CHRIS NAUNTON TUTANKHAMUN: THE IMMERSIVE EXHIBITION
Could we start with how you first fell in love with Egypt? I think it was really at university that I decided this was something I wanted to do. I went to the University of Birmingham to study Ancient History and Archaeology and, to be honest, I’d become a little disengaged from studying towards the end of school. University just seemed like the sensible thing to do. But once I got there, having only just scraped in, I realised I’d found my niche. I found something I was genuinely interested in, engaged by, and actually quite good at, which came as a surprise.
Out of everything I studied, Egypt was the thing that grabbed me most. There’s something about it that’s incredibly alluring. For someone from the suburbs of southwest London, it felt exotic. There’s this romantic idea of going out into the desert, putting a spade in the ground and uncovering incredible things.
Ancient Egyptian art and material culture also played a huge part. It’s so rich, colourful and visually striking. The symmetry, clean lines and bold colours really appealed to me aesthetically.
So at university I started to think this was something I might genuinely want to pursue seriously. By that point it looked unlikely I was going to play for Arsenal, and none of the bands I was in ever got signed, so Egyptology seemed like a decent alternative career path.
Honestly, I didn’t really expect it to work out, but about three months after finishing my Master’s degree I got my first proper job in the field.
Was that your first experience of going out to Egypt? At Birmingham it was compulsory to go on what they called a “study tour” at the end of your second year. The university would give you a few hundred pounds and you had to spend four weeks somewhere relevant to your studies. At that point I was a complete homebody and definitely didn’t have the travel bug. But because
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I’d become so interested in ancient Egypt, I found myself choosing Egypt.
Suddenly, aged 20, I was heading there for four weeks with a group of fellow students.
Egypt was everything I expected it to be, noisy, dirty, chaotic, overwhelming and I found parts of it really difficult. But at the same time it was absolutely amazing and I loved it. It completely supercharged my interest in the subject. When I returned to the UK I went straight to Waterstones, bought books on Egypt and immersed myself in them. That was the moment I knew I was hooked, because I found myself reading about ancient Egypt purely for pleasure rather than for university.
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ENTERTAINMENT CHRIS NAUNTON
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