Vivian Ibrahim<\/strong><\/a>, an associate professor of history and international studies, is studying how Egypt<\/strong>‘s best-loved mummy<\/strong> became an influential figure not only of the country’s ancient history, but also of its future. Ibrahim hopes to complete her research with the help of a\u00a0National Endowment for the Humanities<\/strong>‘ Summer Stipend<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’m looking at the global Tut tours that took place in the ’60s and ’70s,” the Ole Miss professor said. “Egypt as a newly decolonized state used these tours to promote cultural diplomacy, raise financial aid for their new infrastructure projects and promote peace in the Middle East<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “They also changed the way worldwide museum practice took place. This was the beginning of what we now know to be the blockbuster tours, and it started with King Tut<\/strong>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The now-famous golden mask of Tutankhamun influenced many cultural trends\u2014from the Art Deco<\/strong> movement of the 1920s to songs, “Saturday Night Live<\/strong>” skits and mummy movies\u2014and sparked interest in the mystique and culture of the Middle East that hadn’t previously existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “People would queue up for hours on end to go and get a glimpse of a different culture and, for Egypt, this was a way of controlling the narrative surrounding Egypt’s identity the height of the Arab-Israeli conflict<\/strong>,” she said. “It was a way of normalizing Egypt, making it more palatable to an American <\/strong>audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was also a way to negotiate aid from the U.S. and to promote its own tourism\u2014to make Americans and other Europeans come back to Egypt and look at the heritage in its context.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the goals for the National Endowment for the Humanities is to help make the work of scholars such as Ibrahim relevant to a broader audience, said Noell Wilson<\/strong>, chair of the\u00a0Department of History<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “This speaks to that goal, to the appreciation of the scholarly work historians do,” Wilson said. “(Ibrahim’s research) is a history of Cold War<\/strong> diplomacy, but it’s also a history of museums and traveling exhibitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s demonstrating that the work historians do influences a broader audience, and it’s doing that in almost a meta way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before he was the world’s most well-known mummy, Tutankhamun was not an especially renowned king of ancient Egypt<\/strong>.\u00a0Named pharaoh at 9 years old in 1332 B.C.E.<\/a>, Tutankhamun reigned for a little less than a decade before he died at age 18. For the next 3,000 years, he faded into relative obscurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of King Tut began again in 1922 when his was the first intact pharaoh’s tomb discovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings<\/strong>.\u00a0Tut’s remarkably preserved remains\u2014and the\u00a0treasure trove of jewelry, furniture, gold-covered chariots and other belongings<\/a>\u2014quickly made him one of the most iconic examples of Egyptian art<\/strong> and history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was the largest intact tomb that was discovered that hadn’t been disturbed,” Ibrahim said. “In the Valley of Kings, there were lots of grave robbers, and this (tomb) was pretty much intact, so there was a huge number of antiquities.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n British archaeologist<\/strong> Howard Carter<\/strong> and his benefactor George Herbert<\/strong>, the fifth earl of Carnarvon<\/strong>,\u00a0took credit for the discovery of Tut’s tomb<\/a>\u00a0and distributed colored photographs of the discovery to the international press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That’s where a lot of that Tut mania originally comes out of\u2014that cultural moment,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because Egypt gained its\u00a0semi-independence from Britain’s colonial control in 1923<\/a>\u2014as Carter and Carnarvon were still excavating the tomb\u2014Egypt maintained control and ownership of its artifacts,\u00a0unlike many other previous archeological discoveries of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as the Rosetta Stone<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.thelocalvoice.net\/oxford\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Vivian-Ibrahim-archives.jpg?resize=640%2C625\")
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