LEGACY OF A BOY-KING: Tutankhamun’s treasures testify to Africa’s timeless, soul-shattering artistry

The Bokoni stone circles of the Mpumalanga escarpment were actually built by aliens. Great Zimbabwe was constructed by the Phoenicians to provide gold to King Solomon, or if not by them, then by the ancient Egyptians. As for the pyramids, those were built by a mysterious civilisation, perhaps ancient Atlantis. 

Okay, then. Let’s concede the pharaohs and their workers really did build the Giza pyramids, the Nile temples and the breathtaking tombs of the Valley of the Kings. Well, then, you cannot really call ancient Egypt “African”, can you? Think more olive-hued, Mediterranean types, say Yul Brynner wearing mocha foundation as Ramses II in The Ten Commandments (1956).

Why is it so hard for so many of us to see Africa’s brilliant human talent? Growing up under apartheid, the consistent message I got from my elders was: Africa is primitive. Sure, black Africans can sing and dance beautifully, and Good Lord, how do they manage to speak so many languages?

 But still, a drum circle is hardly a symphony orchestra. As for architecture, engineering, and literature, as Saul Bellow once put it, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?” (The correct answer: Tolstoy).

All of this came back to me during a recent trip to Egypt. Returning from my adoptive home of Pennsylvania to my native Mpumalanga, I had one of those air travel opportunities that are just too good to pass up. By far the cheapest tickets were on EgyptAir, and when I looked into a weeklong stopover in Cairo, it cost nothing extra, essentially.

Egypt was also generally cheap – a true value destination for South Africans. But the clincher? The brand new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM).

Opened less than a year ago, after numerous delays, the GEM is the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single civilisation. Back in 2002, a global competition decided the building’s design.  Since its opening, architectural firm Heneghan Peng’s majestic contemporary tribute to the greatest Wonder of the Ancient World, built with a commanding view of the latter, has become the toast of globetrotting museum-goers, with the London Times calling the museum a “new wonder”.

No ordinary museum

We visited the GEM on a warm September evening. Right after we scanned our e-tickets at the entry turnstile, it was clear we were not in an ordinary museum. Instead of just walking a few steps to a museum entrance, we crossed a vast plaza studded with date palms and covered with shining, translucent alabaster tiles, past a hanging obelisk. At last we came to an enormous building with a pyramid-like triangle jutting out of a marble-and-glass facade, decorated with hieroglyphs bearing, we later learned, the names of Egyptian kings and queens.

The effect was spectacular, but the shock and awe were just beginning. Inside, we cooed over the statue of Ramses II in the central foyer, 3,200 years old and considerably larger than the Madiba who grins in front of the Union Buildings with his arms raised. We wandered up the grand staircase, past sculptures memorialising 3,000 years of pharaonic rule over Egypt. 

We then strolled through 12 galleries of exquisite artefacts until we finally reached the Tutankhamun galleries, located off to one side in the New Kingdom section of the main galleries. We had been told that this was a highlight of the new GEM, since all the artefacts discovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 had finally been reunited here, where they could be preserved with state-of-the-art climate control and security.

Here I need to stop and offer a mea culpa. Somehow, in my cynicism about the whitewashing of Egyptian civilisation in popular culture, I’d missed the real archaeological significance of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb. 

Maybe it was all those breathless newspaper stories of the “pharaoh’s curse”, when George Herbert, financial sponsor of the successful archaeological expedition, died of pneumonia five months after entering Tutankamun’s sealed vault. 

Maybe it was the millions who lined up to see King Tut’s golden mask, and a selection of other artefacts from his tomb, when it toured major world cities in the 1970s. As a very rough guide, the longest queues I’ve encountered as a tourist – say, for the Empire State Building, or Madame Tussauds at Times Square – were for experiences I often found underwhelming. 

Or perhaps it was just the 10,000 cheesy Halloween costumes inspired by King Tut’s likeness. 

Blown sideways

At some level, I thought, what’s the big deal? A child-king who ruled from ages eight to 18. With the robust help of his adult adviser, he did a few significant things, like restoring traditional Egyptian polytheism after a brief dalliance with Atenism. It was the briefness of Tutankhamun’s reign that protected his tomb from robbers: since he died before his royal tomb was completed, he was buried in an ordinary, unmarked grave, adapted for a pharaonic burial. 

