Okay turns out I do have a lot of thoughts about Pharaoh Tuck's design. I know everyone refers to this design as King Tuck which is easier and creates the allusion to King Tut(ankhamun) but Pharaohs are cooler, sorry not sorry.
Anywayyyyyyy... let's talk about it.
Just so we all have the same amount of knowledge here, the Ancient Egypt everyone typically refers to is Egypt pre-death of Cleopatra and the fall of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Roughly 30 BC, I want to say 2,000 years ago but my calendar math has always been terrible. Most of the popularized pharaohs especially Tutankhamun were recorded to rule in 1332-1323 BC a good 1,200 years before Cleopatra. Again my math may be off because BC dates are confusing.
I mostly want to talk about the crown because in terms of fashion ancient Egyptians mostly wore a combination of Shenti, linen kilts, and sandals, especially men. There was a lot of variation in colors because Egyptians used a lot of minerals to dye their material, but white is the color most commonly associated with their clothes since it reflected the desert sun. There have been depictions in art that show the largest evolution in the men's fashion were the addition of sheer blouses with pleated sleeves during the New Kingdom Era where it was thought Egypt to be at its most prosperous. All that to say the clothes are perfectly serviceable and they have a nice gold trim around the edges which I think makes them ornate enough. If we really wanted to add some historical accuracy points a lot of Egyptian royalty were recorded owning leopard skins but had a lot of stigmas associated with animal furs, especially wool.
Crowns and jewelry were what really separated the commoners from the pharaohs. The crown Tucker is wearing isn't actually a crown, it's a fiber headdress called a Nemes that covered the whole head and top of the shoulders. Tutankhamun's Death Mask was depicted wearing a Nemes,
Rameses III, and IV, Amenemhat III, Akhenaten, were also depicted wearing Nemes in their paintings and statues.
However, I believe the reason why the Nemes became visual shorthand for Pharaoh is because of the 1956 Film version of the Ten Commandments, as well as the fact that in the early 20s-40s Tutankhamun was all the rage, as he was one of the most preserved mummies ever found at that period of time and well people were nuts. They believed ground-up mummies were aphrodisiacs of all things-- but that's neither here nor there.
There were actually several different crowns worn by pharaohs! though most of them didn't survive. But lucky for us, they were depicted in hieroglyphs or drawings. like the Atef(left) worn by Osiris ruler of the underworld.
Atef bears a resemblance to Hedjet (right), Atef is largely just a Hedjet with two curled ostrich feathers. The Hedjet belongs to the ruler of northern Egypt and symbolizes Horus, and goddess Nekhbet. Whom later united with another goddess Wadjet (she's actually the cobra you see adorning most of the headdresses and death masks) and formed one unified entity symbolizing the unity between upper and lower Egypt. which brings us to the double crown aka Pschent (as it was called by the greeks)
The translation of pschent (left) is "two ladies" which tells us of the two matriarchs of Egypt unifying. The bottom half of this crown was also another type of crown called the Deshret (right). It was worn by the ruler of the southern half of Egypt Which represented the goddess Wadjet.
All this context to talk about my favorite crown the Khepresh
There are no surviving Khepresh much like the other crowns. It was a much more ceremonial headdress, and largely worn for battle. I don't know why I like this one so much, I guess because it's so eyecatching, it's really flashy much like the Osiris crown. Tutankhamun was depicted wearing one in a few statues. As well As Nefertiti, Akhenaten, Thutmose IV, and Akhenaten
There are a few other ceremonial crowns and head wrappings so I'll lightning round them real quick.
The vulture crown (left) was worn by wives and female pharaohs, The crown of justification (right) was supposed to be worn to signify the wearers' victory over the underworld and Osiris and their enemies. Its made up of golden flowers as a tribute to Ra the sun god. There's the Radiant Crown, which is recorded to look like ram horns.
And that brings us to the Osiris beard. Pharaohs adopted a fake beard to mirror the appearance of the eternal ruler Osiris. It's actually been posited that Egyptians preferred to be clean-shaven but made synthetic beards to achieve the Osiris look. Female Pharaohs and nobles even adopted this trend to show their respect to Osiris. So I think that should stay.
With all this in mind, How would I go about fixing this design? Because personally, I'm kind of tired of Nemes being the default Egypt visual signifier. I'd spring for the Khepresh, I'd maybe lean further into the mummy wrapped in linen look, add more jewelry bc C'mon-- its Tucker, you can't tell me that he wouldn't be the flashiest/drippiest pharaoh he could be.
and that I think really what should have been done, this design should have been pushed a lot further to be over the top, drop-dead, gaudy.
