I will be referring to this picture a bit:
http://www.ehs.pvt.k12.ca.us/students/9900/6/ACProjects/egypt/images/twoofmypicturesofnefertiti.jpg
The Modern Curse
Let me first start by
saying that I don't believe in any sort of
death curse that an
ancient Egyptian king set on his
temples. There isn't any
evidence of it anywhere.
There have been examples of
curses found in tombs that say things like "For any
man entering this tomb, may their
servant sleep with their
wife." or something
kinda silly like that. More of an informal curse like one would yell at someone who
cut them off on the freeway. Nothing too
serious. Anyways, I've heard
documentation of about a women who visted the pyramids at Giza, went home and
then mysteriously died a few days later. When they did an
autopsy and stuff like
that, they found she died of a fungal infection. Basically, she
disobeyed the rules
and touched the walls of the pyramids and other things like that and carried the
fungus with her. Now the idea that the ancient Egyptians placed that fungus there on
purpose is ludicrous. What happened was: they left all sorts of things for the king to
live off of during the after life in the king's tomb including many
perishable things
such as food. The food rotted quickly and developed bacteria and
fungii. Fungii has
a truly amazing resilient quality and lived for a very long time. These types of
rumours were probably started by those who first investigated the tomb of king
Tutankhamen (perhaps, the most well-preserved tomb ever). Many of them died
within twelve hours of first venturing in. This is not unnatural. Jim Henson (you
know, the muppets?) died in the same way. He became infected with some fungus
and died within twelve hours. The symptoms of this type of infection can range from
a swift, painful death to a long, painless toenail infection. So they didn't really do this
on purpose. Also, all of this would come from Old Kingdom or possibly early Middle
Kingdom tombs. After that, pharaohs stopped requesting large,
magnificent
monuments to themselves and actually started making
hidden tombs in the desert
that were completely hidden and visually uninteresting on the outside, but just as
much on the inside (or atleast they tried to be. It was hard because the Egyptians and
not yet developed the idead of an "Arch" and had to use numerous columns inside
that really cluttered the whole thing and made it hard to navigate through).
The Old Curse (the effects of)
Well, the older was more direct. It took effect on king
Amenhotep IV, later known as
Akhenaton (all of these effects can be explained scientifically, historically, or
politically (or can they??)) and it can all be seen through the art of the time.
Akhenaton's father (
Amenhotep III) decided to break the
tradition of the royal
family and
marry outside the family. They had a
long history of inbreeding (of
course there were a few
different subsets of the family that made up the whole
family) and they had kept it up just long enough so that no real deformations were
visible. Of course the effects of inbreeding don't really show up in the first
generation but rather the 3rd or 4th, unless it's a
genetic disease in which case it
does show up in the 1st generation. Amenhotep literally married a peasant-girl.
Therefore, he and his family line was cursed. Based on the art of Akhenaton the
deformations did show up him. He was disliked for this (in a way) and also for the
political chaos he caused among the high priests. I'll talk about that later. First of all,
Akhenaton created a whole new fashion style. Look back to
Regal Positions and
Symbolism in Ancient Egyptian Royal Sculpture for more details on the old form of
art. I will
summarize it here: kings were displayed as eternally youthful, healthy, and
handsome in the images in their tombs. But in the sculptures and paintings of
Akhenaton he clearly has a
swollen belly, full breasts, an
elongated skull,
almond eyes, large rounded "
childbearing hips", and full lips. He also has slightly
stretched arms and legs. Not to say that the older pharaohs really were healthy and
young. Khafre died at the age of 90. He definately did not look like his
ka images.
