SenenAnap Meritamen wrote:

"Can you think of the funniest thing you know of relevant to either 1) Ancient Egyptian archaeology or 2) a historic moment in Ancient Egypt?

The first is a description from Howard Carter that while excavating the tomb of Tutankhamun, after initially opening it in 1922, the days often got so hot that he would often work down in the tomb with no more on that an apron. :O (I still keep a mind-boggling image of that sort of excavating in my mind, although I thoroughly understand why he did it!)

One of the funnier, though sad, comments in Egyptian archaeology is when Flinders Petrie had completed his wide-ranged and wonderful collection of predynastic Egyptian artefacts, along with his meticulous and large inventory of other finds from Lahun, Amarna, etc., he was getting older and worried about how his collection would fare after he had died.

So, he offered the entire collection (well over 10,000 pieces) to the British Museum for their use. However, his offer was refused by the Keeper of the Egyptian Antiquities, at that time, E. A. Wallis Budge, since the artfects "weren't pretty enough" for inclusion in the British Museum collections!

However, Petrie, IMO, had the last laugh: for these artefacts were kept, after Budge's refusal, within the University College London, where Petrie taught, and eventually the collection was turned into the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, one of the best Egyptian museums in the world, and the only teaching museum in Egyptology. The Petrie's artefacts are also sprinkled throughout the University, such as the Coptos Lions, which can be seen here and here. Both of these lions sit before the Provost's Office at University College London (I can't recall how many times I passed those lions while an MA student there: they never failed to awe me).

In ancient Egyptian literature, I personally always thought many stories in Egyptian literature quite amusing, though not hilariously funny from a Western point of view.

One such story is the myth of Ra, where he's feeling sorry for himself since he's so old. No one can lighten his spirits until his daughter, Hathor, comes to him, as a child, and exposes herself to him as a child would to a doting father. This apparently lifts the old god's spirits, as he smiles at his daughter's foolishness (there are parallels for this story in Greek mythology as well).

As for unconscious humour in Egyptian texts, there is a rather well-known example from the period of the reign of Akhenaten, during the Amarna period, by one of the Assyrian kings, in quite a fret, who complained as follows to the Pharaoh:

Why do you make my envoy to you stand in the sun for hours on end? It may be very well that the king prefers to stand in the sun, but my envoys will die if they are left standing in the sun!"

One can almost hear the angry exasperation of the Assyrian king about this matter, and no doubt it was very serious to him. But, for me, the imagery of this Assyrian king, fretting himself into a fair tizzy over the treatment of his envoys, always struck me as fairly amusing.

There's also a good book on wit and humour in ancient Egypt you might enjoy. It is

Houlihan, P. 2001. Wit & Humour in Ancient Egypt. London: Rubicon Press.

I hope this assists.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg