The Hatshepsut show was much better than the general run of such things, and from my point of view, here are the highpoints. I think for once the level of confidence one can have in the identification of the mummy is genuinely high; this isn’t a repeat of the Nefertiti debacle, and the work with the scanners and the new DNA equipment was extremely intriguing; I hope there is a lot more to look forward to, especially since the putative TI mummy is now ruled out as TI. As I recall, there were doubts about this mummy from the beginning since it appeared too delicate and too young. Perhaps we can also hope now for a definitive answer to whether the AIII mummy is AIII. There appear to be so many anomalies there, and if DNA can be extracted it would at least show where this mummy is in or out of the royal line.

I also thought that there were some great shots of Dier-el-Bahri, the red chapel and Karnak, particularly the work around the obelisk. The idea that Hat built the enclosing wall around the (then) two of them is certainly interesting and the pair statue was beautiful. In fact, most of the actual program dealing with identifying the mummy and looking at the archaeological record was excellent.

I hate to seem ungrateful, but, on the down side, the number of commercials was really unpardonable. At one point we got five minutes of programming for three minutes of the same ads again and again, including ads for a repeat of the program we were in the middle of watching. And what is up with the people who develop the “recreations”? Most of fabrics looked like polyester and, once again, the alleged wigs were a fright (particularly the horror Senenmut was wearing), and the false beards were a joke; they looked liked pudgy bratwurst covered with cheap “gold” decorative trim of the sort one sees at bad hobby shops. Apparently it’s also impossible to find a blue crown that fits, since TIII was wandering around in what looked like an inverted leather fishbowl with about an inch of free space between his head and the crown. Was this supposed to be symbolic of his youth because he hasn’t grown into it? In any event, it was visually pretty silly. I don’t think these programs should bother with recreations unless they are going to make them as accurate as possible. In this case, people do not seem to have done their homework.

For all my carping, a decent show nonetheless.

Lee