Later this month, Egyptologists will gather at Swansea University’s Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt conference at the campus’ Egypt Centre, to, among other things, uncover the roots of even our current efforts to defeat the doldrums of death with beauty, sex, and just a little scandal:

Carolyn Graves Brown, the centre’s director, said, “The Egyptians were in some ways a lot more liberated than us but at the same time not too dissimilar from some aspects of today’s society.”  “That theory is well illustrated by the images from the tomb of the so-called Two Brothers, Niankh- Khnum and Khnumhotep, who were ‘manicurists to the Pharaoh’ and buried together. The drawings depict two men embracing and it has long been argued that they were homosexual.”  The question of cosmetic surgery will also be debated.  Queen Nunjmet’s mummy had its cheeks stuffed with bandages, resin and a cheesy substance and other bodies have had noses altered. Today, plastic surgeons would use materials such as silicon to enhance features but as the Egyptians knew how to enhance the features of the dead, did they do it on the living?

It’s commonly accepted that the Egyptians never really got a full shot at advancing civilization before Alexander came in and crashed the party.  If not for those fussy Greeks, who knows?  “Queer Eye for the Boy-King Guy” and “nip/tuck: Thebes” were likely already in development.

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