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- [00:01]
William
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter. Sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com.
- [00:20]
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- [01:17]
Anita Arnand
good, so good, so good.
- [01:19]
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- [01:53]
Anita Arnand
Well. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand and me William.
- [02:00]
William
Now in the last episode we saw the end of Akhenaten's dynasty with the death of the boy king Tutankhamun, who had no heirs. Today we bring you a special episode to wrap up the series. We are discussing when everyone went crazy for Tut in the aftermath of the incredible 1922 discovery, we are joined once again by the brilliant and Wonderful my compatriot, Dr. Campbell Price.
- [02:28]
Dr. Campbell Price
Hi. Hi hi. Nice to be back.
- [02:30]
Anita Arnand
We're so delighted to have you back. We did a bonus episode for anybody who wants to go and listen where we talked in depth about the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. For those of you who want to listen to it, join our club, empirepod uk.com, empirepod uk.com but you know, we talked about this man, Howard Carter. Unlikely because he wasn't from one of, you know, sort of the top notches of British education establishment. An Egyptologist who discovers the intact to of Tutankhamun. It's the best preserved pharaonic tomb in existence. And Howard CARTER after this 1922 discovery, Campbell, the world goes nuts for King Tut.
- [03:13]
Dr. Campbell Price
They do, Anita, they absolutely do. And it's worth saying 1922 also represented the centenary of the decipherment of hieroglyphs by Frenchman Jean Francois Champollion. So it was a double whammy of Egyptomania. And it's difficult to, I think, yeah. Overemphasize just what Tutankhamun meant, how much he caught the zeitgeist of the moment in the 1920s.
- [03:40]
Anita Arnand
And I suppose that's not a coincidence when so many people are thinking about, you know, the senseless loss of young lives. Tutankhamun, the boy king, and, you know, the world has just come out of World War I, where so many young men died.
- [03:53]
Dr. Campbell Price
Well, going into the excavation, Carter and the team didn't know that Tutankhamun was a boy. That was information that came out from the discovery and aging of his body. But when it became known that he died about the age of 18, of course. Yeah, that resonated with that lost generation of young men in Europe. And the aesthetics of the tomb, the idea of discovery, the idea of finding something that was hidden and was secret. But then you've got to remember, yeah, Roaring twenties, Art Deco, all that angularity and geometric design that the tomb was filled with, really spoke to the moment.
- [04:31]
William
And there's also the timing in terms of mass media after the First World War. You're getting things like photography, illustrated newspapers, radio. All that is beaming this stuff out, isn't it? And it has a kind of global presence in a way that it just wouldn't have done in the early years this century.
- [04:51]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah. In a way, it's the first big global news story that's not about war in the aftermath of the First World War. You're right. There's. There's, you know, there's improvement in communications, there's a greater use of color. So not just in newspapers, but a lot of the Tutankhamun material was visualized in the Illustrated London News. That's where you could see a lot of the photographs, often colorized photographs of the find. So it spread not only because it was a great story, but because there was a means to communicate, to literally to telegraph this, this news around the world.
- [05:28]
Anita Arnand
And advertisers, who are never backwards about coming forwards, they jump all over it very, very quickly, don't they? Because you have pretty much Egyptian motifs on. On everything.
- [05:37]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, there's a. There's a great rage for. For Tutankhamun. I mean, everything from. From Soap to clothing to contraceptives are Egypt themed. So, yes, yes, it's a big moment.
- [05:52]
William
Tell me about the Egyptian themed contraceptives.
- [05:55]
Anita Arnand
I'm so glad you asked because there was a question I wanted to know the answer to. Yes, do tell us about the contraceptives. What are we talking about?
- [06:01]
William
Hieroglyphs covered. I mean, what's the.
- [06:03]
Dr. Campbell Price
Don't think there were hieroglyphs on them.
- [06:05]
Anita Arnand
Was it sort of obelisk? I mean. Oh, no, genuinely, what's the first time
- [06:09]
William
Christ has crushed them?
- [06:10]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yes, well, I mean, the Ramesses name is kind of ironic because he had 100 children, so know how effective?
- [06:17]
Anita Arnand
Oh, that's funny.
- [06:18]
Dr. Campbell Price
A contraceptive device with the name Ramesses would have been. But I think it's both high culture, you know, really expensive, nice stuff and pretty low culture stuff. Takes inspiration from pharaonic Egypt generally, but Tutankhamun in particular.