But this look that Akhenaton had became popular. He also had a new style of
royal
"kilt". Other supporters of the king tried to emulate him and dress like him. He
created the new style of fashion. This did not bother the high priests very much but
what did was that he wanted to change
everything religious. He blotted out
the name of most Egyptian gods included the ever-famous "Amen" from all
inscriptions including the name of his father and even his own name (that's why he's
now called Ahenaton). He wanted to change the beliefs of Egypt from
polytheism to
monotheism and make everyone worship
Aton (who was really not an important
god at all until then) as the one and only
sun god. He changed the capital from
Thebes to a new site dedicated to and named for Aton but which is now called Tell
el-Amarna. He claimed himself the
universal god and only son of Aton. Therefore he
did not need at
priests with him and their jobs were made useless. The priests
obviously did not like this. Previously, the king was taken care of by the priests
essentially. The priests made just about every political and other decision. The king
was kept in
solitude and knew little about the world outside of his palace. His
purpose was to perform
monotonous rituals. Akhenaton did not like this.
But what about this new city? Pyramids took more than 20 years to build but he built
an entire city in less the 10 years! Well, the
pyramids were built with
huge blocks
of stone and he discovered that when the ston was cut into smaller uniform blacks
that they were much easier to handle. And smaller buildins could easily be built
quickly as long as they used these simple
bricks. Anyways, the priests hated him
and after he was dead, the priests destroyed his city. Really all they did was push the
whole thing over which was great for
archaeologists who have recently pieced the
city back together like one huge 3 dimensional
puzzle! Also, the priests destroyed
nearly all of the art of the king. Very few pieces survived. What about this king's
deformities? Were they real or just part of the art? Most historians and scholars now
believe that it was real. Originally it was thought because of the king's eyes that he
had Down Syndrome. But usually accompanied by
Down Syndome (atleast the major
cases) is mental retardation. Akhenaton was probably not
retarded. He was fairly
clever about not introducing this new belief system too suddenly. He spaced it out
through several years, by first telling everyone about it then slowly building the city
and having people migrate to the new
capitol gradually. The Egyptians did know
about the Asians from the east and it is very likely that the king had some Asian
blood in him. Also, the full lips is a good piece of evidence of the original Egyptians
being black Africans. The stomach is probably just an exageration of his weight
problem but what about the
breasts and
hips. Some actually thought that he might
have been a hermaphrodite but through several writings it has been verified that he is
not. His figure and elongated skull is most likely the effect of inbreeding. As you can
see in paintings of him and his family, his wife does not have a head like his, but his
three daughters do. Some thought that it might be a
manipulation of their body
started at an early age. A good example is the Mayans who would place boards on the
heads of their children and gently massage them into the desired shape. This has
been ruled out because of the
large size and
roundness of their heads. Historians
think that this is a rare bone condition. It causes the elongation of arms and legs
which is prominent (it also makes the bones have trouble calcifying and becoming
hard). Because of this, the three plates that make our skulls and are usually pressed
together during birth and later fused
permanently are never pushed together. Their
brains grow rampantly and their heads make a truly alien shape. (Don't even try to tell
me they were space aliens.)
Also notice the change from stiff regal positions of the old kingdom to the playful
more human ones of the new. In one
painting you see Akhenaton's wife cradeling
two of their daughters while
Akhenaton himself is kissing the other on the
forehead. You would
never see this in the old kingdom. In another you see
one of his daughters massaging the other's back while one rubs the others cheeck in
affection. (Aww...)
Anyways, different cultures take to different deformalities differently and obviously
Akhenaton's was loved by his
peers (probably only because of his status) but still it
became the new fashion throughout the rich in the kingdom. Another example is of
many
Native American tribes who believe that people with bodily deformations were
just so full of spiritual energy that it physically
manifested itself through the
deformations. But how could Akhenaton be the king if he wasn't true to the
bloodline? Well, even though "officially" there was a big uproar, the people didn't
really care. They excepted all sorts of strange kings. For example, Queen
Hatshepsut became pharaoh over her brother because she claimed she had a dream
where she was told she was chosen to be Pharaoh. Contrary to popular belief she was
liked by most people and built an elaborate tomb for herself in the valley of kings.
The valley of the kings and that of the queens aren't
physically seperated so
it wasn't that big of a deal. But what was a big deal was that she would lead her
troops into battle. No pharaohs ever went into battle "physically" (they directed their
Ma'at). No one ever expected it, especially of a
women. Anyways, a king's curse can
have many dangerous consequences...
An Original work of BigHoliday