17. An Interview with King Tut

PEACE PIPE 1984 II (1983)

This chopper, like the tank, has the bowl on the bottom.The skids and rotor are brass painted black. The twin cannons in the nose are sterling silver painted black.

AN INTERVIEW WITH KING TUT

ARTY> Well, today I'm thrilled to have the Pharaoh Tutankhamun as a guest. He was only Pharaoh for a few years but he is now the most famous of all the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs. Now, first of all, you're now known as King Tut. How does it feel to be known by millions worldwide as "Tut"?

TUT> Arty! Nice to see you again. You've aged in the last 3,300 years since I died. Being Tut doesn't bother me at all. It's just one more name. I had at least six names while I was on the throne, and that was just in Egypt. I was known by other names in other countries. In our religion we lived as long as someone spoke our names. You could say I'm more alive today than I was back then just based on the number of people who know my name and who I was. Basically, call me anything, but just call me.

ARTY> As you know I like to ask everyone this question: What, with 20/20 hindsite, would you have done differently?

TUT> Boy, that's a tough one. I didn't have much choice about what I did. There were so many traditions to observe, so many rituals that required my time. I may have been Pharaoh but I was practically a prisoner. It was a wonderful life but there was so much required of me that I never woke up in the morning wondering what I was going to do that day.

My first priority was to fix the damage done to the entire nation by my father Akhenaten. He was quite mad you know. He wanted to re make Egypt in his own image and what an image that was. His statues show him the way he actually looked! He outlawed all the gods except Aten, moved the capital and neglected the affairs of state. When I came to the throne the great temples were abandoned and falling into disrepair. The great Sphinx was just a head sticking out of the ground. The royal tombs were looted. It was my life's work to restore Egypt to it's former glory. As it happened I didn't have much time to fix my father's mistakes. I died before I reached adulthood but before that I was able to do much with the help of my advisers.

ARTY> Through some stroke of luck or fate, your tomb was the only tomb in The Valley of Kings that was not looted, giving us 20th century dwellers a glimpse of royal lifestyle from 33 centuries ago, Are you surprised?

TUT> Well, yes I am. My successors did me a favor by trying to discredit my father and his heirs. No one remembers them now but they wanted to erase my father and me from history. Then they dug another tomb near mine and in the course of doing that they covered up the entrance to my tomb with rubble. My tomb and I were soon forgotten.

ARTY> Of course you know that the Egyptian gods were forgotten and lost to the ravages of time about 2000 years ago.

TUT> Ah, yes. Sad really. It was such a magnificent pantheon of deities. We had it all. For over 3000 years ours was the grandest, most opulent religion ever seen on earth. Even in ruins it's still staggering to look at. Imagine what it was like in it's heyday. Unfortunately it was too good to last. A nation cannot put so much of it's resources into temples and tombs just to please deities who don't really exist. As a people the Egyptians just used themselves up on these make work projects that served no economic or security purpose. We were conquered too many times, each new foreign government bringing it's own gods to commingle with ours.

ARTY> Well, I want to thank King Tut for stopping by for a chat. Is there anything you'd like to say to modern man before we say good by?

TUT> Take a tip from us. Being the greatest country in the world is a fleeting thing. It's self defeating, and no nation that has held that position has ever kept it. They have all joined the rest of those former world powers as conquered bits of some other empire which will soon join it's subject nations as has beens. Apparently there is a law of nature at work here.