As with all good days, I have been pondering over the events of the day; and here are some of mine.
What made me pleased was that Tutankhamun was placed in historial contex with the rest of Egyptian history. His father Amonhotep IV or Arkenaten as he changed his name to, turned Egytian life and society upside down by changing the state religion.
No ne really knows why it happened, but it is possible that the desicion to worship just one God, rather than the plethora that was worshiped before and after his reign, may well be the first instance of monothesism, if thats the right word, in the history of the world.
It would be tempting to think that Arkenaten being the king ast the time of the ten plagues, and the power of the God of Moses causing the king to abandon the old ways. However, most scolars seem to theink that king was Ramoses 2.
The new God, although it was worshipped in the past, was the Aten, or the Sun Disc. And Tutankhamun's original name was Tutankhaten, meaning Living Image of the Aten.
After moving the court and capital hundreds of miles to the south of Thebes, Arkenaten suddenly died; probably murdered, and so the nine year old prince became king.
Under the guidance of his mentor, the soldier Aye, he replaced Aten worship with the old beliefs, and restored the priests and temples.
Sadly, ten years later, the young king himself died.
This period of Egptian history his hard to guage from this distant point in time; especially as most traces of Arkenaten was erased from history and public buildings. As befitting this, a multitude of theries about this time are 'out there', but the Egyptian Dept of Antiquities rule with an iron rod, and limit research and excivations to those that further their theories.
Some of this is alluded to in the exhibtion, some is not, of course. I do realise that the main point of the exhibition is to educate and fire the imagination; this is what is done fantastically well.
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| Further thoughts on King Tutankhamun |
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