King Tut

For Christmas, my in-laws on the Raubacher side, got Mallory and I two tickets to go and see the King Tut exhibit in the Pacific Science Center. Mallory and I got ourselves out of the apartment this morning and got there just in time to get in with our time-block. The story of us being late is a whole different blog post that's totally not going to happen haha. Don't ask, because it's my own dumb fault :p

We arrived and the pieces I saw had a pretty big impact on me. In the first room, you're faced with several sculptures of the pharaohs and other royal family members. Being in the same room as these items was such a powerful feeling because as you soaked up the sight of these statues and took in the marvelous details you could feel that the men and women who made these were believers in what they were doing. As we moved on through the exhibit, we passed through the treasury of King Tut's tomb and then proceeded to the Imax show which explained the depths of the Egyptian culture and religion.

Despite the fact that this was King Tut's exhibit, and the figures were all of the Egyptian royals, the ones who I saw as being immortalized in that display were the artists. The level of detail that they put into these figures and pieces of jewelry was incredible. Human hands from three thousand years ago moved across blank material and rendered the faces of kings and queens. It was the artists and the craftsmen of that generation that built the prestige of the Egyptian empire, and they did such an amazing job. I was taken back to a kingdom on the edge of the Nile where people believed that a god in human form was the pharaoh. This was a different time, full of different beliefs, but many of them did not sound foreign to what we believe in today.

According to the Egyptians, at the point of leaving this world, the pharaoh's heart would be weighed as just or unjust and if he was righteous he would pass through to paradise where his soul would be reunited with his body. He would enjoy an existence where each moment was like the most beautiful day. Honestly, when you boil things down, there is very little difference from this concept and the Christian philosophies of judgment, resurrection and eternal life.

There are people who look at the story of humanity and see us as a people who are led to fabricate deity, imagine up ceremonies and rituals and philosophies and coin symbolism to console ourselves against the terrible fact of life: death. On the contrary, I see that we're a species who are made by a God to want a God.

Thousands of years have passed. Empires have come and gone, but people have changed very little in my eyes. We are still the same people who have the same desires for God and justice.

I was so impressed by the organization that seemed to exist in this empire. I find it funny that we aggrandize our leaders and the ruling party with riches and opulence. We want to see someone with power, and presence who can command us and tell us what to do to succeed.

The egyptians were pretty fabulous. They traveled the known world searching for ingredients to take care of themselves with, and their taste in gold ornaments is inspiring.

It was truly an incredible experience, and having stood in the presence of such wondrous works of art, I am in as much awe as the kings of old to whom they were first unveiled to.