The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in November 1922 made headlines around the world. It was a good news story, after the devastating years of the Great War followed by the flu pandemic. Some canny manufacturers were so sure it was going to start a trend that they produced Egyptian biscuit tins and powder compacts in time for the Christmas market. Tourists flocked to Egypt, hoping to get a glimpse of the spectacle, and Tutankhamun became an overnight celebrity more than three thousand years after his mummification, and Tutmania was born.
The initial wave of enthusiasm was fuelled when technological advances in print, telegram and cinematic media allowed photographs and illustrations of the tomb’s contents to be shared widely, in a way they couldn’t have been a decade earlier. Eastern exoticism had been fashionable in the early years of the century, and the sublime artistry of Tutankhamun’s glittering treasures, plus the shapes of the phoenix wings and strange hybrid animals in hieroglyphics, fed into 1920s design. The term ‘Art Deco’ had not yet been coined, but products as diverse as buildings, cars and furnishings began to use Egyptian-style lines and motifs that would later be identified as characteristic of that style.
Flapper fashion was heavily influenced by Tutmania: the short cropped bob and black lines drawn around the eyes were taken directly from Egyptian statues. Some young women wore snake bracelets that twined up the arm, or headbands with striking cobras on the front. Egyptian-style geometric patterns were printed on fabrics and wallpapers, and Helena Rubinstein cashed in with the ‘Valaze Egyptian Face Mask’.
Immediately the tomb was found, popular novelist Marie Corelli began warning that pharaohs’ tombs were cursed, and the story was leapt upon by Arthur Weigall, a Daily Mail journalist, who was annoyed that exclusive rights to cover the tomb had been sold to The Times. When Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the dig, died from an infected mosquito bite four months after first entering the tomb, the story went viral (in a pre-internet sense). For the rest of the decade, if anyone died who had visited the tomb, it made front-page news – and there seemed to be a lot of unusual deaths, if you went looking for them.
A mystery, curses, unimaginable wealth – this was a trope few could resist. Novels were published and the first motion picture, The Mummy, came out in 1932, scripted by a journalist who had reported on the excavation and starring Boris Karloff. There were dozens of stage acts, and a popular song named ‘Old King Tut’, all of them romanticising Egyptian culture.
Perhaps at the root of Tutmania was a Western fascination with the Ancient Egyptian attitude to death. While we in the West tend to shy away from talking about it, Egyptians recognised that life is temporary while death is permanent, and they spent a lot of time planning their resting places. If they had lived a good life, they believed the gods would allow their souls into the afterlife, so the wealthy stuffed their tombs with everything they would need to make it comfortable.
There had been surges of Egyptomania before the 1920s. After Julius Caesar’s conquest of Egypt in 47BC, Romans lapped up stories of Cleopatra’s wiles. When Napoleon’s troops discovered the Valley of the Kings in 1798 and brought home treasures such as the Rosetta Stone, there was a wave of mass curiosity. But the timing of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, with its intact mummy sheltered inside ornate solid gold coffins, must have struck a chord with those who had lost loved ones in the Great War or its aftermath. When Howard Carter opened the last coffin he could see the dried-out skin, lips and nose of a man who died in 1323BC. Had Tut’s soul entered the afterlife he planned? Had those of their loved ones?
Tutankhamun only ruled for nine years, after taking the throne at the age of eight or nine. He wasn’t a particularly significant king in political terms, but a combination of circumstances meant his tomb went undiscovered after the rest of the Valley had been dug up, and because he died during the height of Egyptian artistry, his treasures were particularly spectacular. That’s why he got a ‘mania’ named after him that persists to this day, with touring exhibitions of his artefacts still attracting millions worldwide, and Tutankhamun souvenirs topping the bestsellers in museum gift shops.
The Collector’s Daughter, Gill Paul’s novel about the discovery of the tomb, is published on 30th September.
Aspects of History Issue 5 is out now. Tutmania
