King Tut. That’s what we all call him, anyway. Like we know him – or knew him. Is a bit like how we call famous people by their first name?
Eg. “What did you do Friday night?”
“Oh I just watched Will and Kate’s wedding.” Angelina Jolie simply becomes Angelina and, to the gossip mags, Jennifer Aniston becomes Jen. Humans – we’re weird, aren’t we?
Anyway, for the purpose of this blog and to save my hand from getting RSI let’s refer to Tutankhamun as Tut. Is that ok? No disrespect intended!
Who was this Tut guy anyway? And how the heck do you say his name?
Well, as I was bored lining up to see the King Tut exhibition at the Melbourne Museum, staring at peoples’ heads in front of me and noticing how people were dressed up to go to the museum on a Saturday night like it was hippest thing this side of Austin, I realised one might easily apply expressive dance to explain how to pronounce his name.
WARNING: this is very lame.
So, it’s TOOT! honk honk, toot your horn. Haha very funny. I know you’re grimacing, not smiling – “Hurry up, get to the point, I need to finish pairing my socks!”
AN …. couldn’t really think of gestural dance for this word but if we use creative license maybe you could scrunch up and be an “ant.” AN + T, for the purposes of nothing else being … in my mind. My goodness, I think I have failed miserably on this one. Onto …
(My favourite!) CAR …. broom broom!! Who doesn’t love to imitate a car?
“So, little Johnny, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
Little Johnny puffs up and answers, “Broom broom! A CAR!”
Last one is MEN … Men, how does one express this word? This may be a contentious one … up to you to decide how to best portray this.
So that, my friends, is an easy way to remember the name Tutankhamun. May have mixed results.
That useless but topical How-To lesson preludes my first blog on Tut. Having seen the exhibition, having ruminated and been inspired and been horrified, I have much more to say on this subject.
This is NOT the only blog I intend to write on the subject. How could I do that to do: start a blog about Tut, tease you with mention of history and my experience of the exhibition and then completely go off subject and tell you how to say King Tut’s name if you’re ever playing Charades? No, I couldn’t do that to you my faithful and loyal reader, if such a reader exists.Yet reader or no reader, I shall return with more coverage on Tut … some likely more useful.
I even have a farewell which will instill hope in you that I will certainly return to this topic, that which our friend the Terminator once appropriately advised, making his intentions super clear: “I’ll.Be.Back.”
Don’t worry, I’m not the Terminator. I mean, right now I’m doing a metaphorical curtsey and giving you a queen wave goodbye (detached but demonstrative) – would the Terminator do that? … Would he? … Would I? Oh dear, now you’ve confused me!
Anna Kosmanovski 