- [06:34]
Anita Arnand
So, I mean, Carter gets bombarded with silly requests, you know, things like, you know, can you. Can you send us the designs of the shoes because we want to make footwear. You've got grocers wanting to sell packets of mummified food, as you say, from everything, you know, soap, gloves, everything else sort of just getting stamped with hieroglyphs and these faces that have been exposed. Why? Now you tell me, why do you think, Campbell, that this Tut mania suddenly takes hold? What was it about this tomb and its contents?
- [07:07]
Dr. Campbell Price
There's an element of the timing, sure. You know, it's pretty kind of slow news days, perhaps after the First World War. There is the gleam of gold assures interest, fashion, celebrity, glamour, royalty at a time when European monarchies were maybe not entirely all of them feeling confident about their positions. But then there's the act of discovery, something which, you know, it's the kind of the challenge of discovery, of planning and then searching and then eventually finding this absolutely untold splendor just waiting in the sands of Egypt. There'd always been interest. You know, interest in Egyptology was way back before Napoleon showed up. But then it just reaches this kind of fever pitch and along with the telecommunications and the visuals. Yeah, it just goes wild for several years and then drops off to nothing.
- [08:13]
William
Why is it that it has so much more of an effect in popular culture than, I mean, around the same time you've got, you know, wooly digging the royal tombs of Ur, and that's got some pretty good golden lapis too. But it doesn't have the same effect on popular culture that Tut does.
- [08:30]
Dr. Campbell Price
No, exactly. And I think it's not just about the bullion. You know, it's not that there's just more gold in the tomb of Tutankhamun. It's about the way it's fashioned, the way it's shaped, especially in the way the face of Tutankhamun literally speaks to us. And it's something we talked about in that previous episode about the discovery. Howard Carter's sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, whose name is inextricably linked with Tutankhamun. The curse of Tutankhamun, the greatest curse on Carnarvon, was that he never saw the golden mask.
- [09:00]
William
It's extraordinary fact that because we always associate him. You have the picture of how Carter beside the mask, and it's always assumed that he saw it, but he didn't.
- [09:11]
Dr. Campbell Price
He didn't. And the aesthetics of that. Well, the craftsmanship of the mask. Of course, the king is represented in a number of other objects in a very almost kind of androgynous way, because this is typical, as we said, of the Amarna revolution, the time Tutankhamun lived in. His father is a religious revolutionary, Akhenaten, and he favors the worship of one God, and in doing so, he kind of splices male and female. And so regardless of what the people looked like, we'll never really know for sure. They are depicted with very long skulls and very androgynous faces.
- [09:50]
William
That's what Anita calls et chic.
- [09:52]
Anita Arnand
Et chic is exactly what I call it. Yes. So rounded bellies and narrow shoulders.
- [09:57]
Dr. Campbell Price
And Tutankhamun's mask, which may have actually been reused from a mask made for Nefertiti, some people believe, some Egyptologists believe, has pierced ears. They were covered when Tutankhamun was found by Carter. But the fact that they have pierced ears in what survives and what's presented adds to this androgynous kind of appeal. Tutankhamun is something for everyone. He speaks to every generation. Taste background.
- [10:23]
William
So this also coincides not just with the sudden efflorescence of mass media, but there's also the very important political moment, isn't there? Because in 1922, Egypt gets its independence. The Brits who've been sitting there since the time of Lord Cromer dominating Egypt, have become very unpopular and they withdraw.
- [10:45]
Dr. Campbell Price
Absolutely. This is so important to recognize. Yeah. After the invasion of Egypt in 1882, Cromer's been there for quite a while. Egypt gets partial independence. You could say the Brits are quite keen to control access to the Suez Canal because of its linkage with South Asia. And the broader world. But yes, it's a moment of Egyptian national identity asserting political independence. And so Tutankhamun arrives on the world scene at a very interesting and very sensitive time for Egyptian politics.
- [11:21]
Anita Arnand
I mean, that must have a molding effect on Egypt's population as well because there is a religion, it's Islam and yet you've got now people becoming completely obsessed with something that entirely predates Islam or any Abrahamic religion.
- [11:37]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, I think there was always interest. I mean, people often forget that a lot of scholarship before Europeans showed up was written in Arabic.
