好英语网图坦卡蒙：一座少年法老的坟墓如何掀起了埃及热
When King Tutankhamun’s tomb was opened in November 1922, the world fell under his spell. For today’s archaeologists, the explanation for the cult of King Tut lies in the exceptional richness of the discovery, especially as many of the tombs were robbed of their mortuary goods; and in the mystique surrounding the premature deaths of the boy king and Lord Carnarvon, who funded the dig. As the largest collection of Tutankhamun’s treasures to travel outside of Egypt goes on display at the Saatchi Gallery in London (after drawing record-breaking numbers in LA and Paris), the find clearly still has a global appeal in the 21st Century.
当古埃及法老图坦卡蒙（Tutankhamun）的陵墓于1922年11月被发现时，整个世界都被它迷住了。考古学家之所以这么崇拜图坦卡蒙，原因之一可能这个陵墓中的发现异常丰富，尤其是在很多墓葬的遗物都已经被盗的情况之下。英年早逝的图坦卡蒙，以及资助考古发掘队的卡纳冯勋爵（Lord Carnarvon）在图坦卡蒙陵墓被发掘后几个月就去世，更为这座陵墓蒙上了浓厚的神秘感。目前，图坦卡蒙陵墓中的文物正在伦敦萨奇画廊（Saatchi Gallery）展出，这也是埃及以外最大的图坦卡蒙墓文物展，此前在美国洛杉矶和法国巴黎展出时，参观人数突破记录，这足以显示古老的文物在21世纪的现在仍然持续焕发魅力。
But as I explore in a new Radio 4 programme, The Cult of King Tut, the power of King Tutankhamun lay as much in the extraordinary context of the 1920s as it did in the contents of the tomb. In 1922, Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who found the tomb, was caught in the middle of a political storm. Egypt had recently undergone a political transformation, and the new government kept a tight control on the artefacts.
但是，当我在BBC第四台（Radio 4）的一个新节目中探讨对图坦卡蒙的崇拜时，我发现图坦卡蒙的权力既存在于陵墓之中，也存在于20世纪20年代的特殊背景中。1922年，发现陵墓的英国考古学家霍华德·卡特（Howard Carter）陷入了一场政治风暴之中。埃及最近经历了一场政治变革，新政府对文物进行了严格管控。
To raise money to pay for the complex process of excavation, preservation and cataloguing the tomb’s riches, Lord Carnarvon signed an exclusive deal with The Times newspaper giving it sole rights to supply the world’s press with news and photographs. At the time, this sort of arrangement was extremely unusual. Cat Warsi, assistant archivist at the Griffith Institute in Oxford, argues the financial support and continued media interest was vital “because this was a costly excavation that in the end took almost 10 years”.
为了筹集资金来支付复杂的挖掘、保存和编目墓室文物，卡纳冯勋爵与《泰晤士报》签署了一项独家协议，独家授权该报向全球媒体提供新闻和照片的权利。在当时，这种安排是极不寻常的，牛津大学（University of Oxford）格里菲斯研究所（Griffith Institute）的助理档案保管员凯特·沃西（Cat Warsi）说，财政支持和媒体的持续关注是至关重要的，“因为这是一次耗资巨大的挖掘，最终花费了近10年时间”。
Lights, camera, action
灯光，摄像机，开拍
Harry Burton, a British-born art photographer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was brought in to photograph the excavations. His approach was meticulous and dramatic, photographing objects from multiple angles with specialist lighting and staging that were being developed in the new film industry in Hollywood at the time.
纽约大都会艺术博物馆（Metropolitan Museum of Art）的英裔摄影师哈里·伯顿（Harry Burton）被请来拍摄挖掘的全过程。他的拍摄方法一丝不苟且富有戏剧化，他用专业的灯光和脚架从多个角度拍摄对象，当时这种技术才刚刚在好莱坞兴起。
The dig revealed that the world was enchanted by the treasures – extraordinary and ordinary. Paul Collins, curator for the Ancient Near East at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford, says this ‘Egyptomania’ was fed “by a perfect storm of technology. The moment when radio, telegram, mass-circulation newspapers and moving film came together so everyone could have a bit of Tut”.
全世界都被这次挖掘出的稀世珍宝迷住了。牛津大学阿什莫林博物馆（Ashmolean Museum）的古代近东馆负责人保罗·柯林斯（Paul Collins）说，“埃及热”是被“一场技术的完美风暴”滋养的。广播、电报、发行量巨大的报纸和电影汇聚在一起，让每个人都能感受到一点图坦卡蒙的气息。
Burton’s photographs revealed more than 5,000 objects crammed into the small tomb. Among the exquisite golden statues and jewellery, decorated boxes and boats, and dismantled chariots, there were also signs of everyday life: loaves of bread, haunches of meat, and baskets of chickpeas, lentils, and dates. There were even garlands of flowers.
