomb was discovered by English archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings on the Nile's west bank, thousands of precious objects were unearthed. Though Tut was an obscure pharaoh, his was, and remains, the most intact tomb ever found, largely ignored by centuries of looters who plundered richer, more famous resting places of other Egyptian rulers.

After the world tour in the 1970s, the Egyptian government clamped down on road shows of their treasures, feeling stung by their past generosity. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said as much to reporters during a preview in Fort Lauderdale in December, after the city's leaders gave a series of speeches about brotherhood and the benefits of cultural exchange.

"In the past," Hawass said, "Egypt gave many exhibitions freely. Museums made a lot of money but we made hardly anything. Now, why do we send exhibitions to the United States or Europe? It's about money. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is still making money today on King Tut replicas (from the 1970s) in its gift shop and we see not one penny of it. There are no free meals anymore."

This time around the Egyptian government collaborated with National Geographic, which has produced a lavish catalog, and the for-profit Arts and Exhibitions International to ensure control over the installations at each venue, the marketing and ticket sales. The Egyptians anticipate making at least $30-million, which will help fund a new museum in Egypt for the King Tut collection, Hawass said.

But it should be a cash cow for the U.S. venues, too. Organizers said the Los Angeles museum raked in about $9-million, and though they have not reported their share of the profits, museum leaders said it was an economic success. Fort Lauderdale officials said they expect, based on the Los Angeles experience, an economic impact of $121-million for their city.

For all their grousing, the Egyptians have not stinted on their loan of objects, offering far more than were included in the previous Tut tour.

"Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" is visually stunning and intellectually stimulating, organized with a feel for pacing and supplemented with wall texts, maps and collateral information that are generous but not overwhelming. A nice touch is a hieroglyphic title on each gallery introduction that is the equivalent of the English title. Visitors should consider preordering the catalog from the museum; it provides comprehensive but readable historical background.

To forestall disappointment, I will say right away that the one thing the exhibition does not have is the large golden coffin that wowed viewers in the 1970s. The statue of Tut used in promotional materials resembles it but is a small coffinette that held the king's viscera, measuring 10 centimeters in height.

Still, it has an abundance of spectacular antiquities that will delight even those usually bored by them. The exhibition spreads through 11 galleries lit and painted to enhance the theme of each.

A brief film opens the show, after which curtains are drawn to reveal a bust of Tutankhamun. It differs from many antique statues in its humanistic facial expression, meant to be more representative of the person than of a god-on-earth to be revered and feared. Its presence signals the import of the entire undertaking, which differs from the first Tut show that was mostly about spectacle. Here, the intent is to put Tutankhamun into a context. That goal is helped by the decades that have transpired between the two shows, since much more scholarship has been done, including sophisticated scans of Tut's body.

Several galleries deal with Egyptian life during that period. Because the objects came from tombs, and only the wealthy could afford them, the glimpses reveal mostly how the privileged lived. Even the most everyday stuff was created to give visual and tactile pleasure. A carved spoon takes the shape of a languid woman. A vessel is supported by a finely carved servant for its stem. A leather dog collar is gilded and appliqued. Faience, a type of finely glazed earthenware, is formed into fruits that would be sustenance for the afterlife. The message is, you can take it with you.

The galleries explaining Egyptians' beliefs about death and the afterlife underscore that point. Projected onto walls are scenes of the nightlong journey to the Great Beyond, replicas of images carved into a tomb of one of Tutankhamun's ancestors that follow the path of the sun god along a nether world river.

The elaborate rituals of burial document the care Egyptians took in protecting the body for the afterlife, basically drying it out and removing the liver, lungs, stomach and intestines that were also dried, then wrapped, dipped in liquid resin and stored in containers that were often as elaborate as the coffin. The heart was sometimes removed and dried, but it was always buried with the body. The corpse was wrapped with strips of linen into which amulets, weapons and jewelry were nested.