- [11:45]
Anita Arnand
Good point.
- [11:46]
Dr. Campbell Price
Egyptian and other Arab speaking Arab writing scholars were describing ancient Egypt. But you're right, in 1922 there's the rise of what's called Pharaonism. So this is the deliberate, explicit pushing back against colonialism, British colonialism and trying to connect to the Pharaonic past. So it influences architecture, it influences discourse at the time, in the 1920s into the 1930s. Ultimately it kind of goes out of fashion after then, but it's quite hot around the time of Tutankhamun's discovery.
- [12:25]
William
How does it manifest? You don't have the speaker in the Egyptian Parliament dressing up in ancient Egyptian garment.
- [12:31]
Dr. Campbell Price
No, no, no you don't, but so you have the Prime Minister, Saad Zagloul, who is, you know, proud of Pharaonic history and of Egypt's independence. And I think there's something about Egypt being a self contained, united country at the time, a kingdom. Remember there is a king of Egypt still in the 1920s, Farouk, at this point, not yet Farouk, he's the 1930s, but King Fouad the First, his father. I mean Egypt is always the kind of in between place, as Egyptian friends might say. They're partly foot to foot in different camps. But there is a real need to assert ownership of the Tutankhamun find because remember Howard Carter, his sponsor Lord Carnarvon, does a deal with the Times of London. So the news exclusively of the find, when it's discovered, is channeled through a British newspaper. So if you're an Egyptian journalist or if you're an Egyptian consumer of news, that's quite an insult.
- [13:36]
Anita Arnand
Do the Egyptian newspapers, do we know that they respond in kind? Are there sort of ceremonies to say, you know what? It's ours, not theirs. We did know about this. This is our birthright, not a European one, not Howard Carter's.
- [13:48]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, there's anger, of course there's anger because there's anti British sentiment anyway in Egypt at the time. And I mean everything can be nuanced, of course. I mean, Carter had lived and worked in Egypt for a long time, could speak Arabic, was good friends with lots of Egyptian people, but his stated interest was in the scientific objectivity of the excavation, and he wanted to control access. I mean, that's Carter's claim. So he had his specialists who were mainly, but not exclusively, Europeans or Americans. And so in doing the deal with the Times, he claims he wanted to just simplify the news communication. But that, of course, put a lot of, understandably, a lot of Egyptian noses out of joint.
- [14:37]
William
Campbell, just tell me a little bit more about the politics of this, because 1920s is almost the high point of pan Arabism. You've got a lot of talk about Syria. Palestine is under the British mandate. There's a lot of frustration over the Balf declaration and so on. And the Al Aram is publishing articles from Cairo attacking all this. Do you have the Egyptians very much taking on their Arab identity and opposing it from an Arab point of view? Or are they saying we're the descendants of the Egyptians and our moolids still contain many of the same? These religious festivals contain many of the echoes of pharaonic festivals. Or how is this? How does it play out?
- [15:22]
Dr. Campbell Price
I think this ebbs and flows, really. Although in the 1920s and 30s you have theronism, and this desire to connect with Pharaonic past, to stand against European colonialism is strong. That kind of pan Arabism that takes over into independence. So full independence, of course, with the seizing of the Suez Canal, liberation of the Suez canal in the 1950s. So there are reasons where that becomes more significant later on. But around the time of Tutankhamun, that's like a touch paper. To connect more closely with pharaonic heritage. Not to dismiss and ignore Islamic heritage, but to be proud of a Pharaonic history.
- [16:10]
Anita Arnand
Very interesting. I mean, we sort of talked about this during our Persia series as well. The way sort of young Iranians were
- [16:17]
William
hearkening back to looking to Persepolis. Exactly.
- [16:20]
Anita Arnand
Yeah, exactly that. I mean, putting matters temporal to one side for a moment. Can we talk about matters supernatural as well? Because the curse of two people.
- [16:30]
William
Oh, we like a good curse on this program. I can see Campbell coming over all skeptical again, though.
- [16:35]
Anita Arnand
No, no, no, I'm not suggesting there was a curse, but what I'm asking is, in 1922, were people obsessed with the idea that, you know, this is cursed, we shouldn't talk about it, or, you know, it's killing people. I mean, what was that sort of portrayed as at the time, both in Egypt and in Britain.
