“King Tut” And Other Parts Of Egyptian History We Got Wrong.

“I find it hard to believe King Tutankhamen was born in Arizona or moved to Babylonia!”

There was a bit of a kerfuffle recently online regarding Steve Martin’s 1978 Saturday Night Live sketch “King Tut” and how the humor didn’t translate to modern audiences. And honestly yeah, it kind of straddles a line of being too niche and topical with little modern analog. John Belushi playing a Kurosawa samurai hotel manager walks a similar line, but unlike the King Tut Sketch it doesn’t need a deadpan monologue about a fifty year old museum exhibit explaining what it’s making fun of.

But it does remind me that despite a lot of pop culture fascination with Egyptian culture, most of our common knowledge is outdated and inaccurate. The enormous monuments and structures still standing, elaborate pictorial language and meticulously-preserved remains of their leaders and other figures hint at a highly advanced society that astonishes us to this day. Yet over the years wild sparks of historical imagination and inspiration have led to a great deal of misinformation about this culture being spread that have been later debunked by new findings. Let’s dig through and separate the fact from fiction.

ASSUMPTION: The Most Important Egyptology Discoveries Were Made Decades Ago