King Tut
Saturday afternoon I took a look at the calendar and realized that this weekend truly was the last chance I would have to get down to Chicago before it is likely to snow, as every weekend in November involves holidays, work, or other plans. So I bought a ticket to the Tut Exhibit for Sunday, went way overboard preparing for a trip to downtown Chicago on the day of a Bears game (including looking up directions to two alternate park-and-ride lots, just in case) then woke up at the crack of dawn and headed off down the now-familiar tollway.
Before Tut, I went to see a small traveling exhibit on Gregor Mendel which was quite fascinating and well done. The best bit: his microscope had a hat! Okay, it was a little thingy to keep dust off the eyepiece, but it looked like a wee little hat! With gold braid and fur trim and a tassel! If I had a microscope, I'd totally make a fabulous little hat for it (or two, if it had twin eyepieces). Then I walked through the Evolving Planet exhibit, and was mildly disappointed that the creaky dioramas I remembered from last time that barely worked anymore and were therefore hilarious had been replaced by movies on plasma TVs and interactive touch-screens.
The Tut exhibit itself was a lot larger than I expected. Initially, I kept fearing that each room would be the last, but towards the end I was getting tired and in a low blood sugar slump and kind of started wishing it could be over already.
I've discovered something about ancient Egyptian representational art: you've got to right up in their faces and look at the expressions. Ancient Egyptian statues were usually very stylized and formulaic and because of this it's easy to assume that each statue is going to have the same formal, vacant expression as the last. Not so. Maybe it was never the sculptor's indent to show much emotion, but every now and then some will leak through in the shape of the eyes or the curl of the lips. Sometimes, these expressions are just classic.
The first one I noticed was a wooden statuette of a woman who was in somebody-or-other's harem who had this unexpectedly sad cast to her face. Then came the statue of a serpent goddess who looked so very, very bored. You could just hear her thinking, "Sigh. Still here. Still holding up these damned heavy winged arms. Did I mention they were heavy? Well, they are."* The best was the funerary mask of Tuyu. (Here, top row, second from the left.) It was my absolute favorite. She has the best smile on her face - so happy, if a little self-satisfied. "Yeah, I rule."** I bought a handful of postcards and a magnet with the picture of this mask, I love it so much.
There were a number of other pieces I liked, most of which I've forgotten. I was amused this one wooden cow's head. The eye makeup reminded me of some of the cows I've seen while in the field, which have black lines above their eyes that look just like eyebrow pencil (we call them "Glam Cows"). Then there was this golden, long-handled fan that originally held ostrich plumes. The piece were the plumes were mounted had this relief of Tut on a chariot chasing... something, and there were these thing that looked like pine trees in the background that appeared to be getting thrown all over the place by the speeding chariot. I could just imagine him on the hunt, knocking over trees left and right, and people going, "Dude, cut it out!" Behind Tut was this little ankh with arms and legs, holding a tiny fan of his own with which to fan the king. The little guy was so adorable, I can just see him as the perky cartoon character that guides neo-ancient Egyptian children through their algebra textbooks. Or maybe he'd be like the MS Word paperclip. "Hello! I see you're trying to write a funerary inscription! Maybe I can help!"
All the large boxes and chests had an interesting, asymmetrical arrangement of knobs. There would be a knob on one short end, near the top, and then an identical knob on the lid at the short end, near the edge. There were no knobs anywhere else on the box. I assume the knob on the side was for holding the box steady while one used the other knob to pull the lid open. The odd thing was, the boxes clearly didn't all open by the same mechanism. I noticed one with hinges (on the end opposite the knobs), one that may have slid off, and one that clearly had neither hinges nor the ability to slide and could only have been pulled straight up. I'm not sure how this arrangement of knobs really helped in the latter case, but I suppose conventions were conventions.
*Here she is, on this page. It's not the best angle. You have to look at the face dead-on to really get the look of supreme annoyance.
