Michael Jackson = Ancient Egyptian?

By Marcus Gilmer in Miscellaneous on Aug 5, 2009 4:40PM

Image courtesy The Field Museum

It all started in November 2007 with this picture on Flickr. Then it popped up here a year ago. Now, suddenly, in the wake of the pop singer's death, it's becoming a phenomenon. Does a Field Museum mummy really look like latter day Michael Jackson? Well...yes. Yes it does. The Sun-Times' Michael Sneed has more on the bust - carved sometime between 1550 BC and 1050 BC. One correction, though, in regards to perhaps the biggest conversation piece of this striking similarity: the nose. Everyone knows of Michael's shape-shifting nose as a result of multiple plastic surgeries. But what about the bust's nose? Sneed says:

"The nose of the ancient Egyptian statue, which has been in the museum's private collection since 1899, is disintegrating. At the end of his life, Jackson's nose appeared to be disintegrating."

ZING!

But Sneed only has it half-right. A spokesperson at the Field Museum told us, "according to the curator, 95% of Egyptian statues and busts were defiled by early Christians and Muslims because they were used for idolatry. They looked at these as idols and taking the nose off made them 'non-human.'" We're not sure if that applies to Jackson, too.