- [16:53]
Dr. Campbell Price
Well, so, I mean, this is probably.
- [16:56]
William
We know that. We know that tone in Campbell's voice when he says whale.
- [17:00]
Dr. Campbell Price
So this is something which is, yeah, probably the most well known aspect. You know, the fine points of 18th dynasty chronology are not so scintillating as, you know, Lord Carnarvon was bumped off by a pharaoh's curse and the dog howled. I think there's something underlying throughout the excavation and it's something, you know, in Carter's description. So behind me I've got a cardboard cutout of one of the so called guardian statues.
- [17:34]
Anita Arnand
Handsome he is too.
- [17:36]
Dr. Campbell Price
So one thing which bubbles along under the. The more kind of headline worthy news about the curse is a certain anxiety about the status of the tomb. And so Howard Carter describes these two black painted gilded statues of the king as guardian statues. I've got a cardboard cutout, one of them in my office behind me. And these are actually ritual representations of the king that may have been used during the king's lifetime, but which ended up in the tomb antechamber. So among the first things that Carter saw, and he describes them as sentinels because they hold weapons, they seem quite menacing. It almost kind of implies that Carter feels guilty for probing further into the tomb. So there is this, in a way, a kind of colonial guilt about the entering and the emptying of a pharaoh's tomb. And that finds real expression in a narrative which is cooked up by people who feel kind of left out in the cold by the Times deal. So the Times of London reporting deal means that in order to generate, you know, copy for newspapers, journalists have to write about something. And so this idea of, especially after Carnarvon's death, the supposition that it's a curse really kind of balloons.
- [19:09]
Anita Arnand
And what's interesting is that, you know, Carter's having none of it. He sees it for what it is and describes it as Tommy rot. Any mention of the curse is Tommy rot, he says. But what is also interesting is the human condition. Because you have talk of the supernatural and talk of a curse, people are even more interested in seeing it with their own eyes and, you know, getting their hands on merch if they can.
- [19:30]
Dr. Campbell Price
I mean, I think there's always, there had always been an association between pharaonic Egypt and magic. So it appears in scripture, Egyptian magicians. And that persists because, you know, we're talking about pharaonic religion appears to an outsider quite mysterious, quite arcane, quite, in some ways quite threatening. There's lots of things to do with the dead focus on tombs and graves. So all of this makes a really heady cocktail that speaks to the. To the moment.
- [20:01]
William
But it's also significant for the moment that all this stuff stays in Egypt for the previous two centuries. Most of the good stuff is being shipped out. You go to Italy and there's this enormous Egyptian museum in Turin associated with the early Italian royal family. The British Museum is obviously notoriously chock a block with Egyptian goodies. Now, Tutankhamun, which is the best stuff of all, stays in Egypt. Now, that would not have happened, presumably, 20 or 30 years earlier.
- [20:32]
Dr. Campbell Price
No. And there's an interesting play on the rule book because it said that if a tomb was found intact, certainly a royal tomb, that it should stay property of the state in its entirety. But if a tomb is robbed in some way, not intact or not a coherent group of objects, then it's subject to this system of finds, division, this colonial system cooked up by an Englishman and a Frenchman, Flinders Petrie and Gaston Maspero. So when Carter finds Tutankhamun, they find evidence and play up, deliberately play up the evidence that the tomb had been robbed. So this seems to be done as
- [21:16]
William
a way of trying to get it all out.
- [21:18]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, yeah. Well, getting at least some. Some of it out, Carter describes as recompense for Lord Carnarvon, because Lord Carnarvon has spent a lot of money on the excavation. And this is also the justification for the Times deal, because Carter, him, sorry, Carnarvon himself, has spent a lot of cash in doing the business of archaeology. It's not cheap.
- [21:42]
William
Now, Carnarvon does get bits out, because when you go to Downton Abbey today in the basement, there is. There is some stuff. There's quite a lot of Egyptian bits and bobs, but it's not obviously the gold mask or any of the really big knockout objects.
- [21:57]
Dr. Campbell Price
No. And to be clear, it's just so not done for libel. Highclere Castle doesn't have any actual Tutankhamun stuff. I don't believe any of that.
- [22:04]
William
There's some Egyptian stuff.
- [22:06]
Dr. Campbell Price
It has Egyptian stuff because Carter was a buyer for Carnarvon before the find of Tutankhamun.
