Toby Wilkinson: belief

Transcript context

…Here’s a very sociological question. In America in particular, how is it that King Tut became so very famous? When I was six years old, I knew who King Tut was, but I had no idea, say, of Napoleon. I’m not even sure I knew who Hitler was. How did it become such a big deal? The discovery of King Tut’s tomb was the first archaeological discovery of the modern media age. Lord Carnarvon did a very smart thing. He entered into an exclusive relationship with The Times of London to cover the excavation and the discovery of all these amazing objects. It was hot property in media terms. The Times then syndicated its stories around the world. It was also something about the era. I think the early 1920s, the world was picking itself up after the First World War. There was a real hunger for glamour and stories of beauty, and opulence, and magnificence. It struck a chord with the zeitgeist, you might say. It was a combination of the media frenzy, the time, and also, let’s face it, ancient Egypt is just such a visually appealing civilization. It’s a civilization that produced great art, but it’s also the exoticism of Egypt. It’s the sheer antiquity of Egypt. I think all of these ingredients just combined to make it the gift that kept on giving as far as the media were concerned. It became a global sensation in a way that no discovery really before or since ever had. There’s the old Hollywood movie The Mummy. There was the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, which I think is maybe still there. Do you see anything like this obsession coming back today? Are there any signs of that?…

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