The NYTimes turns to Steve Martin for perspective on the new exhibition of King Tut artifacts:
IT is fitting that so many major news organizations have asked me to herald the coming to the United States of the artifacts from King Tut's tomb. After all, I'm the one who wrote the silly song about him. I stepped over the backs of many Egyptologists who wanted to write this article, but it's better that they learn their lesson now: silly song writers are powerful and vicious people who will stop at nothing to write an article about subjects they have treated in a silly way.And, lest you'd wondered:
It does strike me as ironic that the song has become the standard reference work on the subject of King Tut. Many of the lines in the song are now believed to be fact. In this article I should - as a serious scholar - set the record straight:In next Sunday's Times: Susannah Hoffs and Vicki Peterson's theories on how how Egyptians really walked.King Tut was not "born in Arizona."
He did not live in a "condo made of stone-a."
King Tut did not "do the monkey," nor did he "move to Babylonia."
King Tut was not a honky.
He was not "buried in his jammies."
The song does, however, make a valid assertion that scholars still regard as a breakthrough: King Tut was, as explained in the song, "an Egyptian."
(Via Red and, by extension, Tommy)
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