The Story of Tutankhamun with Garry Shaw

Hello and welcome to World History Encyclopedia. My name is Kelly and today I am joined by Egyptologist and author Gary Shaw. Gary is the author of many acclaimed books on Egyptology, including The Pharaoh, Life at Court and on Campaign, The Egyptian Myths, A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends, and Egyptian Mythology. And he also teaches online Egyptology as a part time tutor for Oxford University's Department for Continuing Education. Today though, Gary is joining me to talk all about his new book, The Story of Tutankhamun, An Intimate Life of the Boy Who Became King, published by Yale University Press. Gary, thank you so much for joining me today. It's my pleasure. It's great to be here. Thanks for inviting me back. It's nice to be talking again with you. I'm really looking forward to talking to you about your new book. So let's start off by generally asking what is your new book all about? Okay, well it's The Story of Tutankhamun. So it's literally a biography of what we know about Tutankhamun and I try to stick as much as possible to the time in which he lived and a bit of the time right after it and also a little bit before he was born as well. So it's about a 40-year period for the majority of the book and then we fast forward to the discovery with Howard Carter and then also the decades after that up to the present day. But the major content, the main focus is on trying to say what was Tutankhamun's life like? What did he do during his childhood and then as king? Because after 100 years since the discovery of his tomb and all the treasures and the studies have been going on, it seems like the perfect time to really try and look at this again and see what can we really say about him as an individual. Absolutely, because I feel like initially finding his tomb, it was all quite incredible but it sort of overshadowed the man, the person who did all this stuff. So you have written like a narrative of his life. How was it working in, I'm assuming you worked with archaeological data and the evidence we found in the tomb, what was it like sort of using that to craft a narrative? Yeah, it was really enjoyable experience trying to pull together all these kind of disparate pieces of information and kind of keeping these other little files of like, okay, this object reflects this aspect of his life so I'll make sure I plug that in when I'm writing this section and this other object says okay, that can go later in his life. The objects from his tomb are really a sort of time capsule of when he was alive and so they tell us all sorts of different aspects about what he was up to because I don't know if many watchers, listeners know this but the tomb is full of objects that were from his lifetime, not just ritual objects made for his tomb. They weren't just things made for ceremonial purposes for his death or for his afterlife. A lot of them were just objects that were in the palace that were even used by some of his predecessors and so they all reflect different aspects of his lifetime and it was really fun to try and pick up certain items and then kind of say, okay, what can we, what does this tell us about what he really got up to? I mean, there's like, you know, let's say the crook and flail for example, these symbols of kingship. There's two sets in the tomb. One were made for him as a child and one were made for him when he was a lot older and he's, I suppose, late teens and so it reflects a sort of continuity of his ceremonial role and there are lots of other objects in the tomb that show signs of usage and so those are the ones I was really wanting to pick up on. So, you know, if there was an object like his scribal equipment that you can say that it looks like it's been used, that's great, you know. I was like, okay, I've got to mention that because it shows that, you know, this is something he touched and so and then I make an end note for the reader so they can go and look up these objects if they want to, like investigate further. So yeah, it's good fun. So this stuff, so obviously, I think probably most people are aware that Tutankhamen's death was quite sudden, it was quite unexpected. He was, you know, 19, he was quite young. So is it common for pharaohs to be buried with stuff that they used in life or is this something that they did because they just didn't have enough stuff ready for him? Well, the problem there is, of course, we don't have any royal tomb from this phase at all as well preserved. I mean, we do have bits and pieces from some of the royal treasures from other tombs, but they're very fragmentary. They tend to be more the ritual objects and so it does seem that there was a standard kit of ritual objects that certain items in Tutankhamen's tomb that are connected with the gods or the afterlife. We do have fragments from other tombs and also I think it's the tomb of Seti II. We have a nice image in the tomb, a painted scene of some of these objects that we recognize from Tutankhamen's tomb. But as far as the kind of objects from the personal life, I mean, we can't really have, there's no comparable material to say whether this would be normal or not. But I mean, it does seem that the tomb and the burial were quite rushed and so the fact that they were maybe hastily trying to find other objects to kind of place in the