Despite the unprecedented discovery, nearly fifty years ago, of what appears to be documentation of the gay life and times of history’s first same-sex couple, attempts are still being made to keep the nature of their apparent relationship under wraps.
NIANKHKNUM and KHNUMHOTEP, whose names translate respectively as “joined to life” and “joined to the blessed state of the dead” were manicurists to the court of King Niuserre during Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty (about 2,400 B.C.) In 1964, archaeologists discovered a warren of chambers fabulously decorated with reliefs of two men hunting, banqueting, and most surprisingly, in a series of intimate poses reserved for hetero-normative couples in the canon of Egyptian art.
Despite this evidence, homophobic historians have classified the two men as being merely “friends” or brothers. Even as recently as 2009, a professor of Egyptology at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts constructed a hypothesis about the relationship of NIANKHKNUM and KHNUMHOTEP to suggesting that the two men were “…conjoined twins, and it was this physical peculiarity that prompted the many depictions of them hand-holding or embracing in their tomb-chapel.”
All I have to say is HELLO! These two old queens were manicurists! What more evidence do you need?
