Regal Return: Tut's Treasures and Others to Tour U.S.

By Stan Parchin
Sunday January 30, 2005

American Schedule Finalized

Some 50 burial treasures of ancient Egyptian boy-king Tutankhamun (ca. 1343-1323 BC), augmented by another 70 masterpieces from tombs of the auspicious Eighteenth Dynasty (1555-1305 BC), will start a 27-month American tour this June. 55 of the pharaoh's funerary furnishings were last seen here 26 years ago in Treasures of Tutankhamun. That special exhibition toured seven American museums. It was viewed by an estimated eight million people. The show defined the museum expression blockbuster.

The emphasis of this show is on the art and archaeology of Egypt's imperial Eighteenth Dynasty. Many of Tutankhamun's treasures will return to the United States again, minus his iconic Gold Mask, no longer allowed to travel from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Arranged thematically and chronologically, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs includes remarkable antiquities from the tombs of Yuya and Tuyu, Tutankhamun's great-grandparents. Their burial find was the most significant in Egyptology's history until Howard Carter's discovery of their great-grandson's tomb in November 1922.

National Geographic is a major sponsor of the American version of the show. It helped finance January 2005's CT scan of Tutankamun's mummy. Hopefully, scholars will learn and publish conclusive results about the pharaoh's heritage and demise, definitively resolving one of modern archaeology's major mysteries.

The present show was first exhibited in Basel, Switzerland. It's presently in Bonn, Germany.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs will be at:

Los Angeles County Museum of Art:

June 16 to November 15, 2005;
Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL:

starting December 2005;
The Field Museum, Chicago, IL:

starting May 2006; and
The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA:

February-September 2007.

Admission ticket prices will average $30.00 per adult person.

National Geographic will publish a scholarly volume for the show in May 2005.

Check: www.kingtut.org for more information.

For further reading:

Edwards, I.E.S. Treasures of Tutankhamun (exh. cat.).
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976.

Freed, Rita, et al. Pharaohs of the Sun: Akhenaten, Nefertiti,
Tutankhamen (exh. cat.) Boston, MA: Museum of Fine Arts, 1999.

James, T.G.H. Tutankhamun.
New York: MetroBooks, Inc., 2000.

Reeves, Nicholas. The Complete Tutankhamun: The King,
the Tomb, the Royal Treasury. New York: Thames & Hudson,
1995.

Image credit:
Painted Wooden Mannequin of Tutanhhamun
(ca. 1343-1323 BC)
Egyptian Museum, Cairo