CAIRO – 13 June 2018: Sydney, Australia, will host in 2021 the largest exhibition of King Tutankhamun, entitled "King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh", according to ABC News.
The exhibition will tour 10 cities across the world,Sydney is the fifth of which, to show more than 150 exquisite objects.
Hence, the New South Wales Government announced on Monday that the museum will carry out a $50 million upgrade to be able to accommodate the Golden Pharaos' artifacts.
“The significant upgrades to the Australian Museum will ensure we have world-class museum exhibition spaces for visitors,” NSW Minister for the Arts Don Harwin said in a statement on Monday.
Forty percent of Tutankhamun’s objects will leave Egypt to tour the world before returning to Egypt for a permanent display in the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is currently under construction.
Around 800,000 are expected to visit the exhibition during its six-month accommodation in Sydney.
The exhibition will include 60 artifactsout of the 150 pieces that have never been seen outside Egypt, according to Australian Museum director and chief executive, Kim McKay.
McKay remarked that some of the objects in the exhibition will include a gold mesh collar, featuring a vulture with its wings spread.
However, Head of Museums Sector at the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities Elham Salah denied this piece of information, referring that the collar is not one of the main pieces of Tutankhamun’s treasures and that similar collars can be found in many kings' tombs.
The other items that would be exhibitedare exquisite rings found on King Tut’s fingers, opulent jewelry that adorned his body, and the gold sandals that were placed on his feet upon burial.
The exhibition is currently being held in Los Angeles at the California Science Center, celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.
Besides the artifacts, multimedia displays telling the story of the king will be convened, along with the scientific analysis of his 3000-year-old mummy and the cutting edge archaeological tools now being used in Egypt.
This is not the first time for Egypt to show Tutankhamun’s masterpieces abroad as the exhibition has been held in several countries since the 1960s such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Japan and France.
The Minister of Antiquities Khaled al Anany said that presenting Egyptian antiquities outside Egypt will promote tourism, which suffers from stalemate in the current period, and which will bring millions of dollars for archaeological excavations upon revival.
The Discovery
The opening of Tutankhamun's tomb via Wikimedia Commons
Sir Howard Carter, British archaeologist and Egyptologist had made it his life’s quest to find the tomb of King Tutankhamun first. When Carter had begun work in Egypt in 1891, most of the documented Pharaohs had their tombs discovered. One, however, proved to be elusive; King Tutankhamun, whose resting place had yet to be found and who Egyptologists knew very little about.
With the end of World War I, Carter made it his goal to be the first to uncover the tomb of Tutankhamun. Carter had worked in Egypt for 31 years since he was 17, using his skills as an artist to copy inscriptions from walls. He would then become appointed inspector-general of monuments in Upper Egypt. In 1907 he started to work for George Herbert, the fifth earl of Carnarvon, who would aid him in his quest to uncover the lost tomb of Tutankhamun.
Carter was certainly dedicated, spending a massive amounts of money and time in order to track down where the tomb might lie. With Lord Carnarvon as his sponsor, they began working earnestly at excavating the Valley of Kings. Alas, even after five years of work, Carter wasn’t able to report back on anything substantial.
He refused to give up however, tirelessly working to fulfill his quest, and soon enough, Carter would be rewarded beyond his imagination.
The discovery of steps beneath the sand on November 1, 1922 was a breakthrough for Carter. At long last, his tireless search for Tutankhamun would finally bear fruit. Carter announced the discovery on November 6, and it took three weeks until he could begin work on excavating into the tomb. Workers exposed all of the steps and the sealed doorway into the tomb, which at one point had been broken in by tomb robbers but resealed again, leading to hope that the contents had not been plundered.
Carter finally entered on November 25, finding evidence of resealed holes but noting that it had likely been thousands of years since anyone had entered again. If anything remained in the tomb, it could have proved to be one of the grandest archaeological discoveries in all of history.
When Carter made a hole inside the sealed door and peeked inside, he was left astounded. Gold flooded his senses, and animal statues, rich perfumes, piles of ebony, childhood toys and the Pharaoh himself adorned the room alongside countless other treasures. It was a bounty of riches the likes of which he had never been seen before; Carter couldn’t have anticipated this finding in his wildest dreams.
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