伯顿的照片显示，这座小间墓室里塞满了5000多件物品。除了工艺精湛的黄金雕像和珠宝、精雕细琢的宝盒、船只和战车部件外，也有许多日常生活的痕迹：面包、肉、一篮子鹰嘴豆、扁豆和枣子，甚至还有花环。
The discoveries inspired fashion design of the 1920s, as generic Egyptian motifs of snakes, birds and lotus flowers appeared on exclusive clothing designs, as well as mass-produced consumer goods available to everyone. Burton’s pictures of luxury items spoke to the new consumerism of the 1920s. The US economist Thorstein Veblen had recently coined the phrase ‘conspicuous consumption’, which summed up the ‘Roaring Twenties’ consumer economy, and what Veblen called the ‘display power’ of shopping; ostentatious consumption showed to the world you could afford to buy more than life’s bare necessities.
这些发现也启发了20世纪20年代的时装设计，蛇、鸟和莲花这些典型的埃及图案常常出现在独特的时装设计中，也出现在消费类服饰中。伯顿拍摄的奢侈品相片反映了20世纪20年代的新消费主义。美国经济学家托尔斯坦·维布伦（Thorstein Veblen ）最近创造了“炫耀性消费”一词，用来概括“咆哮的二十年代”的消费经济。炫耀性消费是在向世界表明，你能买得起比生活必需品更多的东西。
King Tut fed people’s fantasies, and the demand for products that referenced his world. It was perhaps easier to relate to it than some other ancient kingdoms because Tut’s father, Akhenaten, had ushered in a new style – Amarna art – that represented royalty in softer, more natural settings, offering intimate representations of family life. And women were much more prominent.
图坦卡蒙满足了人们的幻想，也满足了人们对于他那个世界中物品的渴求。与其他古代帝王相比，图坦卡蒙更容易让人与之产生关联，因为他的父亲阿赫那吞（Akhenaten）开创了一种新的艺术风格——阿马纳风格（Amarna）。这种艺术风格用更柔和和自然的方法表现王室生活，女性在这种风格中也更为突出。
Figures such as the goddess Isis, one of four statues guarding each corner of King Tutankhamun’s canopic shrine, were inspirational for ‘modern girls’, a new kind of woman who was emerging after World War One.
图坦卡蒙神殿的四个角落各有一尊守护神，其中包括生命女神伊希斯（Isis），这对一战后的新女性来说是鼓舞人心的。
The ‘modern girl’ was a global phenomenon – neue Frauen in Germany; modan gāru or moga in Japan; modeng xiaojie in China; garçonnes in France. They shared a common style that stood for liberation. With a Cleopatra-style bob haircut and shift dress, sipping cocktails and dancing the rhythm of a jazz band, the modern girl signalled defiance. She could attract a man or get by without one.
“摩登女郎”是一种全球性现象——无论是德语中的Neue Frauen，日语中的 modan gāru 或 moga，或者汉语中的“摩登小姐”，又或是法语中的 Garçonnes，她们都有一种象征解放的共同风格。摩登女郎留着埃及艳后克利奥帕特拉（Cleopatra）式的短发，穿着连衣裙，喝着鸡尾酒，伴着爵士跳舞，这象征着一种反抗——她可以吸引男人，也可以不吸引男人。
She was also a commodity icon – selling lipstick, face powders, perfumes, and face creams. Many of them, like Nile Queen products manufactured by the Kashmir Chemical Company in Chicago, were marketed with an explicit Egyptian theme.
她也是一个商标——卖口红、粉饼、香水和面霜。其中许多产品，比如芝加哥克什米尔化学公司（Kashmir Chemical Company）生产的尼罗河皇后（Nile Queen）系列产品，都是以埃及为主题的。
Jazz Cleopatra
爵士风格的克利奥帕特拉
The modern girl was epitomised in the African-American dancer Josephine Baker, who styled herself as a ‘Jazz Cleopatra’. A prominent user of beauty products for black women produced by Madam CJ Walker, one of the most influential and well-known black US businesswomen, Baker used this new beauty culture to empower herself. She challenged racism by being fashionably modern.
这类摩登女郎的代表人物是非裔美国舞蹈家约瑟芬·贝克（Josephine Baker），她把自己打扮成“爵士风格的克利奥帕特拉”。知名的沃克夫人（Madam CJ Walker）一直为黑人女性生产美容产品，而贝克则是她们产品的忠实用户。她用这种新的美容文化来增强自己的能力，并以时尚摩登的形象挑战种族主义。
Baker became famous for her jazz routines at the Folies Bergère in Paris, popularising the Charleston, the dance craze from the US. As dancers were no longer necessarily paired ‘in hold’ (dancing in one another’s arms with the man leading), it looked revolutionary. According to the Paris-based musicologist Martin Guerpin: “Once you dance alone, you can do whatever you want.”