- [22:13]
William
That's not Tutankhamun stuff that you see there in the basement.
- [22:15]
Dr. Campbell Price
So this is not necessarily directly connected to the tomb, but for sure, Carter does pocket a couple of things which may end up outside of Egypt but then subsequently are returned.
- [22:26]
William
You wouldn't possibly be able to say.
- [22:28]
Anita Arnand
We can comment on the fact that there were massive rows about this, that Carter was accused of you know, pocketing an amulet which then gets given to somebody in 1934. And the allegation is very clear that, you know, while he was taking stuff out and putting things in crates and counting things up, there's stuff that went uncounted and slipped into pockets.
- [22:49]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yes, that's a nice way to put it.
- [22:52]
Anita Arnand
I think we'll leave it at that.
- [22:53]
Dr. Campbell Price
Okay, we'll leave it at that. But it's important to say that that was at the time the expectation of any find. That was just how things were done. But back to the political context. With the Egyptian government keen to assert its own authority, it was no question to Egyptian officials at the time that everything should stay as one finds. You know, the power of the Tutankhamun galleries in the Grand Egyptian Museum now is that they are everything together. And you can see everything together from the tomb.
- [23:26]
Anita Arnand
So, Campbell, I mean, look, this is the first wave, we should say, of Tutmania. There is a second wave to come. And just as the first wave comes on the heels of a hot war, the second one has a lot more to do with the Cold war. Join us after the break and we'll talk about this some more.
- [23:48]
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- [24:48]
Dr. Campbell Price
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- [25:54]
Anita Arnand
Welcome back. So just before the break, we were sort of giving you a little tease about the second wave of Tatmania, but we ought to talk about events in Egypt, which we've, you know, done a whole series on here at Empire, and that is, you know, NASA's rise to power, the whole Suez crisis and this complete assertion of, you know, Egyptian pride, if you like, Campbell. And with that assertion, where you've got sort of a living figure like NASA, I guess the Egyptology kind of fades into the background because here's a living, breathing colossus that people can fixate on.
- [26:29]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yes, absolutely. I think most important to mention, of course, is Egypt's complete independence in the 1950s. And so Nasser is the president of Egypt, and that ushers in a period of great ambition. So the plan is pretty soon realized to raise the Aswan High Dam to generate energy. And so going hand in hand with that, I think there is a notable slump in interest in Tutankhamun. There's a slump in interest in Egyptian archaeology in general. And certainly non Egyptian archaeologists working in Egypt don't dry up entirely, but aren't so significant. But in order to raise awareness and raise funds for the Aswan High Dam project and the removal, the movement, if you like, of the temples that are threatened with flooding. So temples of Abu Simbel, most famously Temple of Philae in the south of Egypt near Aswan, Tutankhamun has to go on tour. So although, as we'll discuss, there are major, you know, tours of geopolitical importance in the 1970s, actually in the early 60s, some material of Tutankhamun's goes around several venues in the United States. Seen by Jackie Kennedy, this is a big thing. It's already a diplomatic move. So it's ancient objects, ancient material being leveraged for modern fundraising.
- [28:00]
William
So certainly from a British point of view, the big moment of wave two, Tutmania, if you like, is 1972, when President Sadat, who's the guy who takes over after Nasser, the guy who we met most recently with the 1973 war tacking over the Suez Canal and then Camp David. Those are all episodes which you can, you can listen to on, on our back list. He sends Tutankhamun to the British Museum in London. And I remember as a seven year old, some of my earliest memories, the excitement. I was already Man Keane on Tutankhamen and I knew already the galleries in Edinburgh backwards. And I begged and I begged and I begged to go to London to see the singer. And it was my first ever trip to London and I went down and I remember being amazed by everything, by the double decker buses and the Hare Krishna people who were outside the British Museum playing on their drums and then going in and this darkened museum space with this amazing lighting of this, you know, completely iconic death mask at the center. And I remember, you know, as a, literally a seven year old peering up at it, cause I was physically down below it. You know, you have certain memories from your childhood which completely clear. This for me is one of those. It's my first big moment, my first big trip, the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. And it was everything of that entire trip is absolutely sharp in my memory.
- [29:33]
Anita Arnand
So I mean, you know, that tour had a profound effect on a man who's then going to devote his life to history. Where else did the tour go? And do we know what kind of impact it had on the people who saw?
