King Tut Would Have Loved a Philly Cheesesteak

By Steven Feldman

May 29, 2007

Greetings from the City of Brotherly Love. I’m writing this within the elegant halls of Philadelphia’s Union League. The first day of our seminar has just concluded, and it has been great so far.

The BAS Seminar group gathers around Prof. James Hoffmeier as Big Ben watches.

We’ve gathered to hear two fine Egyptologists, James Hoffmeier and Ellen Morris, lecture on King Tut and his world. The seminar was built around a visit to the spectacular Tut exhibit currently at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia’s venerable science museum.

Before our group headed out for the exhibit, Jim gave us an introduction the Boy King, explaining that Tut, though he had a relatively short reign (he was dead by 19) played a key role in Egyptian history. His predecessor, Akhenaten, revolutionized Egypt by restricting religious worship to Aten, portrayed as the sun disc. That’s why he’s sometimes called the first monotheist. Tut, who may have been Akhenaten’s son or his younger brother, reestablished traditional Egyptian religion; in the process, he changed his name from Tutankhaten (“the living image of Aten”) to Tutankhamun.

The BAS group after seeing the King Tut exhibit in Philadelphia.

Ellen then gave us an overview of ancient Egyptian royal tombs and burial practices. Poor Tut seems to have had his intended tomb usurped by his successor, Ay, and was buried in a much less grand tomb that likely was meant for a non-royal figure.

But if Tut’s tomb was second-rate, I’d sure like to see a first-class tomb. The objects on view in the Tut exhibit are simply stupendous—beautiful objects of all sorts, made of gold and other precious materials. The mind boggles at how many hours must have gone into the making of these objects.

I’ll conclude by mentioning what two participants told me on the bus back to the Union League. The first told me how stunned he was to see many objects in the Tut show painted the same beautiful shade of blue as a Persian vase he owns from the 15th century A.D. Two cultures separated by nearly 3,000 years, yet they seem to have shared the same decoration techniques. The second person asked if we could share the names and addresses of our seminar participants because he was already making great friendships—after not even a full day! That’s what BAS seminars are like. You won’t know what you’ve been missing until you attend one yourself.