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Night Created Image Silent
by SARAH WAMBOLD
The real Tutankhamen appears on a plasma screen above the 3D replica of his withered remains which lie in a glass box in the Houston Museum of Fine Art. Communication between them is a mystery to the people who surround the glass box. A sign next to The Tut explains he is not the actual remains, but an exact representation based on CT scans. The people have come with children and they look at The Tut with eyes glazed over, unable to concentrate any longer. Kids jump up and down with excitement around the box while a few others slouch against a wall, bored. The real Tutankhamen looks at them from his screen, but hardly any of them look back.
The Tut moves. Throughout the museum, he finds himself most often in front of a Buddha made of turquoise sequins who stares calmly past him. He feels close to the Buddha, though he does not understand why. There are many things The Tut does not understand. A plaque next to the Buddha says he was created to resemble a fish; to remind people that they could die young, be forgotten, be insignificant. The real Tutankhamen died young and was nearly forgotten, but is now one of the most expensive items in the world.
The Tut knows he is eternal life. This is the happiness he can share with the real Tutankhamen. He cannot share anything else. He is kept away from his gold. In every museum, The Tut is placed in a room by himself, naked and small, at the end of the tour. Gold appears alongside his name in the title of every exhibit The Tut travels with, but that’s the closest he gets to it.
Maury Povich understands the distance between a name and a promise. He provides paternity testing to indignant parents. The child being tested appears on a screen behind Maury. He reads the results in front of a live audience. “You are the father,” he tells the man who has put his head in his hands. The child on the screen watches his father leave the stage. After a commercial break, a different child appears onscreen and the process repeats. On the plasma screen in the museum, the real Tutankhamen undergoes DNA testing to determine who his father is. A careful scientist biopsies his fragile bones. The results are read, revealing to the world that Ankenhaten is his father. The drama transcends time. The video starts over.
The Tut sits in front of the Buddha at night and tells him about being created in the real Tutankhamen’s image. The real Tutankhamen wants him to do everything he would do; to show the world what they want, but cannot fully see. The Tut lacks the charms of the real Tutankhamen. He is not dead. He is not really a child. He carries a message of durability rather than history.
The lines at the museums grow long each time The Tut visits. Cell phones are shut off and cameras are put away. I stand in one of those lines and enter the world created by a dead child. There are kids everywhere. They ask their parents questions about death. I take notes on a pad of paper. We reach the end together and look into the glass box. The kids are disappointed he is not real. Everyone checks their phone for messages they may have just missed.
At home that night a woman writes a post for her blog titled “Just My World." She has a name but she doesn’t use it. She writes that she went to the King Tut exhibit but there were 250 kids that crowded her out of seeing his replica in the glass box. She was thankful that the ticket price was affordable. She shares with the world that she saw the Buddha as well. She had no idea the Buddha would be there, nor how beautiful he would be. It made the trip to the museum worth it. She signs off in peace. No one comments.
Sarah Wambold is a writer living in Austin.
"Candles" - Beth Orton (mp3)
"Something More Beautiful" - Beth Orton (mp3)