- [29:46]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, well, that's a great story, William. Thank you for sharing it. I would love to have been one of those people.
- [29:53]
William
You're too young, Campbell. You're too young. You're barely out of short trousers a little bit later.
- [29:59]
Dr. Campbell Price
But I know several noted Egyptologists who, like you, were children in the queue and that inspired them to become Egyptologists. It's worth saying about that show, that really iconic 1972 show, there were 50 objects, including the famous gold mask, selected to mark 50 years since the fine. So 1972, of course, was 50 years since 1922. And then that really ushered in the literal blockbuster because that and other venues clocked up well at the BM, almost a million people in the United States, 8 million people, where people were queuing round the block. So it busted the block. So there's the origin of the phrase. And one thing as a curator I'm often struck by, in looking at the photos and the press around that time, is the dramatic lighting. So the rooms were dark, the galleries were dark. Objects were not given much in the way of contextual information, but they were spotlit. And so they really loomed out of the darkness.
- [31:05]
Anita Arnand
They popped, as we say, they popped and it popped.
- [31:08]
Dr. Campbell Price
Absolutely popped, yeah.
- [31:10]
Anita Arnand
So in. In what Britain has. Has taught the Egyptians and Sadat at the helm is that there is a hunger for this. And he's a savvy man, as we've discussed in our Egypt series before, and he real is a certain currency. And kudos that, you know, soft power, if you like, with jumping on the back of this tut mania. And what's really interesting, Campbell, is that there is a tour of the Soviet Union between 1973 and 1975, so straight after the British Museum, enormous success. And it's interesting because Sadat himself has kicked out previously all his Soviet advisors previously, when he comes to power, he's sick of them, you know, littering the place and boots them all out. And yet he realises, if I want to build a bridge, let's make it a pharaonic bridge.
- [31:59]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah. And emphasis on the soft power, because although, as I said, Tutankhamun or items from Tutankhamun's tomb had been on tour in the United states in the 60s, you know, big stuff like the gold mask really do speak to diplomacy. The numbers also, I suspect, really shocked people because there are hundreds of thousands of people queuing up. And it gets. Yeah, it gets the cultural products of one country in the newspapers of another. So it does help with diplomacy. But then the relationship, I think, with the USSR cools on the international scene generally, but that with the United States, warms up and that introduces the possibility of a return visit for Tutankhamun with bigger flasher things, including the mass mask in the second half of the 1970s.
- [32:53]
William
This, as we know from our Camp David episode, is in the aftermath the 1973 war. Sadat is making peace with Israel. Carter is. Is pulling Sadat close to him.
- [33:06]
Dr. Campbell Price
Jimmy Carter, not Howard Carter.
- [33:08]
William
Jimmy Carter, not Howard Carter, not to be confused. And Tutankhamun goes off in the wake of all this around the States. He goes to Washington, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle for three years between 1976 and 1979. Toot is on the move. And we even get a law case, don't we, when there's a policeman who has a stroke while guarding the treasure. And his legal claim on the city is that the injuries resulted from the curse of the Pharaohs.
- [33:40]
Dr. Campbell Price
I've not heard that one, but I would fully believe it.
- [33:44]
Anita Arnand
Very happy to tell you. It says it's police Lieutenant George E Labrache who had the stroke and tried that on.
- [33:51]
William
History doesn't relate whether he got his injury claim with the Curse of the Pharaoh.
- [33:55]
Anita Arnand
But what does happen is that as a tool of diplomacy during the Cold War, suddenly the pharaohs are front and center.
- [34:04]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah. And I think that's probably also more generally in museums. The idea of the temporary touring exhibition as a diplomatic tool comes to the fore. It's not just for ancient Egyptian material.
- [34:21]
Anita Arnand
So.
- [34:22]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, I mean, Tutankhamun can go places that maybe politicians can't, or you can smooth the way. And that has reverberations in pop culture, particularly in America. Yeah. For Egyptology.
