In un lungo articolo pubblicato sul New Yorker, Casey Cep, ripercorrendo l’avventurosa storia della scoperta della tomba di Tutankhamon – di cui quest’anno ricorre il centenario – e riflettendo sul fascino che questa esercita ancora oggi e in special modo negli studenti più giovani, spiega come la storia del faraone adolescente e i tesori riportati alla luce da Carter siano stati spesso usati dalle potenze occidentali per scopi geopolitici.

Not long ago, in my sister’s elementary-school classroom, I met a second grader who seemed well on his way to a doctoral degree in Egyptology. After describing the mummification process in recondite detail—not only why the brain was removed through the nose but how exactly natron dried out the rest of the body—the child drew an elaborate cartouche with the hieroglyphs used to spell my name. He then proceeded to tell me more about the pharaoh Tutankhamun than most of the other students could tell me about their own grandfathers.

It makes sense that a boy king would have an enduring hold over boys, but it is less clear why so many of the rest of us are still enthralled by Tutankhamun more than three thousand years after he ruled over the New Kingdom and a hundred years after the excavation of his tomb, in the Valley of the Kings. Tutankhamun represents an extremely narrow slice of Egyptian history; imagine if, in the year 4850, the world understood the United States largely through the Presidency of Millard Fillmore. Yet the anniversary of the excavation has occasioned everything from new histories and documentaries to travelling exhibitions and children’s books, each of which contains its own implicit argument about Tutankhamun’s appeal.