Women's Media Nation | Social, political, and cultural issues relating to women

Art & Thought: Tutankhamun’s Funeral

posted by ChickSpeak
Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 9:42pm CDT

We had been friends since elementary school, and we could not have been more different. Even in the first grade, she was considered fashion forward with her sparkly pink t-shirts, pigtails, and leather pants. She held the most parties out of all the other girls in class, celebrating every Easter, Halloween, and Christmas with a Barbie-themed bonanza that drove all of us, and even a few boys, wild.

Our friendship had gotten off to a rocky start. I had refused to lend her my new colored pencils, and she envied the wide range of colors I had, especially the five shades of pink I put on special reserve for all important art assignments. Finally, she stole them, and what ensued was a temper tantrum on my part that brought in the nurse, the other first grade teachers, and my parents. Since the incident of the pink colored pencils, everything else that has occurred in our friendship has been smooth sailing.

Now, the same girl who I befriended many years ago was standing beside me, dressed like she was ready to go out for a night on the town. When we met for some tea, I jokingly asked her what she was wearing. Making a face, she peered down at me from her supermodel vantage point of 5′11 and lowered her starry blue eyes, blushing. “Since when did you have an interest in fashion?” she asked.

Once we made our way to the Metropolitan Museum, I told her that we would be viewing an exhibit called “Tutankhamun’s Funeral.” Pulling her golden hair into a bun, my friend said she was uninterested in seeing the corporal remains of a man whose name she could not pronounce, but after a half hour of nagging in the lobby, she finally relented. We spent an additional half hour sitting on a random stone bench while she dabbed her lips with a shiny pink gloss she described as “a shade of rose that smelled as sweet as honey.”

After taking several other detours along the way (including the Metropolitan Museum store, where we wasted what felt like hours surveying jewelry and silk scarves neither of us could afford), my friend and I arrived at the Egyptian Special Exhibitions Gallery. From the get go, she was clearly unimpressed with the range of objects on display and crinkled her nose as we passed a series of large storage jars recovered from the pharaoh’s tomb.

“Gosh, Katherine, you sure picked the most boring exhibit in this entire museum!” She shot a dirty look in my direction, pulled out a compact, and began dabbing her cheeks.

I can only imagine what I must have looked like, as I took her by the hand and led her over to a glass display, practically dragging her behind me. “It’s not boring,” I snapped. “These are valuable artifacts, all of which have been preserved for centuries at a time so that you would be able to view them on this day!”

I pointed to a bust of the god Amun, which was, aside from a broken nose, perfectly intact with a weathered stone surface. I could not help but marvel at the primitive details of the Egyptian god’s braided beard and the cap he wore. His serene face and expressive eyebrows, which overshadowed the rest of his face, made one feel strangely at peace, appropriate for a statue that was carved for the pharaoh’s tomb.

Walking briskly to another display (I had by then left my friend behind to bemoan her situation from across the room), I took note of a beautiful painted wine jar decorated with petal-like garlands in blue and red. There were other jars as well, including several oddly-shaped water bottles with long narrow necks and a rose-colored amphora. One of my favorite pieces from the exhibit was an aquamarine bowl painted with a colorful pattern along the edge. Especially prepared for the tomb, it even features a flower-like design within the bowl that is colored the same light blue as the outside.

As the exhibit was a rather small one (containing around sixty objects), I returned to my friend’s side sooner than I had expected. With a sarcastic edge to my voice, I asked her whether she had enjoyed the exhibit from the bench she sat on.

“It was okay,” she said, taking out a brush and smoothing out her hair.

“Oh really? What did you like about it?”

“Well, I think it’s pretty amazing that the pharaoh Tutank - whatever his name is - became king of an entire country at just nine-years-old. And what I find more amazing is the great fashion sense they had, even back then.”

Surprised by the depth of her answer, I decided to goad her on. “What fashion sense?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Statement jewelry is definitely hot right now,” she explained. “And apparently, it was hot back then, too. Look at all the floral collars in the exhibit. They were once made of real flower petals and beads. A lot of these necklaces, if the flowers were still alive, could definitely grace the pages of a high-end fashion magazine today.”

“Like, for instance, this one,” she got up and walked next to a display containing a dried-up floral collar. “This one is made of blue lotus petals, nightshade berries, faience, and linen. They really experimented with their materials, signs of any good designer.”

I stood there, unwilling to believe that the young woman who less than an hour ago spent fifteen minutes trying on one silk scarf, was now lecturing me on the Egyptians’ fashion forwardness.

“That’s great…” I stuttered.

“So, what did you see? Anything interesting?” she asked.

“No,” I replied sheepishly. “Just a few jars, bandages, and sheets.”

For more information, please visit the exhibition’s website. On display until September 6, 2010, “Tutankhamun’s Funeral” is located in the Egyptian Special Exhibitions Gallery.

Katherine J. Chen is a sophomore at Princeton University majoring in English with a certificate in Creative Writing. While she is fascinated by all the objects in Tutankhamun’s tomb, she can’t help but feel a little creeped out, too.