So as I turned the corner, I was ready to be pleasantly impressed, but certainly not blown sideways. 

I gasped. I’m a regular at art museums, but I had never seen anything so lovely. 

Four giant, gilded funerary shrines were inscribed with hieroglyphs. In addition, there were three coffins, all shining gold, with inlaid glass, portraying Tutankhamun as the god Osiris. Originally, Tutankhamun’s mummy was found nested inside the three coffins, which in turn were embedded within the four shrines, but now each of these treasures was displayed individually. 

Everywhere were exquisite objects: jewellery, sculptures, an alabaster shrine for Tutankhamun’s organs. A golden chariot stood in the centre of the exhibition hall, near a ceremonial throne. Funerary beds with post heads in the shape of hippos, cows and lions glittered, golden, in their pristine glass cases. All in all, counting all the small items – little buckles, miniature servant sculptures, tiny gold protective amulets – more than 5,000 items were on display.

I stood in front of a display case housing 30 tomb artefacts, each about the size of a water jug. Again, what extraordinary beauty! A carving of the cobra goddess, Wadjet, made from wood and plated with gold foil, stared at me with lifelike eyes and striking geometric patterns on its flare. Above Wadjet, on either side of the top display row, two twin falcons, Horus guarding the young king, faced each other, banners rising from their bodies to signify their divinity.

My eyes misted over. That something so gorgeous could last so long! The previous day, our tour guide at the Saqqara tombs had explained that, contrary to popular belief, slavery was rare in ancient Egypt. The pyramids were built by paid workers, and the artisans who created tomb objects were often closely associated with the pharaonic court. 

What time these artisans put into making these objects! What adoration it surely showed for their king, who was believed to transform into a god after his death. Also, what a feeling for art, one of the great universals, stretching back, in front of me, 3,500 years.

Quintessentially African

That was when it came to me. How African all of this was, too, the bold patterns and expressive faces, the familiar creatures, like spitting cobras and hippos. 

Later, we would learn that during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the GEM, which took place about a week after ours, the Cairo municipality painted over a mural on Xi’s route that portrayed Tutankhamun with dark skin. Apparently, the authorities feared Xi would imagine ancient Egypt – and by extension, the modern state – as more black or racially diverse than official narratives allow.

But Luxor, where Tutankhamun was buried, is in southern Egypt, close to Nubia. Although we have no way of knowing for sure, both Tutankhamun and the artists who made his treasure would probably have been darker-complexioned than ancient Egyptians living further to the north, near the Levant.

More importantly, archaeologists note that Upper Egyptian civilisation descended from Naqada settlements, further up the Nile, in today’s Sudan, before migrating downriver to the Nile Delta. The connections between pharaonic Egypt and west and east Africa are visible in the evolution of hieroglyphics, in the development of artistic and architectural techniques, and in cultural parallels, including the divine status of rulers and the tradition of circumcision as a rite of passage. 

Tutankhamen and his treasures are quintessentially African. Since Africa represents both the biological origin of humanity and the genesis of some of the world’s most influential civilisations, the artefacts are also archetypally human.  

Africa, like everywhere else, has never been culturally homogenous. Ancient Mesopotamians and Canaanites influenced Egypt, just as Europeans, Indians, and Lebanese immigrants influence Africa today – which is why Tutankhamen’s artefacts are hybrid and sophisticated.

To disrespect Africanness, then, as my childhood mentors did, is to look down on humanity itself: a form of self-hatred. Like all great art, Tutankhamun’s tomb holds up a mirror to the human condition. And at least to this visitor, what I saw in those shapes, faces, and writings was elaborate, ambiguous, ambitious and soul-shatteringly beautiful. DM

Glen Retief’s The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood won a Lambda Literary Award. He teaches creative nonfiction at Susquehanna University, recently spent a year in South Africa as a Fulbright Scholar, and resides between Emgwenya, Mpumalanga, and Sunbury, Pennsylvania.