Memories… from King Tut

by Melih Onvural Posted on September 20, 2009

Today I went to the King Tut exhibit at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Just walking through the ten rooms that they set up really took me to another place and time. Clearly, the exhibit itself takes you back over 3000 years, and gives you that glimpse into a world that’s nothing like the one we live in today.

It left me with so many questions. What was it like to be poor in a world where the pharaohs, and I’m assuming the rich, had so much wealth? Was the middle class, if there was one, just enabling the wealthy? How does an economy react to as much wealth as was in Tut’s tomb being effectively destroyed when the pharaoh dies? Have we really advanced as much as we often claim in technology, art, culture?

(As an aside, having just written those questions down, it makes me realize that there are a lot of things that probably don’t change at all…)

On a personal level however, it took me back to elementary school. I was fascinated with Egyptology in third grade. I would actually skip recess to have a chance to go the library, and try to find one more book to read about that world which fascinated me so much. I don’t think I was as passionate about anything in my life to this day as I was about becoming an archaeologist when I was in elementary school.

Remembering that really has me questioning a lot of things all of a sudden. I know that I’m good at what I do today, and that makes me very happy.

However, should I have gone after that dream? Would I have been good at it? I’d still be in school, and I definitely would not have gone to NC State. I would not have met James or Matt who are my future co-founders in waiting. I’m not sure where I would have ended up, but I do know that it would have been doing something that I loved.

I ended up asking myself, and my brother the Philosophy major, do we need to fail many more times than we succeed to say that we’ve even tried.

I don’t know what the answer is today, but I’m going to work through it a bit in my head, and see if I can come back and answer the question. In the meantime, please feel free to share.

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  • Waqaar

    Melih, you're too hard on yourself. If you pursued EVERYTHING that you were passionate about, you'd be dead. You'd have never had time to sleep, eat, make friends, spend time with your family, etc. You are the poster-child for the International Take Life By The Horns foundation. Enjoy that consistent fact and keep doing what you do.

  • saket

    I know this feeling…it's how I felt about manned spaceflight. I saw a poster on Apollo 13 in the hallway outside my 4th grade classroom and became enthralled. Over the next 4 years, I read every single book on manned spaceflight in the local library (only a dozen at the time); built models of the lunar lander, command module, and a 3ft tall Saturn V moon rocket; begged the parents to visit the Johnston Space Center in houston, Hunstville Space Center in alabama, and Kennedy Space Center in florida; had them take a 2 hour drive to san marcos to hear my hero Jim Lovell (commander of apollo 13) speak; attend Space Academy (ie space camp for middle schoolers); and had my mom sew a NASA patch and apollo 13 mission patch onto a blue jacket of mine (which got compliments from the kennedy space center people!!).

    in this case, it became the reason why i wanted to go into engineering. i thought when i grew up i was going to be working on the electronics for the mars lander.

    then we moved out of texas to a new school and new home. high school started, met new friends, started getting more into this newfangled thing called 'the information super highway', along with computer games, digital media, etc. but to this day, the only decoration i keep on my keychain is a dogtag bearing the mission patch of the Apollo missions. While displaying a never-before-seen determination, confidence, and national vision we reached beyond our cradle of civilization and realized a dream our ancestors have had for thousands of years. And that is surely something to be inspired by.

  • http://bartkno.ws/ Space Alien

    Melih, as the poster-child of the International Take Life By The Horns Foundation (c'mon, I need a lot to keep the cycles busy on all levels of consciousness), I too was deep in egyptology from 1st grade on. Everything about the glyphs fascinated me. What drove people from ancient times to carve (for days) in stone, knowing that stone was among the most eternally pervasive media for passing a message along to subsequent generations. What had they discovered?

    Step your gaze away from the planet and envision a blue pearl of life with these little 5 pointed microbes expanding upon its face near a lush delta. What did their scholars leave for today's ancestors (many people think all ancient Egyptians *all* vanished, alas, to their own misunderstanding) to understand?

    I've done a lot of 'homework' on my time. By listening to elders from all over that appeared with answers when I asked the right questions.

    Think deeply about what we are in the greater order of Nature. Are we as evolved as we say? Are there any other animals destroying their natural habitats at this time? How many years does it take a Human offspring to be 'Prepared' for life-long survival in its Natural Habitat? How many genetic iterations has it took? What is the statistical order of years needed for the life-long survival of *other* animals on Earth? …

    What about on a macro-organism level? How many years does it take for an intelligent *civilization* to become 'Prepared' for life-long survival in a planetary habitat? How many iterations are needed?

    Now, how many years does it take for an intelligent consciousness to become 'Prepared' for eternal survival in a Universal habitat? How many universal iterations are needed?

    And moreover, who's the parent at every stage? What mature intelligent adult do you know that has matured without the aid of a wiser, more intelligent progenitor?

    Read Michio Kaku, Zecharia Sitchin, and if you are interested in interesting statistics, I have an idea….

    Love and Eternal Light,

    You know who

  • http://bartkno.ws/ Space Alien

    Melih, as the poster-child of the International Take Life By The Horns Foundation (c'mon, I need a lot to keep the cycles busy on all levels of consciousness), I too was deep in egyptology from 1st grade on. Everything about the glyphs fascinated me. What drove people from ancient times to carve (for days) in stone, knowing that stone was among the most eternally pervasive media for passing a message along to subsequent generations. What had they discovered?

    Step your gaze away from the planet and envision a blue pearl of life with these little 5 pointed microbes expanding upon its face near a lush delta. What did their scholars leave for today's ancestors (many people think all ancient Egyptians *all* vanished, alas, to their own misunderstanding) to understand?

    I've done a lot of 'homework' on my time. By listening to elders from all over that appeared with answers when I asked the right questions.

    Think deeply about what we are in the greater order of Nature. Are we as evolved as we say? Are there any other animals destroying their natural habitats at this time? How many years does it take a Human offspring to be 'Prepared' for life-long survival in its Natural Habitat? How many genetic iterations has it took? What is the statistical order of years needed for the life-long survival of *other* animals on Earth? …

    What about on a macro-organism level? How many years does it take for an intelligent *civilization* to become 'Prepared' for life-long survival in a planetary habitat? How many iterations are needed?

    Now, how many years does it take for an intelligent consciousness to become 'Prepared' for eternal survival in a Universal habitat? How many universal iterations are needed?

    And moreover, who's the parent at every stage? What mature intelligent adult do you know that has matured without the aid of a wiser, more intelligent progenitor?

    Read Michio Kaku, Zecharia Sitchin, and if you are interested in interesting statistics, I have an idea….

    Love and Eternal Light,

    You know who