The Face of Tutankhamun

by Christopher Frayling (Editor)

4to.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Egyptology, Egypt

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

Reviews

[Mark Dickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a collection of essays and stories, there are always bound to be some that you enjoy and some that you don’t.

There was slightly too much fiction in this book for me. Whether that was literal chapters taken wholeheartedly from other fiction books (which makes up about a quarter of this volume) or a hypothetical situation seen to its natural conclusion, it didn’t work for me.

However, I did get from this what I wanted. There are some fascinating essays in here on the causes of Tutmania specifically and fascination with Egyptian history in general. In particular, there was one towards the end that discusses how many Western historians do not combine this history in its current Islamic context; it caused me to reassess my failing to do so, and has inspired me to hunt down more contemporary history to fill this hole.

It is a pleasing snapshot of history, but far too bulked out by unnecessary information. The blurb describes this as “fascinating in every detail”, but I would describe it as “fascinating in some details”.

[DAJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not so much a book by Frayling, although it does contain a good deal of text written by him, as it is an anthology of works related to the tomb discovery and to Egyptomania. It doesn't have much detail about the process of discovery and clearance (the best books for that are Tutankhamen: The Search for an Egyptian King by Joyce Tyldesley or the biographies of Howard Carter by T. G. H. James and H.V.F. Winstone) or about the tomb's contents (where the best source is The Complete Tutankhamun by Nicholas Reeves). Its strength is the discovery's cultural context. Most discussions of the tomb's discovery provide a handful of examples of the discovery's impact on pop culture before going back to the tomb clearance itself, but this book digs deeper, including in the portions written by Frayling himself.

The sources for the excerpts range all over the place, including Amelia Edwards' account of travel on the Nile; accounts of excavation in the Valley of the Kings by Theodore Davis and by Carter and Carnarvon themselves; ancient Egypt-themed fiction by the likes of Bram Stoker and H. P. Lovecraft; a humorous piece from Punch; and tales of Tutankhamun's curse by the charlatans Velma and Cheiro. To say the results are eccentric would be an understatement, but they do illustrate the often eccentric nature of Egyptomania. The most significant piece in the anthology may be the essay by Edward Said about how Tutankhamun fits into the relationship between ancient and modern Egypt, and about how so many Westerners virtually ignore modern Egypt in their fervor for the ancient. To my knowledge, this is the only twentieth-century English-language book about the discovery that expresses any serious interest in the perspective of modern Egyptians, which rather proves Said's point.

The design of the book is rather confusing. The excerpts aren't all that clearly distinguished from Frayling's own text, and Frayling's text itself incorporates many block quotations from yet more authors. It's especially easy not to notice when excerpts end (look for the row of squares and circles), so if you're not careful you can lose track of who is saying what.