Tut Crazy: Recollections of My Life among the Ancient Egyptians

ID: 790300.0947

With the opening today (June 16, 2005) of the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, I inaugurate this section with a reprint of my March 1979 article for Peninsula magazine, Tut Crazy: Recollections of My Life among the Ancient Egyptians. It was written, under the pseudonym Phillip Brighton, for a previous King Tut exhibit in San Francisco.

Lock your door, grab your hat and hang on to your wallet. King Tut is coming to town! Billed as “the most important and beautiful exhibition of ancient Egyptian art ever to come to the United States,” the Treasures of Tutankhamun will spawn a merchandising orgasm unparalleled since the birth of Christ and Christmas. Between now and its June 1 installation at the M. H. de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Bay Area will be in the throes of what Time magazine so aptly termed “Tutglut”. Balzac might have called it “Tut-o-rama”, but we can expect a plethora of Tut memorabilia which will span the continuum from fine, high-quality museum replicas and contemporary, well-crafted Tut-inspired designs, to the inevitable nadir of human culture: kitsch. T-shirts, beach towels, can-openers, corkscrews, toilet paper, cheap jewelry, and hamburgers will bear the touch of this rather insignificant Egyptian pharaoh. I anxiously harbor a Holden Caulfield-like fear that my gravestone will be defaced with the cartouche of Tutankhamun. If you were bored with “Keep on Truckin',” “Right on!” and “Do you run?” brace yourself for an inundation of mummy and Tut jokes.

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