Royalty Reconsidered: The King'S Beer And The Commoner'S Shirt

Just as animated movies teach our kids to imagine themselves as princesses and their entourages, for more than a century, museum celebrations of ancient royalty, as in the first displays of the treasures of King Tut, have encouraged us to imagine the past from the point of view of those in power. [. . .] The rise of elites and hierarchy are depicted as progress, a good and necessary step forward, a more sophisticated society than the egalitarian world which came before. “First Kings of Europe” is a bold inversion of this, a history of the origins of inequality spanning from the Neolithic period through the Iron Age that shows its kings rising through wealth and violence, keeping the point of view firmly centered on the experience of the many while chronicling the means and brutality of the rising few.[After walking the reader through the show, the review concludes thusly:] Back at the exit, the gift shop staff have found their biggest sellers are the Beer for Kings cans and the Beer for Commoners T-shirts. An audience that wants to enjoy the king’s beer but wear the commoner’s shirt is a good synthesis of today’s wealthy democracies, which encourage us to feel that we can enjoy luxuries while still identifying with the masses, not the exploiters. This attitude is not without problems, especially as wealthy nations continue to fund their luxuries at the cost of harm to many regions, including the Balkan Peninsula itself, but the dream of putting the riches and fruits in the hands of the people is certainly the right one, especially if paired with the sense of universal—not national—human solidarity that “First Kings of Europe” conjures so powerfully. Certainly, we are in a different and better museum exhibition than the many shows where the only T-shirt celebrates a king.
Congratulations to Curator Bill Parkinson and Research Associate Attila Gyucha (University of Georgia and former FMNH postdoc), who curated the exhibition.
August 23. 2024