December 22, 2005--Brokeback Pyramid
As embarrassed as I am to admit this, I did take a peek last night at the O'Reilly Factor. After he ranted again about how it is essential to return Christmas to Christmas, he lurched into a segment on Brokeback Mountain and how the NY Times has done six stories, count them, six articles about the film because they are using it as an excuse to promote their covert campaign in support of gay marriage.
By coincidence, having just returned from seeing the film that very evening (for what it's worth I give it One Thumbs Down and just two and a half stars) I didn't at all think about it as a film promoting marriage--straight or gay--since all the ones depicted in the film are so unspeakably unattractive. If this is a film about marriage, I vote for fooling around while herding sheep.
But then later that very same evening, while catching up with the NY Times, I came across an article in the Science section (see link to it below) that, well, maybe is a covert attempt on the part of the Times to change the law here so that even Elton John can get married on his next tour of the US.
The piece is about a painting on the wall of a 4,300 year old tomb right near the great pyramids at Giza--of two men in a loving embrace. Like right out of the movie!
Up to this point there have been two explanations: It is agreed that the two men depicted were the chief manicurists, you heard me, to Pharaoh Saqqara. That's not the point though--what they did for a living. According to one view, Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep are just very loving brothers and thus posed for their portraits with their arms around each other. Someone else
even speculated that they might have been the Chang and Eng of Ancient Egypt--cojoined twins, Siamese Twins if you will.
But if one peers a little more closely at the actual image on the wall of the necropolis, and compares the specific details of the kind of embrace depicted there, Nian and Khnum are locked in each others arms in ways quite similar to Ancient Egyptian heterosexual couples. You see, it's all in the iconography. That's after all what scholars do--they cut through to the truth of things in these subtle ways. To make this even more convincing, that more than cojoinedness or brotherhood is involved here, the archaeologist espousing the gay interpretation is French, one Nadine Cherpion. And you know of course what Bill O'Reilly would have to say about that.
But at the end, instead of making the case itself, the Times takes the coward's way out by giving the final word to Dr. David O'Connor, professor of ancient Egyptian art at New York University:
"The semipublic nature of their tomb chapel suggests their gay relationship was accepted as normative by the elite of a particularly famous and illustrious civilization."
But still not in Wyoming.
Though did you also get a chance to look at the Pharaoh's toe nails?
By coincidence, having just returned from seeing the film that very evening (for what it's worth I give it One Thumbs Down and just two and a half stars) I didn't at all think about it as a film promoting marriage--straight or gay--since all the ones depicted in the film are so unspeakably unattractive. If this is a film about marriage, I vote for fooling around while herding sheep.
But then later that very same evening, while catching up with the NY Times, I came across an article in the Science section (see link to it below) that, well, maybe is a covert attempt on the part of the Times to change the law here so that even Elton John can get married on his next tour of the US.
The piece is about a painting on the wall of a 4,300 year old tomb right near the great pyramids at Giza--of two men in a loving embrace. Like right out of the movie!
Up to this point there have been two explanations: It is agreed that the two men depicted were the chief manicurists, you heard me, to Pharaoh Saqqara. That's not the point though--what they did for a living. According to one view, Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep are just very loving brothers and thus posed for their portraits with their arms around each other. Someone else
even speculated that they might have been the Chang and Eng of Ancient Egypt--cojoined twins, Siamese Twins if you will.
But if one peers a little more closely at the actual image on the wall of the necropolis, and compares the specific details of the kind of embrace depicted there, Nian and Khnum are locked in each others arms in ways quite similar to Ancient Egyptian heterosexual couples. You see, it's all in the iconography. That's after all what scholars do--they cut through to the truth of things in these subtle ways. To make this even more convincing, that more than cojoinedness or brotherhood is involved here, the archaeologist espousing the gay interpretation is French, one Nadine Cherpion. And you know of course what Bill O'Reilly would have to say about that.
But at the end, instead of making the case itself, the Times takes the coward's way out by giving the final word to Dr. David O'Connor, professor of ancient Egyptian art at New York University:
"The semipublic nature of their tomb chapel suggests their gay relationship was accepted as normative by the elite of a particularly famous and illustrious civilization."
But still not in Wyoming.
Though did you also get a chance to look at the Pharaoh's toe nails?
posted by Steven Zwerling at
3:38 PM
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