Cairo, Egypt — “Do you have to open graves to find girls to
fall in love with?” an alluring Helen Grosvenor saucily taunts
Frank Whemple in The Mummy (1932) after the archaeologist
confesses that sifting through a tomb’s artifacts sparked ardor
within him for the wizened, mummified corpse of its princess
occupant.
Ambling amongst the Egyptian Antiquities Museum’s legion of
exquisite effigies, it is easy to understand Whemple’s enchantment
— so much so, in fact, a paunch-laden likeness of an unidentified
imperial noble installed in an uncharacteristically quiet corner of
the bustling complex struck an intriguing discordant note.
“Realist, as opposed to idealist, sculpture,” a museum guide told a
gaggle of young European women, several of whom had taken the
standard guidebook “dress modestly” advice to include hot pants.
Husbands escorting burqa-clad wives did not attempt to conceal
their stares. Realism may not have been in vogue with the pharaonic
class, but these men coveted an ideal not locked away in a glass
case.
I felt a pang of sympathy for the sculptor, imagined his artisan
pride morphing into unease as the pharaoh’s smile evaporated at the
unveiling, some favor-seeking court supplicant piping in a bit too
eagerly, “But Aapep, why did you not show the pharaoh as he is,
slender and with abs like a board of washing?”; the belated
realization that dabbling in potbelly realism just got his one-way
ticket to a shovel-ready project stacking bricks at Giza punched.
Slave labor is such nasty terminology, Aapep! Think of it as a
mandatory wellness program…
If Egyptian mythology is accurate, however, the dissident artist
is now likely sharing the last laugh with Osiris in Aaru, peering
down at Frank Whemple’s loveless present-day incarnations as they
unspool mummies to coldly corroborate stories — CAT scanning
remains to pinch a digitally imaged inch, dragging linens out of
sarcophaguses to measure waistlines, excavating previously
unrecorded imperfections as if desperate to recompense for
Star’s failure to open a Nile valley bureau back in the
B.C.
Three millennia after Tutankhamun’s death, for example, the
Daily Record touted research revealing that the “boy-king
portrayed as a godlike figure in statues” was actually “a
pear-shaped fatty” and unceremoniously redubbed him
“Two-Ton-Khamun.” A 2007 wire headline blared, “Queen Hatshepsut,
Egypt’s greatest female pharaoh was fat, balding and had beard.”
National Geographic notes that the queen was “one of the
greatest builders in one of the greatest Egyptian dynasties,” a
woman who was “more afraid of anonymity than death.” Be careful
what you wish for, I suppose. Perhaps Gloria Allred accepts
turquoise protection amulets and cast gold as payment?
Perfection is, of course, a perennial obsession. The crowds at
the trim and dapper Giza pyramids dwarf those exploring the older,
endearingly flabby step pyramids of nearby Saqqara. Michelangelo
made an executive decision not to circumcise David that people
still quarrel over. The U.S. Congress believes economic salvation
lies at least partially in a proposal nicknamed “The Botox
Tax.”
Yet as Daniel J. Boorstin observed in The Image, “It is
only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world
to exaggerating our power to remake the world.” Lard-assed icons
may not have saved the pharaohs from Alexander the Great or,
transitively, us from a particularly egregious Colin Farrell film
performance. A few whacks at strenuously cultivated presumptions of
godly perfection couldn’t have hurt, though. Then again, who are we
to judge? Even as the flaws in the pharaohs’ hair and waistlines
are gleefully catalogued, the transcendent lesson concerning the
high cost of leaders playing god is conveniently ignored.
Cows, sheep, and crocodiles populate the mummified animals room
of the Egyptian Museum, dusty and brittle. A baboon and dog
recruited, no doubt against their will, for afterlife entertainment
face one another frozen in a staged playful pose. If the pair could
be conjured, Karloff-like, back to life, they would almost
certainly intuit the same unuttered primal truth from the glean in
our supposedly enlightened eyes as from those of the men in flowing
tunics approaching with organ hooks and linen rolls millennia ago:
These people are crazy!
