Today In Pop Culture: King Tut Takes The World By Sandstorm

By Less Lee Moore

It seems hard to believe, but there was a time when the name “King Tutankhamun” represented nothing more than a myth to many people, like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or aliens. Yet in 1923, on this day in pop culture, archaeologist Howard Carter opened the sealed doorway into King Tut’s burial chamber for the first time.

The last few years had been a long, hard slog for Carter. Although praised for his abilities to protect the integrity of excavation sites and his grid-block system for searching, it had been a while since he’d seen any success. Now, the entire world knew his name and what he’d found.

Indeed there was so much treasure inside the tomb that it took Howard and his crew nine more years to unearth everything that lay inside.

Who was King Tut? He ascended to the throne around age nine or ten, when most people are still dreaming of puberty or a new iteration of the Playstation. Despite his success as a ruler, a time during which he reinstated worship of the Egyptian god Amun–even renaming himself from his birth name Tutankhaten to the name we now love and abbreviate–he had many physical disabilities that ensured he’d never take part in the many battles that took place during his reign.

For one thing, he had a cleft palate. Then, there was the scoliosis, a fracture in his left thigh bone, and necrosis of the bone tissue in his left foot, a condition that was so severe he was walking with a cane by the time of his death at age 19. DNA evidence later revealed that King Tut had suffered many bouts of malaria and in fact, represents the first genetic proof of the disease. Scientists are still divided as to what actually killed King Tut, and theories range from sickle cell disease to epilepsy to Klinefelter syndrome.

Regardless, his short life—and the nearly 6,000 items recovered from his burial chamber–would be enormously influential, and way cooler than the Kardashians. Not long after Carter broke the seal, Egyptology became a worldwide trend for the second time. (The first wave of Egypt-mania began in the 19th century when scholar Jean-François Champollion translated hieroglyphics.)

In 1932, Karl Freund’s The Mummy was released by Universal Studios, and star Boris Karloff remains the most feared, well-known, and well-loved theatrical iteration of the iconic monster. Technically, however, Karloff’s character was that of Imhotep, who lived and reigned about a thousand years before King Tut.

Still, the image of a shrouded, sunken-cheeked Boris Karloff is what many still associate with the word “mummy,” although kudos to Stephen Sommers for giving it the old college try in the 1990s with a series of films starring Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep.

The latest version of The Mummy is said to star Tom Cruise, though whether or not he’ll be wrapped in bandages is still unclear.