tomb for him to use in the afterlife and then for seeing what was in the storerooms and things like this. Okay, I'll grab that jar from the reign of Thutmose III. Oh, that's a nice statue from another reign. Now let's put their name and put Tutankhamen's name on it. Things like this, you know. Maybe that was because of his unexpected death, but we can't really say for certain. So I was going to say, wasn't there like 140 loincloths or something? Surely that's not a standard burial good for a pharaoh. Oh yeah, you need a lot of loincloths in the afterlife, I assume. So, you know, it saves on washing time, I suppose. So you mentioned that there was things like the cooking flame from when he was a child. And so he grew up at Amarna, probably, while his father was ruling and then there was quite a drastic change in religion. Do we see sort of the two halves of his life where he was first, you know, living under Akhenaten and then moving back to the traditional way of sort of ancient Egyptian life? Do we see that in the tomb? There are artefacts that are from the Amarna period. So the time under his father Akhenaten in the tomb that have been adapted. So there are certain objects where you can see that his name is originally Tutankhaten and that this has later been changed to Tutankhamen. And yes, there are objects that seem to come from the reign of the person who is most likely to be his predecessor, the brief reign of Neferneferu Aten. And so these are objects from before Tutankhamen's reign that were adapted for him. So yeah, you can see this kind of change in some of the artefacts, some that represent the earlier phases of his life, in particular, are more connected with this kind of earlier Aten phase when he was growing up in this very, very unusual situation. And I think that's one of the nice things I wanted to really emphasise when writing this new biography, was to really emphasise just how unusual the world in which he grew up was for an Egyptian prince. The fact that there was this very much focus on this Aten, the fact that his father, the person who's very most likely to be his father Akhenaten, had turned his back on the old ways and changed the religion, that sort of revolution was going on. It's a very strange place to grow up in for an Egyptian prince. Very unique compared to probably all the other Egyptian princes. They just had that very solid religious foundation, but this guy had complete upheaval, really. Yeah, and I think that it's interesting when you then see, you were talking just about the objects and reflecting different phases in his life. Well, I always think about this, about the world in which he grew up and how different it would have been. Suddenly he becomes king at the age of 10, and he's now the symbol of this restoration to the traditional ways. And so having to be the face, if you will, of all of this. But he didn't know the traditional ways. He didn't grow up with this. He wouldn't have been trained in the rituals connected with the god Amun. And he would never have really visited and performed rituals in these temples or uttered prayers or been involved in the ceremonies because the temples to Amun and gods like this were closed when he was growing up. He would have been, I guess, taught the ways of the Aten and the teachings of Akhenaten. Suddenly though, he was having to manage the kind of reopening of these temples or at least perform the rituals in them because that would have been a role of being pharaoh that he couldn't have avoided. Even though he was very young when he came to be king, being a divine being comes with responsibilities and those involved performing temple rituals and things like this, the types of things that royal festivals in particular that nobody else could really do in his place. Now, he had to do certain rituals because they were ones that only the pharaoh could do. Exactly. Upholding that mart, that harmony. I mean, it would have been hard enough for anyone to become a king at 10, let alone a king at 10 in a complete change of religion that you're used to. And it's so funny that you said that he was the face of the restoration of ancient Egypt because he's sort of become the face of Egypt in modern days. When you think Egypt, you think of the gold mask, which I believe wasn't even meant for him in the first place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of the theories. It's a strong theory. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But it was originally potentially belonged to Nefer and Neferuaten and the face was changed later on. This was a theory proposed by Nicholas Reeves, the Egyptologist, Nicholas Reeves. And yeah, it's an interesting argument. But it's not surprising in some ways because we knew already that various items from the tomb were reused and belonged to Nefer and Neferuaten. So the fact that the mask might also have been reused is just a sort of continuation of that theme. And so if Nicholas Reeves is right, then yeah, it's a very interesting development. It certainly is. And so what was it like then working with Tutankhamun in sort of the 20th to 21st century, like looking not just at his life and ancient evidence, but then moving into the modern evidence? Because we don't usually have that kind of stuff for pharaohs, as you said, we don't have a lot of their tombs, what was left in them. So