–And he’s looking great! Relatively speaking, that is. At long last, the dessicated phiz of everyone’s favorite honky can be viewed by his adoring public. The official museum position is that the mummy’s curse is bogus, which is a relief to know. On the other hand, they’re expecting people to pay for the privilege of looking at his flaking buck-toothed gob, so what else are they going to say?
For me, the most interesting part of the story was the bit about how the mummy itself was broken into 18 pieces. According to the BBC article, this occurred while the tomb’s discoverer Howard Carter was removing the gold mask and other goodies. This conjures the image of Carter clutching the edges of the mask, flailing the withered carcass around madly while cursing a blue streak. Evidently archaeology as a discipline was not yet clearly distinguished from mugging at this point in history.
Tutophiles may also rest easy in the knowledge that, according to Egyptian Council of Antiquities chief Zahi Hawass, the boy-king’s sacred wang is still present and accounted for:
Yes, the Boy King is looking great. His mummified face brings back an old bugaboo, though. The lad’s centuries-old face is black. Are we in for another round of “Tutenkamen was black!”? What is the conventional wisdom on the skin color of mummies? (UK folks, I’m not talking about your mum.) :rolleyes:
Now that I think about it, when Otzi the Iceman was first discovered, there was also a spate of rumors regarding his groinal apparatus or lack thereof. Was it broken off? Did it get shaved away by the glacier? Eventually it was conclusively determined that his batch had been preserved intact; still, the mere question strikes me as kind of weird. Here’s a miraculously preserved Bronze Age man-- there are so many questions that can suddenly be answered! How did he dress? What was his state of health? What did he eat? What killed him? The question “does he still have a dingus?” would probably not even be on my Top Forty.
It’s the same deal with King Tut: here’s the body of the most famous Egyptian pharaoh in history on display, yet somehow the two-page article announcing this fact feels the need to dispel some vague 1940’s legend about the theft of his prong. Frankly, this peculiar obsession does not paint a very flattering portrait of archaeologists. Why this compulsive need to monitor the winkies of the dead?
Curiously, the announcement leaves the whereabouts of the remaining pharaonic tackle uncertain. What about Tut’s nuts?
I am heartened by the fact that Tut’s er, tool is still with him. Too bad about it falling off. Bad ka and all that. (and what exactly did Carter do? I mean these things are fragile, but jeesh.)