Tea at Trianon: Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, September 12, 2024

Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma

From Reid's Reader:

Sometimes one has to bow down to a whim. A couple of years ago I just happened to see in a bookshop a new book about Tutankhamun, titled Tutankhamun – Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma written by the formidable English Egyptologist Professor Joyce Tyldesley. She has so far written 17 books about ancient Egypt and she is regarded as an expert in her field. I am no Egyptologist, but I knew at once that this book would not be one of those pot-boiler books that give readers a sensationalist version of an ancient civilisation. So I bought the book… and then I left it on my shelf for two years without reading it. I had so many other books to read and review. Finally, this month, I got around to reading Tutankhamun – Pharaoh, Icon, Enigma. And how enlightening and informative it was! After all the fantasies we’ve been given about ancient Egypt; after all the nonsense about deadly curses for those who disturb ancient tombs; after Hollywood movies where mummies come back to life and cause havoc [entertaining though they may be] – I found a courteous, matter-of-fact book about Tutankhamun and his times, as best as we can uncover those times. Joyce Tyldesley is a scholar, but she does not condescend to her readership, explaining things when needed, but keeping a clear narrative.

Tyldesley divides her book into two halves. The first deals with Tutankhamun and the world in which he lived. The second deals with how archaeologists found and dealt with Tutankhamun’s tomb and how it was treated 3,000 years later. Her preface and prologue tell us that Tutankhamun reigned from 1336 BC to 1327 BC – that is, he reigned for just under nine years. He died when he was about twenty. But she does not accept the idea that Tutankhamun was a “boy king”. Though his reign might have been short, and though his rule began when he was only about eleven, he grew to maturity and acted as a ruler should. It was quite common then for people to die in their twenties and it was very rare indeed for people to reach the age of fifty or older. In the era when Tutankhamun lived, the 18th. Dynasty, pyramids were no longer raised to honour pharaohs. Instead, pharaohs were buried in the remote Valley of Kings on the west bank of the Nile, their tombs cut out of hard rock.

So to Tyldesley’s account of Tutankhamun’s life and time.

The pharaoh Akhetaten was a sort of heretic. He moved his capital from the traditional court in Thebes / Luxor to the smaller city Amarna and he set about abolishing many of the gods. Some historians have mistaken him for a monotheist – a believer in one god – but this was not true. Akhetaten was a henotheist – one who believed that there were many lesser gods, but only one really important god. Akhetaten shut down many temples and built his worship around the sun god alone. His consort was Nefertiti. Among Egyptologists there is still much speculation about who were Tutankhamun’s parents. Was his mother Nefertiti? Or [a possibility] one of his older sisters? Or what some Egyptologists call “harem queens”? We do not know because a pharaoh would keep his sons very much in the background and not publicise the birth of a son. (Read more.)