what was it like sort of working with the modern material as well? Yeah. For me, the interesting angle there is just kind of how, you know, how much he stayed in the kind of popular consciousness continuously since the 1920s, so for a hundred years now. So yeah, normally I'm writing about ancient material or, you know, material of that type, you know, historical material. But, you know, suddenly I'm looking at the kind of like the material from Howard Carter's clearance of the tomb and the photographs that were all connected with that. And then going further into the 50s, 60s, 70s and the exhibitions, it was really interesting to kind of delve into how this all kept Tutankhamun around, you know. The initial clearance of the tomb was a big news event. It was all over the news for, let's say, about the 10 years or so of the clearance of the tomb. So every time something fabulous occurred, you found that it would be hitting the newspapers again. Like I think it was, you know, 1925 when they finally got to the mummy and started kind of clearing, unwrapping the mummy and so forth. You know, that was another time when it would have hit, the story would have hit the news. The discovery of the gold mask and all these things hits the 50s, 60s, 70s onwards. Every time there's an exhibition tour, you know, every time there's a study of the mummy, finding something new, there's documentaries, you know, there's all these sort of objects that get connected, like souvenirs and things like this, you know, that come out connected with Tutankhamun and it kind of stays around. You don't really get this for other, you know, pharaohs, you know. The story has various angles to it that I think captures people's imaginations, the sort of analysis of the body and what can we learn about him, the kind of preciousness of the treasures and the kind of beauty, you know, just simply looking at them and being amazed. But also there's the angle then of what I've been trying to do with the book and taking those artefacts and other objects and trying to say, what can we recreate about his life then from these artefacts too? And that puts another angle because then we can also try and, you know, recreate his life, which I think is very, very important now after 100 years to try and bring the individual back. Because although he's become very famous now, thinking about, you know, the 20th century, 21st century and his continuing fame, I always kind of feel that Tutankhamun has almost become quite secondary in his own story, you know, because when you talk to people about Tutankhamun, it is always the treasures and all the curse or how he died. And there's also this continuing idea, I think, that he was kind of insignificant, that he was an insignificant pharaoh, which is completely wrong, I think. And so kind of giving back his position now as an individual, his personality as much as possible, was important to me when writing this biography. Yeah, definitely. I feel like we think, you know, he was an inconsequential ruler because he died so young, but he was really important for an important time in Egyptian history with this changing back to the original religious practices, which would have been a pretty big and important role for him, considering there would have been quite a large amount of the population that would have remembered the traditional religion. And so with the recreating of his life, we don't actually know a lot about his life, in that his name was sort of scratched out by his predecessors and sort of akin to Hatshepsut in that sense. How was it working with artifacts and sort of not having the whole picture, but then trying to have to reconstruct the whole picture? Yeah, I mean, I guess we are lucky, though, that compared to many pharaohs who we think we know quite well, you know, we don't have the types of objects that survived from Tutankhamun's reign, thanks to the personal objects we've been discussing from the tomb. So it's kind of a different way of looking at his reign. And because there's more, there is actually more of a personal side we can bring out from his clothes and so forth. I always like the duck tunic, you know, there was this tunic that was decorated with little flying ducks. Some are standing, some are running, some are taking off in these little bands. And, you know, you never see a pharaoh wearing this type of thing in Egyptian art. You just don't find that. But clearly Tutankhamun owned this type of tunic, so kings could wear this type of clothing if they want to. And so that's a different insight, if you will, into the kind of pharaoh's lives. It's not just about big battles or, you know, major political events, although of course there are major political events under Tutankhamun. You know, it's different. We can see his sandals, we can see his clothing, we can see some of the objects he used in his daily life. That's a different way of looking at a pharaoh. But talking about the destruction of his name, yeah, that was interesting to work with, because I think that's, to go back, sorry, to what we were just saying about him being regarded as an inconsequential pharaoh. You know, this is partly because of events that occurred right after his reign. So his successors tried to erase him from history, you know. And, you know, we know that there was this great explosion of artistic activity