贝克以在巴黎女神游乐厅（Folies Bergère）的爵士舞而闻名，并在美国掀起了一阵查尔斯顿舞的热潮。由于舞者不再一定要成双成对（在男人的怀抱中跳舞），这看起来很有革命性。据巴黎的音乐学家马丁·顾尔品（Martin Guerpin）说：“一旦你独自跳舞，就可以做任何你想做的事。”
King Tut also inspired jazz music, including the 1923 tune Old King Tut, which declared he was a ‘wise old nut’. The recognition that he was a boy king emerged a few years after the tomb’s discovery: Carter’s excavations only reached Tutankhamun’s body in 1925, when he opened the first of a series of coffins that revealed the king’s gold funerary mask, and sometime later, his fragile, broken body.
图坦卡蒙也是爵士乐的灵感来源，其中包括1923年的名曲《老图坦卡蒙》（Old King Tut），这首曲子宣称图坦卡蒙是一个“聪明的老疯子”。人们是在坟墓被发掘几年后才知道图坦卡蒙是一位“少年法老”：1925年，当卡特掀开层层棺材后，才看到了图坦卡蒙的黄金面具，一段时间后，才看到了他的遗体。
A painstaking autopsy revealed that King Tut was not a vulnerable old king, but a young man, aged between 17 and 19. The discovery that the ‘boy king’ had suffered multiple injuries fuelled a new bout of fevered speculation and curse stories that linked back to the death of Lord Carnarvon, only weeks after the tomb’s opening.
经过一番艰难的尸体解剖，考古学家发现图坦卡蒙并不是一位脆弱的老法老，而是一位17岁至19岁的年轻人。这位“小国王”身上多处受伤的发现，引发了新一轮狂热的猜测和诅咒，这些猜测和诅咒都与卡纳冯勋爵的死亡有关，仅仅在墓穴被打开几周时间后，卡纳冯勋爵就去世了。
The cult of King Tut also had a dark side that spoke to people’s private fears and hidden suffering. His body was unearthed at a time when society was still recovering from the impact of World War One. Most of the war casualties were also entombed far from home, their bodies never returned. The discovery that Tutankhamun was a boy king and that his body carried multiple injuries, after his mummy was unwrapped in 1925, captured the imagination of people mourning their war dead – or nursing injured loved ones.
图坦卡蒙崇拜也有阴暗面，它表达了人们内心的恐惧和隐藏的痛苦。他的遗体被挖掘出来的时候，整个社会还未完全从一战中恢复过来。战争中的大多数伤亡者被埋葬在离家很远的地方，他们的尸体再也没有回来。1925年，图坦卡蒙的木乃伊被打开后，人们发现他是一位少年法老，他身上的多处伤痕，激发了人们悼念战争死难者或照顾受伤亲人的同理心。
The bandaged, wounded young men who made it home from the front returned with some of the worst injuries ever seen, and were treated out of sight because weak male bodies represented weak empires. Mummies who could rise from the dead were now immortalised by the new film industry. According to Roger Luckhurst at Birkbeck College: “The first journalist to see the face of the pharaoh Tutankhamun was John Balderston, who went on to write the script for the Universal horror film The Mummy [released in 1932].”
那些战场上的年轻人扎着绷带、带着有史以来最严重的伤势从前线回来了，但他们也同时从我们视野中消失了——因为虚弱的男性身体代表着虚弱的帝国。但电影工业让木乃伊“起死回生”，据伯克贝克学院（Birkbeck College）的罗杰·卢克赫斯特（Roger Luckhurst）说：“第一个看到图坦卡蒙法老面孔的记者是约翰·鲍尔德斯顿（John Balderston），他后来为1932年上映的恐怖电影《木乃伊》撰写了剧本。”
The 1920s craze for King Tut was a global project of the imagination. It connected people to an ancient place and to one another, including loved ones whose loss was mourned – allowing them to imagine themselves in a different, and possibly better, world. And the need to dream of new worlds, by recovering ones lost to history, is as important as ever.
20世纪20年代对图坦卡蒙的狂热是一个全球性的想象力工程，它将人们与一个古老的地方彼此联系起来，包括那些因失去亲人而哀悼的人——让他们想象自己身处在一个不同的、甚至可能更好的世界。通过追忆遗失的历史而梦想一个新的世界，比以往任何时候都更为重要。