- [34:35]
Anita Arnand
And what's really interesting is that that American exhibition happened because the canniest operator of them all, Henry Kissinger, personally, gets involved. So the Metropolitan Museum, Campbell, I'm right in saying, you know, not sure, dunno. And he picks up a phone and says, are you mad? Just say yes, you're gonna take it, because we're gonna take this. So, as Campbell said, nearly 8 million visitors will go and have a look at the Tut exhibition. You'll have things like, oh, Steve Martin, comedian Steve Martin, performing that King Tutor on. On snl, Saturday Night Live. And that, you know, which is just a jokey song. Go look it up. It's still on YouTube. Very funny. Breaks into the Billboard top hundred, sells a million copies, and then it's merch. So much merch. And I think this is the. I mean, I suppose it's the 1920s, was merch tastic. I don't know whether you've ever even done a survey of this. Who produced the most toot tut Tut tut toot tut tat. However you want to put it. Tut tat. Yes. Which was the era with the most tut tat?
- [35:41]
Dr. Campbell Price
I suspect it probably was the 70s. And subsequent exhibitions haven't been able to replicate that sense of real excitement because we're quite used to it now. We're used to the blockbuster. We're used to the idea of a big show rolling into town and photography and documentaries and films and books make this stuff quite accessible. But in the 1970s, you know, the first big glossy colour books about Tutankhamun were coming out. So even if you didn't go to the exhibition, you might see a documentary film on television or you might buy a book.
- [36:15]
William
And back in Egypt, of course, this is also being registered and this whole business of Pharaoh being associated with Sadat, because in 1981, Sadat is assassinated by Khalid Al Istanbuli and he says, I have killed Pharaoh.
- [36:31]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yes.
- [36:31]
William
So all this is playing out at multiple levels.
- [36:34]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, exactly. It's worth saying, you know, in the Quran, in the Muslim holy book. You know, the pharaoh is not depicted well. He's not depicted well in the Bible, I guess, of the Torah. But to call someone a pharaoh is an insult. It's, you know, the mark of a tyrant.
- [36:55]
William
And then you get Solomon is the symbol in the Quran of justice and Pharaoh is the symbol of injustice, ironically. Very interesting. Anyway, then it goes off around Germany. It's not the end of the tour.
- [37:08]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, yeah. It goes to other venues. And again, I know plenty of people who are practicing Egyptologists now who were inspired by those shows of the later 70s, into the 1980s.
- [37:19]
William
Where did you first There.
- [37:20]
Dr. Campbell Price
I first saw the Mask of Tutankhamun In Cairo in 2001, my first visit to Egypt with my parents. But subsequently, as a student working in the Cairo Museum on a databasing project for a few weeks, I remember when the cleaners were in, going in before the public entered and having a few minutes alone with the mask. And that is easily one of the best moments of my entire life.
- [37:49]
Anita Arnand
Can I just say, I completely concur. So I was absolutely blessed to have this. I'm friends with an Egyptian novelist, the
- [37:58]
William
great Adaf Zwef, who we love.
- [38:00]
Anita Arnand
Yeah, yes. Who took, you know, me and a bunch of really excellent women who got in before, you know. So they did this enormous reconstruction in recent years of the Cairo Museum. So what had been sort of fairly dark and dingy maybe when you were doing your research, was suddenly illuminated. Huge cavernous room created to show this stuff off. I mean, it was, it was, I mean, beautifully, beautifully done. And they were working on the Tutankhamun housing, you know, the special place that opened last year. And we got to have a look and wander around like we were the only people in the world. Campbell, it's both of you. It was emotion, I mean, genuinely, genuinely to see something like that in that space and being all alone. And it's the stuff of my childhood too, you know, completely fascinated and obsessed with it. Kyra's done a good job, hasn't it? I mean, the museum. Can we.
- [38:50]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, no, it's absolutely beautiful.
- [38:51]
Anita Arnand
I think it's. I think they've done a really. I mean, as a man who does this, tell us what they've done that people should go and see if they
- [38:57]
William
can, and we should all go and see it. Exactly.
- [39:00]
Dr. Campbell Price
So the old museum in which I had that encounter is still very close to my heart and is still packed full of jaw dropping treasures from Pharaonic and later Egypt. But the new museum, the Grand Egyptian Museum, is out at Giza by the pyramid. Pyramid. And so it was initially conceptualized to house the Tutankhamun treasures, but there are plenty more galleries, including a huge museum dedicated to boats of King Khufu. But you can now go. And if you go early and you run up to the gallery, you can pretty much get. Get the mask to yourself. Everything is there and it's beautifully lit, beautifully explained, beautifully displayed, with lots of space. Because in the old museum you had to jostle. You still have to jostle on a busy day. But that's why having those experiences where you're relatively alone and unaccompanied is really special.
