King Tutunkhamen

When I was in Golden recently, I saw the exhibit King Tut and the Golden Age of Pharaohs at the gorgeous Denver Art Museum. The exhibit was very well done. Almost all of the display cases had the written material posted at the top of the case and on all sides, so you could read them all from a goodly distance away, then go up, quickly view the piece and move back, rather than trying to read the usually tiny card describing what you were looking at, taking up space but not actually enjoying the piece itself. This helped ameliorate the crush of people we encountered, and made the whole exhibit manageable, is still mildly claustrophobic. The items included in the exhibit included many statues of other pharaohs that were impressively large and beautifully crafted. You can read about ancient Egypt all you want, but seeing the products of that civilization makes a big impression. They were amazing.

My favorite piece from the tomb was the coffinette that held King Tut's stomach. When I looked closely at it, I was mesmerized by the intricacy and beauty of the work. It was made ~3500 years ago, and it is impressive craftsmanship for an era. But what stuck me was that going back to the first civilizations, man has searched for glory and crafted over-the-top beauty. To expect that modern man would eschew the magnificence of pomp and glamor when ancient man did not is to ignore what is universally human. Somehow we need to seek solutions to today's problems with the ancient world in mind. We have mostly ignored history and we are tied to our our ancient DNA. That has implications we are unlikely to overcome. I am not sure what the solutions are, but King Tut made a big impression on me.