CHAPTER 1 - TUT-ANKH-AMEN

Summary

Whenever an archæological discovery lays bare traces of a remote age, and the vanished human lives it fostered, we turn at once instinctively to the facts revealed to us with which we are most in sympathy. And these are invariably human in their interests. A withered lotus flower, some emblem of tender affection, some simple domestic trait, will bring back the past for us, on its human side, far more vividly than the sentiment can be conveyed by austere records or pompous official inscriptions boasting how some dim “King of Kings” overwhelmed his enemies and trampled on their pride.

This is, to a certain extent, true of the discovery of the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen. Of the young boy king we know very little, but as to his tastes and temperament we can now make some shrewd guesses. As the priestly vehicle through whom divine influence was transmitted to the Theban world, as the earthly representative of Re—the great Sun-god—the young king scarcely takes for us clear or realizable shape, but as a creature of ordinary human dispositions, a lover of the chase, as an eager sportsman, he becomes easily and amiably intelligible. We have here that “touch of nature which makes the whole world kin.”

The religious aspects of most races become modified by time, circumstance and education. In some cases their feeling towards death and its mysteries is refined and spiritualized. With the growth of culture, love, pity, sorrow, affection, find tenderer modes of utterance and expression.