Tutankhamen: The Search for an Egyptian King by Joyce Tyldesley is a history of a king who has fascinated me since I saw his grave goods displayed in the 1970s.
Started: 9/3/2014
Completed: 9/15/2014
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody
Review:
As a child, I did not really think about the grave goods I saw being looted from a tomb. Sure, I knew that these came from a dead king, but I didn't really think about how his family must have felt laying him to rest and how all of these things were placed in his tomb so that he could realize his belief that he would become a demi-god. I knew that intellectually, but I was more interested in the pursuit. How had Carter done it? What was the order of discovery? What did all these items mean?
This book answers all those questions, but also brings home the concept of a crypt defiled. The author is herself an archaeologist and she doesn't talk about archaeology or the exploration of the tomb as a defilement. She even provides some of the reverence which one should have for a human corpse. The book brought home to me, through the details and the politics and the outright thefts, how it was a defilement. While it may be extremely valuable for history and I certainly applaud the value of that, I understand far better now how such a tomb should be treated.
The story itself of the discovery and extraction of the grave goods is rather well known to me, but it was developed into an integrated whole in this work and I fully appreciated the effort to which Tyldesley went to bring us into the excavation work at the turn of the century. She also does an excellent job of showing how initial concepts (like a box that was thought to contain a library) yield to modern understanding (it was actually loincloths). In so doing, however, she manages to bring the story of the king to life and to explain in rather good detail how difficult even this well documented individual is to understand. Discerning propaganda (even in the king's own time) from truth is challenging and even the lineage of the king is only a matter of speculation.
I enjoyed the book and read it quickly despite the dry material. I'm not sure, however, if others would enjoy it. It removes so much of the myth that many find pleasurable from the story it might actually be frustrating to many. For myself, I enjoy finding the truth where I can and didn't give much credence to issues Ms Tyldesley clarified such as the non-existence of a curse (it was, however, interesting to me to hear why such a curse didn't make much sense even in ancient times),
As a child, I did not really think about the grave goods I saw being looted from a tomb. Sure, I knew that these came from a dead king, but I didn't really think about how his family must have felt laying him to rest and how all of these things were placed in his tomb so that he could realize his belief that he would become a demi-god. I knew that intellectually, but I was more interested in the pursuit. How had Carter done it? What was the order of discovery? What did all these items mean?
This book answers all those questions, but also brings home the concept of a crypt defiled. The author is herself an archaeologist and she doesn't talk about archaeology or the exploration of the tomb as a defilement. She even provides some of the reverence which one should have for a human corpse. The book brought home to me, through the details and the politics and the outright thefts, how it was a defilement. While it may be extremely valuable for history and I certainly applaud the value of that, I understand far better now how such a tomb should be treated.
The story itself of the discovery and extraction of the grave goods is rather well known to me, but it was developed into an integrated whole in this work and I fully appreciated the effort to which Tyldesley went to bring us into the excavation work at the turn of the century. She also does an excellent job of showing how initial concepts (like a box that was thought to contain a library) yield to modern understanding (it was actually loincloths). In so doing, however, she manages to bring the story of the king to life and to explain in rather good detail how difficult even this well documented individual is to understand. Discerning propaganda (even in the king's own time) from truth is challenging and even the lineage of the king is only a matter of speculation.
I enjoyed the book and read it quickly despite the dry material. I'm not sure, however, if others would enjoy it. It removes so much of the myth that many find pleasurable from the story it might actually be frustrating to many. For myself, I enjoy finding the truth where I can and didn't give much credence to issues Ms Tyldesley clarified such as the non-existence of a curse (it was, however, interesting to me to hear why such a curse didn't make much sense even in ancient times),
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