Ancient Mystery
Lance
December 20, 2005
A Mystery, Locked in Timeless Embrace
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
When Egyptologists entered the tomb for the first time more than four
decades ago, they expected to be surprised. Explorers of newly exposed
tombs always expect that, and this time they were not disappointed -
they were confounded.
It was back in 1964, outside Cairo, near the famous Step Pyramid in the
necropolis of Saqqara and a short drive from the Sphinx and the
breathtaking pyramids at Giza. The newfound tomb yielded no royal
mummies or dazzling jewels. But the explorers stopped in their tracks
when the light of their kerosene lamp shined on the wall art in the
most sacred chamber.
There, carved in stone, were the images of two men embracing. Their
names were inscribed above: Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep. Though not of
the nobility, they were highly esteemed in the palace as the chief
manicurists of the king, sometime from 2380 to 2320 B.C., in the time
known as the fifth dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Grooming the king was an
honored occupation.
Archaeologists were taken aback. It was extremely rare in ancient Egypt
for an elite tomb to be shared by two men of apparently equal standing.
The usual practice was for such mortuary temples to be the resting
place of one prominent man, his wife and children.
And it was most unusual for a couple of the same sex to be depicted
locked in an embrace. In other scenes, they are also shown holding
hands and nose-kissing, the favored form of kissing in ancient Egypt.
What were scholars to make of their intimate relationship?
Over the years, the tomb's wall art has been subjected to learned
analysis, inspiring considerable speculation. One interpretation is
that the two men are brothers, probably identical twins, and this may
be the earliest known depiction of twins. Another is that the men had a
homosexual relationship, a more recent view that has gained support
among gay advocates.
Now, an Egyptologist at New York University has stepped into the debate
with a third interpretation. He has marshaled circumstantial evidence
that the two menmay have been conjoined twins, popularly known as
Siamese twins. The expert, David O'Connor, a professor of ancient
Egyptian art at the N.Y.U. Institute of Fine Arts, said: "My suggestion
is that Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were indeed twins, but of a very
special sort. They were conjoined twins, and it was this physical
peculiarity that prompted the many depictions of them hand-holding or
embracing in their tomb-chapel."
Dr. O'Connor elaborated on his hypothesis in a recent lecture and in an
interview in New York. He is describing and defending the idea before
scholarly peers at a conference, "Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt,"
this week at the University of Wales in Swansea.
Opposition to his proposal promises to be spirited. Most Egyptologists
accept the normal-twins interpretation advanced most prominently by
John Baines, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford in England.
"It's a very persuasive case Baines makes," Dr. O'Connor acknowledged.
And he noted that the gay-couple hypothesis had become the popular idea
in the last decade. A leading proponent is Greg Reeder, an independent
scholar in San Francisco and a contributing editor of KMT, a magazine
of Egyptian art and history. The most Google references to the tomb,
archaeologists say, concern the homosexual idea.
The gay argument leans on the analogy with depictions of married
heterosexual couples in Egyptian art, which was first suggested by
Nadine Cherpion, a French archaeologist.
Because the embraces of heterosexual couples in the tomb art convey an
implicit erotic and sexual relationship, and perhaps the belief of its
continuation in the afterlife, Mr. Reeder and his allies contend that
similar scenes involving the two men have the same significance, that
they presumably are gay partners.
Calling attention to the most intimate scene of the two embracing men,
Mr. Reeder said: "They are so close together here that not only are
they face to face and nose to nose, but so close that the knots on
their belts are touching, linking their lower torsos. If this scene
were composed of a male-female couple instead of the same-sex couple we
have here, there would be little question concerning what it is we are
seeing."
In an interview last week, Mr. Reeder said Dr. O'Connor's new
interpretation was fascinating, but added, "It's the most extreme and
unnecessary theory."
Dr. Baines, in an e-mail message from Oxford, said that he "would stick
with my own interpretation, because it seems to me to require the
smallest amount of 'exceptionalism' and to fit reasonably well with
other patterns."
As for the sexual implications of the embracing poses, Dr. Baines has
suggested that they could signify the "socially and emotionally linked
roles" of two men who probably were twins.
Or they could symbolize "protection or close identification and
reciprocity" between the two.
Ancient Egyptian art, experts say, is not meant always to be taken
literally.
James Allen, an Egyptologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art who is
not involved in the research, called the twins hypothesis probable and
the conjoined-twins idea "an interesting wrinkle." The least likely, he
said, was the homosexual-relationship proposal.
Dr. Baines said, "The gay-couple idea is essentially derived from
imposing modern preoccupations on ancient materials and not attending
to the cultural context."
If Dr. O'Connor is correct, the tomb holds a rare example of documented
conjoined twins that early in history, he said, and thus an insight
into ancient Egyptian attitudes toward disabilities. He cited other
records, and art of the dwarf Seneb, who in a somewhat later court was
"overseer of dwarfs in charge of dressing" the king and a tutor of the
royal sons, both positions of elite status. Egyptians appear to have
viewed such people as auspicious figures, not freaks.
"The creator gods had made everything, dwarfs, two-headed calves and
conjoined twins," Dr. O'Connor said. "A king felt more elevated for
having these singular creatures to serve him as manicurists."
