CHAPTER FOUR

TUT REBORN

TRINITY MIRROR/MIRRORPIX/ALAMY

THE TRAVELING EXHIBIT “Treasures of Tutankhamun” opened on March 30, 1972, at the British Museum. With Tut’s famous gold mask as a centerpiece attraction, more than 7,000 visitors lined up each day to get an up-close look at the treasures. The exhibition traveled through Europe, as well as the U.S. and Canada, before concluding in 1981.

“I HAVE SEEN YESTERDAY. I KNOW TOMORROW.”

—AN INSCRIPTION ON THE SHRINE OF TUTANKHAMUN

WILLIAM MILSOM/EVENING STANDARD/GETTY

NEARLY 1.7 MILLION visitors passed through the British Museum during Tut’s nine-month exhibition. Every day long lines stretched around the galleries and spilled onto the streets. Seeing the artifacts in person was often not enough. Visitors also scooped up Tut memorabilia, such as posters, postcards, bags, and stamps. The museum sold out of replica jewelry on the first day.

For ancient Egyptians, death was an elemental aspect of life itself. When a person passed—especially a pharaoh—it was not treated as an ending, but rather a beginning. The entire process of mummification, and keeping the mummy in a tomb surrounded by the deceased’s belongings, was created because the Egyptians believed that the body must live on in the tomb for the spirit to be freed for eternity while the soul joined the stars in the sky. Tutankhamun fulfilled his destiny of eternal life, but in a much different way from what the ancient Egyptians probably had in mind. His immortality—at least as we best know it—isn’t so much a spiritual matter as it is the product of a more modern phenomenon: the cult of fame.

What started as a story of found treasure—spread far and wide by newspapers and newsreels throughout the 1920s—soon took on a life of its own in popular culture. For Carter and historians, the artifacts of Tutankhamun’s tomb were clues to an ancient civilization. But for others, these treasures and the idea of the boy king became yet another way to celebrate and glorify the modern age in which they were living—a symbol of the now rather than of the past. In many ways, Tut was the perfect vehicle for a wide range of visions, as the true facts of his life and what he stood for were completely open to interpretation.

Some of the work he inspired was rather refined. The Art Deco design movement, for example, was significantly influenced by the treasures unearthed by Carter and his team. Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles had been planned in the Spanish style. But those drawings were scrapped and reconfigured, and the theater opened with an Egyptian motif, including Egyptian-style paintings and hieroglyphics on the walls, within weeks of Carter’s discovery.

Other products of Tut’s popularity were aimed squarely at the masses. Palmolive soap began running ads with ancient Egyptian imagery and the slogan “Re-incarnation of Beauty.” Fashion shows in 1923 were full of fabrics and designs inspired by Egyptian artifacts. Accessories such as handbags, cigarette holders, and jewelry were all created with Egyptian patterns and designs. Kohl, the dark makeup Egyptians painted around their eyes, was heavily applied by women as a nod to the Egyptian style. Even the bobbed hairstyles of 1920s flappers are said to be inspired by ancient Egyptian imagery.

As time passed, and Tut’s popularity refused to fade, the manifestations of his fame veered from tribute to caricature. Consider the 1923 song written in New York’s Tin Pan Alley: “Old King Tut Was a Wise Old Nut.” With lyrics like “He got into his royal bed three thousand years BC/And left a call for twelve o’clock in nineteen twenty three,” this clearly was not about history or the life of an ancient king. Now Tut was being used as a buzzword to perk up people’s ears regardless of the context in which it was used.

The Tut phenomenon would be revived anew in the 1960s when the artifacts left Cairo’s Egyptian Museum for a tour of museums around the world. The largest—and most remembered—museum tour ran from 1972 to 1981 and was called the “Treasures of Tutankhamun.” With lines wrapping around city blocks, abundant television coverage, and celebrities such as Andy Warhol and Elizabeth Taylor pulling strings for prime tickets, this was ancient Egypt meets Studio 54.

Tut’s “hipness” reached its peak in 1978, when comedian Steve Martin, backed by a band called the Toot Uncommons, climbed the Billboard Hot 100 charts with the hit parody song “King Tut.” Most people remember Martin’s bare-chested performance of the song on Saturday Night Live—complete with hieroglyphics-inspired dance moves—but like so much of Martin’s humor, there is thoughtful intelligence beneath the surface of the sight gags and groan-worthy lyrics. When he sang “Now if I’d known/They’d line up just to see him/(King Tut)/I’d taken all my money/And bought me a museum,” Martin wasn’t mocking Tutankhamun as much as he was making fun of the over-the-top hype surrounding his tour.

It’s not uncommon for people to lose their identity when they reach the peak of mass popularity. This is certainly true of Tut, a fate that Carter feared and loathed from the moment he was forced to give guided site tours to aristocrats after the discovery.

Who were all these people clamoring for a piece of Tutankhamun? What was driving their interest? Did they know—or even care—about his life or ancient Egyptian culture? Or were they just following the glitter of his gold and the thrilling frenzy of his fame?

TUTANKHAMUN FIRST appeared on the cover of LIFE in 1968. The story inside, written by Tom Prideaux with photographs by Brian Brake, chronicled the ancient Egyptian civilization—a fascination that achieved mass scale after Carter’s discovery in 1922.

ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS LTD/MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY

IN THE 1920S, THE TUT phenomenon influenced women’s fashion as well as hair and makeup styles. This period dress is a fine example, adorned with Egyptian-inspired ornamentation at the waist and hemline.

NBCU PHOTO BANK/GETTY

A TOP 100 HIT in 1978, comedian Steve Martin’s “King Tut”—and his Saturday Night Live performance—is one of the best-remembered phenomena from the Tut explosion of the 1970s. The song, a satire of the hot-ticket museum tour of the era, represents Tut’s transition from historical icon to pop-culture sensation.