**She didn't. Not in the sense of being royal, that is. I've decided based on the expression on this mask alone that she was an absolute hoot who told dirty jokes when you least expected it and wore miss-matching socks and didn't care and probably made it her mission in life to get you drunk before noon.
Before Tut, I went to see a small traveling exhibit on Gregor Mendel which was quite fascinating and well done. The best bit: his microscope had a hat! Okay, it was a little thingy to keep dust off the eyepiece, but it looked like a wee little hat! With gold braid and fur trim and a tassel! If I had a microscope, I'd totally make a fabulous little hat for it (or two, if it had twin eyepieces). Then I walked through the Evolving Planet exhibit, and was mildly disappointed that the creaky dioramas I remembered from last time that barely worked anymore and were therefore hilarious had been replaced by movies on plasma TVs and interactive touch-screens.
The Tut exhibit itself was a lot larger than I expected. Initially, I kept fearing that each room would be the last, but towards the end I was getting tired and in a low blood sugar slump and kind of started wishing it could be over already.
I've discovered something about ancient Egyptian representational art: you've got to right up in their faces and look at the expressions. Ancient Egyptian statues were usually very stylized and formulaic and because of this it's easy to assume that each statue is going to have the same formal, vacant expression as the last. Not so. Maybe it was never the sculptor's indent to show much emotion, but every now and then some will leak through in the shape of the eyes or the curl of the lips. Sometimes, these expressions are just classic.
The first one I noticed was a wooden statuette of a woman who was in somebody-or-other's harem who had this unexpectedly sad cast to her face. Then came the statue of a serpent goddess who looked so very, very bored. You could just hear her thinking, "Sigh. Still here. Still holding up these damned heavy winged arms. Did I mention they were heavy? Well, they are."* The best was the funerary mask of Tuyu. (Here, top row, second from the left.) It was my absolute favorite. She has the best smile on her face - so happy, if a little self-satisfied. "Yeah, I rule."** I bought a handful of postcards and a magnet with the picture of this mask, I love it so much.
There were a number of other pieces I liked, most of which I've forgotten. I was amused this one wooden cow's head. The eye makeup reminded me of some of the cows I've seen while in the field, which have black lines above their eyes that look just like eyebrow pencil (we call them "Glam Cows"). Then there was this golden, long-handled fan that originally held ostrich plumes. The piece were the plumes were mounted had this relief of Tut on a chariot chasing... something, and there were these thing that looked like pine trees in the background that appeared to be getting thrown all over the place by the speeding chariot. I could just imagine him on the hunt, knocking over trees left and right, and people going, "Dude, cut it out!" Behind Tut was this little ankh with arms and legs, holding a tiny fan of his own with which to fan the king. The little guy was so adorable, I can just see him as the perky cartoon character that guides neo-ancient Egyptian children through their algebra textbooks. Or maybe he'd be like the MS Word paperclip. "Hello! I see you're trying to write a funerary inscription! Maybe I can help!"
All the large boxes and chests had an interesting, asymmetrical arrangement of knobs. There would be a knob on one short end, near the top, and then an identical knob on the lid at the short end, near the edge. There were no knobs anywhere else on the box. I assume the knob on the side was for holding the box steady while one used the other knob to pull the lid open. The odd thing was, the boxes clearly didn't all open by the same mechanism. I noticed one with hinges (on the end opposite the knobs), one that may have slid off, and one that clearly had neither hinges nor the ability to slide and could only have been pulled straight up. I'm not sure how this arrangement of knobs really helped in the latter case, but I suppose conventions were conventions.
*Here she is, on this page. It's not the best angle. You have to look at the face dead-on to really get the look of supreme annoyance.
**She didn't. Not in the sense of being royal, that is. I've decided based on the expression on this mask alone that she was an absolute hoot who told dirty jokes when you least expected it and wore miss-matching socks and didn't care and probably made it her mission in life to get you drunk before noon.