Like most elite tombs, this one was built of stone masonry and had
several chambers, the most sacred the chapel or cult room. Here,
survivors of the deceased brought offerings and paid homage. Beneath
the room was the burial chamber. The remains of the two men were not
found.
Egyptian tombs typically represent the lives of the departed in art and
script. Images of the two men and hieroglyphic inscriptions about them
and their families are everywhere, in corridors and in the chapel. The
two men had wives who are named and represented in the art. Yet there
are no scenes of them embracing their wives.
Their apparently close relationship and equal standing are illustrated
not only in images of them together, either holding hands or embracing.
In other instances, Dr. O'Connor said, one man appears alone on a wall
face, and the other on the opposing wall. Their stature and pose are
identical, and they are performing similar acts. While one fishes in
the marshes, for example, the other hunts birds in the same setting.
These scenes and the ones of intimate embraces led to the speculation,
initially by Mounir Basta, the Egyptian archaeologist who first
explored the tomb, that Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were brothers,
probably twins. Dr. Baines developed the idea in a seminal study in the
1980's, and others took up the gay-couple idea.
When Dr. O'Connor looked into the matter, he was struck by a comparison
of the images of the two men with pictures of Chang and Eng, the famous
conjoined twins born in 1811 in Siam. They were seen close together,
arm in arm. They and a number of documented conjoined twins also had
wives and children and engaged in strenuous activities, much like the
hunting and fishing of the two Egyptians.
Their names, Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep suggest another clue, Dr.
O'Connor said. Both names refer to the god Khnum, the deity who
fashions the form of a child in the womb. Though not an uncommon part
of Egyptian names, in this case it might be a play on words to signify
their paired lives.
David Silverman, an Egyptologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and
his student Joshua Robinson pointed out to Dr. O'Connor that the name
Khnum was also similar to the ancient Egyptian word khenem, which means
"to unite" or "be united."
One problem, however, is that none of the tomb art shows a physical
link between the two men, as in some pictures of Chang and Eng.
Egyptian mortuary art, Dr. O'Connor said, "operates in terms of
idealized types, not actual figures."
"It's not photographic art," he added.
Dr. Allen of the Metropolitan Museum agreed, saying, "Egyptian art was
symbolic, and it is doubtful the Egyptians would have tried to
represent realistically the join between these twins."
Whether the two men were normal twins, conjoined twins or a gay couple,
the speculation highlights a problem and an opportunity for scholars.
"We don't have a lot of information about how twins were viewed in
ancient Egypt or how gay life was perceived," Dr. Allen said.
Few accounts refer to twins of any kind in the civilization, and an
honored role for conjoined twins, if that is what they were, would be
even stronger evidence of Egyptian attitudes toward people with
physical disabilities.
"Such attributes were often seen as fabulous rather than monstrous, and
positive rather than negative," Dr. O'Connor said. "They attested the
creator god's ability, if he wished, to bring wondrous changes upon the
norms he himself had established."
Besides, Dr. O'Connor pointed out, "The fact that they could have
worked simultaneously on the grooming of the king's two hands might
have been seen as especially appropriate and desirable."
Homosexuality was only occasionally referred to in Egyptian documents,
sometimes in myths of certain gods, implying that it was not considered
a normal relationship. The prevailing attitude, scholars say, was not
antigay, though probably negative, and certainly not as accepting of
homosexual activity it was in classical Greece.
If the tomb of the two men was indeed a public profession of their
emotional and sexual attachment, scholars say, it could inspire a
reassessment of the place of homosexuals in Egyptian culture.
Defending his interpretation, Mr. Reeder said the similarity of the
embracing scenes with those of husbands and wives should not be
dismissed. He further noted, in his lecture in Wales, new evidence that
he said suggested that one of the men died well before the other.
Khnumhotep was described in one place as being honored by a great god,
possibly meaning he had by then entered the afterlife, while in a
corresponding scene Niankhkhnum had only official titles of his career
in life.
If, then, Niankhkhnum was the one who finished decorating the tomb, Mr.
Reeder said, it was unlikely that they were conjoined twins. "They
would have had to be surgically separated," he said in an interview.
"The Egyptians had surgical knowledge. But separating such twins would
be expecting too much."
The fact that the two men had families is not seen as contradicting the
gay hypothesis, Egyptologists said. Like others of the time, the two
men would presumably have sired children to carry on after them and
maintain the cult dedicated to their well-being through eternity.
Mr. Reeder said his hypothesis "resonates in the gay community because
it shows two historical men being intimate with each other, and this
was something that could be shown in an ancient culture."
Dr. O'Connor acknowledged the interpretation's appeal. "Gays and
lesbians still experience a great deal of prejudice and discrimination,
and these two ancient Egyptians are yet further proof that
homosexuality goes far back in history," he said.
"The semipublic nature of their tomb chapel," he added, "suggests their
gay relationship was accepted as normative by the elite of a
particularly famous and illustrious civilization."
Finally, Dr. O'Connor conceded that the conjoined-twins hypothesis,
like the other two, is not "fully supported by conclusive evidence."