- [39:52]
William
The thing I love most are the Alfheim portraits. Are they still in the old museum, but where are they gone?
- [39:57]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yes, we've got several of them here. William, actually, you should come and see.
- [40:01]
William
Imagine. I'll come. Do a trip. Love to. These are these perfect. Late Egyptian, Roman period.
- [40:08]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah.
- [40:08]
William
Paintings, portraits, probably done during life.
- [40:12]
Dr. Campbell Price
I'm skeptical about that as well. I think they're stock images. We are seduced by them because these look so lifelike. But I'm writing a book on that subject.
- [40:21]
William
Are you?
- [40:22]
Dr. Campbell Price
The way we have faced the ancient Egyptians.
- [40:24]
Anita Arnand
Well, and we'll get you on again for that. Campbell. Can I ask about, you know, when you handle artifacts from. From ancient Egypt and people are still very much keen to know or to associate that period and the artifacts from it with magic, with the supernatural, you've got one at your elbow. In fact, tell us the story of a little spinny statue, because I love it and you should share it.
- [40:49]
Dr. Campbell Price
Thanks for asking, Anita. So next to me here on my desk is a replica of a very striking piece, arguably the most famous out of the four and a half million specimens we have here at Manchester University Museum. And this is a chap called Neb Eu, who lived about 4,000 years ago and who could never have imagined his fame. In 2013, I was going into the gallery, which was new in Manchester, newly opened, and I noticed he was in a different position every morning. He was rotating in his case, but the case was locked and alarmed and I had the only key. So I thought, someone's playing a trick on me. So we set up a stop motion camera which took a photo every minute for a week and it showed that he was spinning at night. And so we put the 53 second clip online and this went viral, was seen by 100 million people.
- [41:46]
William
Did you, did you begin for the first time in your life to assume that there was a supernatural thing going on or were you a Sherlock Holmesian rationalist.
- [41:55]
Dr. Campbell Price
No, it was. It was. Was, sadly, because of vibration from traffic outside and footfall in the gallery during the day. The. The movement was greater.
- [42:04]
Anita Arnand
When you did first tell the story before we, when we were setting up, I did say, oh, that'd be the. That'd be the trains or the traffic. I'm dead inside. I do believe I'm dead. This is, you know, my co. Host weeps with emotion.
- [42:16]
William
Great disappointment.
- [42:17]
Anita Arnand
Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the. But the news, Campbell, at the time when you released that footage must have gone berserk. Did you. Did you see a real spike in visitors?
- [42:27]
Dr. Campbell Price
For about a week. Because news gets old fast. People brought in lottery tickets thinking the statue was going to magically give them the numbers.
- [42:37]
Anita Arnand
People came from Japan.
- [42:38]
Dr. Campbell Price
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:40]
Anita Arnand
What? Oh, that's so.
- [42:41]
Dr. Campbell Price
It's a. The clip is on YouTube. You can see it still. And it did influence the depiction of a museum in an episode of the Simpsons. So there's a marker of pop notoriety in the 21st century. We were on the Simpsons. But it connects to the same thing that people find fascinating about Tutankhamun. There's something mysterious, there's something vaguely threatening. If it had been a, I don't know, a Mesoamerican artifact or a classical Greek artifact, it wouldn't have had the same effect.
- [43:14]
William
So you don't need take your lottery tickets to Campbell. Campbell can come to you if you join the club because we have for our club members a very, very wonderful episode, which Anita and I think is one of the most wonderful we've ever done, with Campbell talking about the discovery of the tomb. And he discusses at length the question of the curse of the mummies. So that is all available for club members. Anita, do you want to finish this episode off?
- [43:44]
Anita Arnand
Sure. Well, it's empirepod uk.com characteristic fashion empirepoduk.com it's only because you can't remember the email. Let's face it, if you want to join our club, and it really is a very good episode, but all that's left for us is to say Dr. Campbell Price, so great having you on again.
- [44:05]
Dr. Campbell Price
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Paul.
- [44:07]
Anita Arnand
Brief Histories Ancient Egypt, published by Welbeck. It's available wherever you find your finest books. And thank you very much indeed. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnhem, and goodbye
- [44:19]
William
from me, William Durample.
- [44:29]
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