under his reign to recreate the statues that had been destroyed under his father, because all of these divine statues, Amun, Ptah, Osiris, all these famous gods, you know, they've all been attacked. Their names have been scratched off monuments, statues have been smashed. And so there was this great activity under Tutankhamun's reign to put the names back on the statues, the temple walls, to recreate the statues. And when you create a statue normally, you get the idealized portrait of the king's face as the kind of face of that god. And that's also interesting to think about, that, you know, hey, you know, this, he was brought up to turn his back on these gods, and now his idealized face is the face on these gods now, you know. And so seeing these must have been a very strange experience for him. And then, of course, people come along and after all this work, they scratch his name off and put their old names on these temple walls and on his monuments. And that kind of erases him and makes it look like he did less than he did. You know, if these hadn't been attacked, if they'd not been usurped, Tutankhamun might have been a lot more famous even before the treasures were found, because he might have been known as, you know, a great, not an artist, but a great person who helped the arts, you know, a king who commissioned a lot of artistic works. And so, because we'd be finding his name everywhere, if they had been untouched. And so he would have been famous for that and the restoration, and then there would have been the tomb as well, and the treasure. So it would have been a much bigger deal. People wouldn't have been regarding him as, you know, just simply, oh, he's famous because of his treasures. You know, he would have been famous for many other reasons too. It almost would have been like finding Ramesses II's untouched tomb, already having sort of a legacy and being sort of a generally well-known pharaoh, and then being able to see intimate details on top of all of that. I do want to ask quickly about the artifacts. So obviously you looked at all of them, you probably worked quite closely with them in working them into your narrative. Did you have a favorite? So yeah, I mean, yeah, I did work, you know, there's a lot of records out there, publications, a lot of discussions of the objects. I mean, I didn't handle the objects personally, sadly. I didn't get to handle them in the museum, but I did go through all the publications in great detail and look at what was there. And yeah, even after going through everything, going through all of these objects and reading all the reports and what's been out there, I think my favorite object is still my favorite object from probably 10 years ago. And the various times I used to go to the Egyptian museum in Cairo, which is this kind of plain, boring stick. I mentioned it in the book, but it's a boring old reed stick that even Howard Carter in his publication points out, you know, it was strange that it kind of stands out among all these beautifully carved sticks and staves from the tomb. But this one's dull. Why? Why is it in the tomb? And then you look at the inscription on the top of it and it says, the king himself cut this with his own hands while he was visiting a specific location. And yeah, it's interesting because it shows it's a very personal item in that sense. And that, you know, it's something he did. He took this himself. Clearly he needed it for some reason. You know, you can connect it with the arguments that he had a club foot and so forth, problems with his legs. Maybe it connects with that. Maybe there was another reason why he might've needed a stick at that time. But it's a nice, I always find that less flashy objects from the tomb are my favourites. So like the stick, for example, or, you know, there's the lock of hair that belonged to his grandmother. But I say, again, shows a more personal side to him, a sort of heirloom as it's called normally. So the treasures and the flashy gold ones are really amazing. They're beautiful, of course, but it's these objects that I prefer myself. Sort of brings you a little bit closer to the actual man, you know, past all of the fanfare to the person that he was. Okay, let's finish up with one more question. What is one thing that you'd like people to know about your book? Okay. I guess the general theme I've been returning to is that there's more to Tutankhamun than just, you know, a gold mask or a curse or Howard Carter's discovery. You know, it's good to look at Tutankhamun as an individual. What can we say about him as a person? What did he do? How did his life progress? So it's not just about his death or the things that were buried with him, but about him as a person. And I think after 100 years of kind of analysis and study of the objects, it's really about, should be really about him now. You know, let's talk about him and his life, not so much his death, necessarily. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Gary. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you about your new book, which I believe is available now to purchase. So you will be able to find a link down below to purchase the book. So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you very much for having me. It's been great to talk about Tutankhamun. Thanks. 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