In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was almost impossible to hold a world's fair without a display of either real or ersatz pieces of Egyptian relics. Queen Victoria had her name inscribed in hieroglyphics at one such pavilion inside an 1854 exposition. Self-styled professors held "mummy unwrappings" in Europe and the United States in which they exposed mummies to public view.
French dramatist Jean Cocteau justified pleasure at macabre museum viewings on the grounds that the pharaohs wanted it that way. "They did not hide themselves in order to disappear, but in order to await the cue for their entry on stage," he wrote. "They have not been dragged from the tomb. They have been brought from the limbo of the wings with masks and gloves made of gold."
Zahi Hawass, center, checks the Tut mummy inside the ancient ruler's tomb in the Valley of the Kings last month in advance of a scanning machine's examination. Tut's artifacts have embarked on a world tour.
(Saedi Press Via AP)
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The appeal lives on: A National Geographic promotion for the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" tour reads, "The greatest blockbuster exhibition of all time."
Legends fed the mummy mania. Early mummy-comes-to-life stories surfaced in ancient Egypt itself. In one, a high priest named Khamwas pilfered a sacred book that was defended by a live mummy. Mummy novels became popular in the 19th century, the years in which Europeans poured into Egypt to scavenge tombs. "The Jewel of the Seven Stars," a novel by Bram Stoker, creator of "Dracula," involved a mummy queen who tries to possess a scientist's daughter.
The 1932 Universal Pictures production of "The Mummy," starring Boris Karloff, solidified America's affair with pharaohs. It's the story of a necrophiliac mummy who thinks his girlfriend, dead already for 3,000 years, is reincarnated in the form of a slinky 20th-century Cairo woman. He tries to mummify her so they can live wrapped in each other's linen strips happily ever after.
Many of the tall tales involve the Curse. That's where King Tut comes in.
After Carter discovered the tomb, a viper ate his canary. It was a bad omen, his Egyptian workers said. Then Carter's sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, died of an infected mosquito bite. Supposedly, Carnarvon's dog in London also keeled over. From then on, anyone connected with Carter or Carnarvon and who died was somehow declared a victim of the Curse. More lately, the head of Egyptian antiquities was fatally hit by a car in central Cairo in 1977 after signing a contract to let 70 Tutankhamen artifacts travel to Great Britain. Hmmm.
So on Jan. 5, when Tut was hauled out in a plain wooden box and the wind blew, everyone gasped. "It was strange," a guard at the tomb said recently. "It had been so calm just a minute before. Strange. Please don't write my name. I don't like to talk about this."
The wind and the breakdown of the scanning equipment (it went down for an hour) fit neatly with part of National Geographic Channel's planned two-hour documentary. The movie will look into the history of Tut excavation, the theories surrounding his death and -- what a surprise! -- the Curse. Hawass says he will explore whether spores and bacteria in the tomb could have caused health problems.
"There are lots of strange coincidences around Tut," says filmmaker Brando Quilici, who is producing the documentary. "Maybe we can get to the bottom of some of them."
National Geographic has contributed $1 million to the Egyptian Mummy Project, in which the Supreme Council will probe scores of mummies to understand ancient Egyptian eating habits, diseases and perhaps the cause of death. Siemens, the German communications and technology company, donated the scanning equipment and reportedly provided a half-million dollars to maintain it.
Hawass's scientific team is inspecting the 1,700 images taken of Tut. The scanner produces three-dimensional pictures and can pick up minute scars and fractures that regular X-rays cannot. Hawass originally proposed to transfer Tut to Cairo for the examination, but Luxor citizens objected. They were afraid he would never return, Hawass says. "He is their king," he says, sighing.
This is not the first time that controversy has visited Hawass and his research/promotional projects. A few years ago he permitted a British archaeologist and a production crew for the Discovery Channel to film a documentary on Nefertiti, the famous queen. The existence of Nefertiti's mummy has long been a subject of speculation and the Discovery documentary claimed to have resolved the mystery. The archaeologist singled out a mummy near Luxor as Nefertiti's. Hawass objected, saying the explorer submitted no scientific papers to prove the point. "This was cheating," he says.
Hawass himself has become something of a celebrity. He has made appearances in several mummy documentaries, keeps a busy schedule of speaking engagements and wears an Indiana Jones-style hat when out among the tombs. In December, Hawass attended the opening of a newly discovered tomb in a place called the Valley of the Golden Mummies. He opened it with an ax as Egyptian and British television cameras recorded the event.
Coming soon: Hawass exposes the cause of Tut's death. "The scan will tell us everything we need to know about Tutankhamen. We can go inside the mummy. I will tell you who killed him. I will tell you in March! Call me," he says.
Gaballa Ali Gaballa, a former director general of the Supreme Council, thinks that Hawass may be optimistic. Tut's body has already been much abused and the use of a scan is less valuable on it than on other, better preserved mummies. Carter left Tut broken into pieces. Bits of fingers were scattered in the coffin. Only the head itself is largely intact.
"Tut's not a mummy," says Gaballa. "He's a mess."
