Queries & Comments

BARboy

The July/August 1998 letters section begins with a suggestion that BAR be more like Playboy and ends with a letter objecting to an article titled “Teat for Tut.” Who says archaeology has to be dull?

I’ll pass on the latter missive, but must comment on the former. Your correspondent commends Playboy because it single-mindedly presents a fantasy world where all women are beautiful and available. He’d like to see a journal that similarly airbrushes scholarship to titillate his intellectual side. Such a journal might, like Playboy, be a delightful escape, but it would do little to reflect our complex world of fragmentary evidence, open-minded conjecture and hard-core insistence on proof.

I certainly don’t agree with everything I read in BAR, but I do enjoy reading it. You cover a wide spectrum of beliefs and lay out the supporting data. Some of the resulting arguments are spirited, as well they should be.

Now, if you only had included a centerfold of Tut’s wet nurse …