Shabtis were small figures placed in tombs that would act as servants in the afterlife, and several gilded examples, probably belonging to Tutankhamun's great-grandparents, stand in glass cases looking ready for their marching orders. Other tomb relics from Tutankhamun's ancestors include statues of animals representing various deities, furniture such as an elegantly carved armchair, and a "magical brick" mounted by a figure, one of four that would have been placed in each corner of a sarcophagul chamber to ward off danger. This one is inscribed with the spell from the Egyptians' Book of the Dead: "One who is coming in order to grab, never will I let you grab (me) . . . It is I who will grab you."

Scholars think, but cannot be sure, that Tutankhamun's father was the iconoclastic pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled from 1353 B.C. to 1336 B.C. His wife was the legendary Nefertiti. Her exquisite face, carved in stone, stares out from a life-sized head that was probably part of a full-body statue, along with sculptures of one of her daughters, almost as beautiful.

Akhenaten ascended the throne as Amenhotep IV but changed his name to reflect a religious revolution he mandated in which multiple deities were replaced by one, Aten the sun god. Akhenaten also moved the capital from Thebes to a new "pure" city, el-Amarna. Historians suspect his motives were more pragmatic than spiritual; as the sole link to Aten, he muted the power and controlled the wealth of the high priests of polytheism.

Artifacts from his reign reflect a more naturalistic depiction of the pharaoh. He was often shown with his family, playing with his children in a domestic setting, or worshiping together, giving all the members a cult status.

Tutankhamun was probably the son of Kiya, one of Akhenaten's lesser wives who was known as Greatly Beloved. Because he was only 9 or 10 when he became king, he was probably heavily influenced by advisers who persuaded him to renounce his father's heretical religion and return to the old gods and capital. He was married at 12, scholars think, to his half-sister, one of Nefertiti's daughters. They had no surviving children though the mummified remains of two prematurely born daughters were in his tomb, outfitted with tiny gilded funerary masks.

He died unexpectedly when he was no older than 20 and speculation has always suggested foul play. Recent body scans and tests indicate no major traumas, just a broken leg that might have caused a fatal infection.

Tut's treasures dazzle, spread through several galleries. Lists found in 1922, along with empty boxes scattered around, imply jewelry thefts (some scholars believe up to 60 percent is missing), but miraculously, more than 200 pieces of jewelry were untouched. One wonders, if they were the possessions of only a minor pharaoh, what splendors belonging to the Big Guns must have been lost to thieves.

We will never know if the jumble of objects was typical of all tomb inventories or, because he died so unexpectedly with no burial plan, everything he owned was simply stuffed in with his body. The collection ranges from a child-sized game board of ivory to an elaborate royal diadem he was wearing when found. Jewels he wore, a chair he sat in, a fan that cooled him share space with shabtis, vessels and musical instruments. Statues portray him in the headdresses of upper and lower Egypt. A gold shrine is engraved with intimate scenes of the young king and his wife. In one, he pours water into her hand as she kneels before him. In these galleries, more than previous ones, is the presence of a real life.

We can even see what he looked like, in a forensics model based on recent scans: an attractive youth with full lips and high cheekbones. He was the last of his line; the two subsequent rulers associated with the 18th dynasty were a powerful adviser and then a mighty general.

Even a god-king might be surprised by so much attention and the travel around a continent he never knew existed. Tutankhamun's relics likely will not come our way again for a long time if the Egyptian government's dream for a new museum is realized. I suggest you make your own journey to Fort Lauderdale before Tutankhamun finally, perhaps, rests in peace.

- Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

"Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" is at the Museum of Art, 1 Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, through April 23. Tickets for adults are $25 Monday through Thursday and $30 Friday, Saturday and holidays; seniors and military are $22.50 Monday through Thursday and $27.50 Friday, Saturday and holidays; $14 for children 6 to 17. The exhibit is open daily from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Group rates are available. For information, call toll-free 1-877-787-7711 or 1-877-888-8587 or go to www.moafl.org

[Last modified January 5, 2006, 10:20:05]