The King Tut Exhibit - Essay Example

The King Tut Exhibit By s of Insert Contact Details Here The King Tut Exhibit The name King Tut has instant recognition in today's world. However, before the discovery of his tomb in 1922, people were unfamiliar with this pharaoh whose name had been discarded from many of the lists of the rulers that the ancient Egyptians had assembled. When Howard Carter found the tomb in 1922 and began clearing it, he was able to show people all around the world the wealth of material the tomb contained and just how rich an ancient Egyptian royal burial could be, even if it was still a relatively small one. Howard Carter had worked in Egypt for 31 years before he found King Tut's tomb. Carter had begun his career in Egypt at age 17, using his artistic talents to copy wall scenes and inscriptions. Only eight years later in 1899, Carter was appointed the Inspector-General of Monuments in Upper Egypt. In 1905, Carter resigned from this job and in 1907 he went to work for Lord Carnarvon. After several relatively successful seasons working together, World War I brought a near halt to their work in Egypt. Yet, by the fall of 1917, Carter and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, began excavating intensely in the Valley of the Kings. By November 1, 1922, Carter began his final season working in the Valley of the Kings by having his workers expose the workmen's huts at the base of the tomb of Rameses VI. After exposing and documenting the huts, Carter and his workmen began to excavate the ground beneath them. By the fourth day of work, they had found something - a step that had been cut into the rock. It was the stairway to the tomb of Tutankhamen. If there was anything left inside, it would be a discovery of a lifetime for Carter. If the tomb was relatively intact, it would be something the world had never seen. The plastered door was photographed and the seals documented. Then the door came down, revealing the Antechamber. The wall opposite the entrance wall was piled nearly to the ceiling with boxes, chairs, couches, and much more - most of them gold. On the right wall stood two life-size statues of the king, facing each other as if to protect the sealed entrance that was between them. This sealed door also showed signs of being broken into and resealed, but this time the robbers had entered in the bottom middle of the door. Before the entrance between the two statues in the Antechamber could be opened, the items in the Antechamber needed to be removed or risk damage to them from flying debris, dust, and movement. Documentation and preservation of each item was a monumental task. Carter realized that this project was larger than he could handle alone, thus he asked for, and received, help from a large number of specialists. To begin the clearing process, each item was photographed twice, both with an assigned number and without. Then, a sketch and description of each item was made on correspondingly number record cards. Next, the item was noted on a ground plan of the tomb (only for the Antechamber). Carter and his team had to be extremely careful when attempting to remove any of the objects. After the completion of the discovery, artifacts were in their thousands, many of which were golden and had inlays of precious stones. Scholars examined the objects, read the inscriptions, and tried to learn more about his life. The information that was taken seemed to focus more on the art, religion, and funerary beliefs than on the king's reign. The first question about the death of Tutankhamen that needs to be answered is that of the nature of his death. The two examinations of Tutankhamen's mummy found evidence that may answer this question. The first examination, conducted in 1925 when the mummy was unwrapped, found a dark colored lesion on the left cheek. It is slightly depressed from the rest of the skin, and looks somewhat like a scab (Carter, 228). They also found that the king was between 18 and 19 years of age when he died. His history is not completely known, and aspects of his life still remain a mystery. The treasures from the tomb of King Tut discovered in 1922 number more than 5,000. They took over ten years to catalogue and remove and currently they are housed in Cairo, Egypt. It is rare for any of the treasures to be allowed to tour cities around the world. The last time any of the King Tutankhamen treasures toured the United States was back in the 1970s. However, more than 130 treasures from the tomb of the famous King Tut and other Valley of the Kings tombs and additional ancient sites will be on display across the U.S. The Los Angeles King Tut Exhibit will be the only showing in the Western half of the U.S. The exhibit includes 50 major objects excavated from King Tut's tomb, including his royal diadem, the gold crown discovered encircling the head of the king's mummified body that he likely wore while living. The viscera will also be on display. It is one of the gold and precious stone inlaid Canopic coffins that contained his mummified internal organs. More than 70 objects from other royal graves of the 18th Dynasty (1555 B.C.-1305 B.C.) will also be showcased, including the intact tomb of Yuya and Tuyu, the great-grandparents of Tutankhamen. Yuya and Tuyu's tomb was the most celebrated historical find in the Valley of the Kings until Howard Carter discovered King Tutankhamen's undisturbed burial chamber in 1922. All of the treasures in the exhibit are between 3,300 and 3,500 years old. The show doesn't include King Tutankhamen's famous gold funerary mask, as it is no longer allowed to leave Egypt. The show does include many artifacts that have never been seen outside of Egypt before. The exhibit is made possible with the cooperation of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and the partnership of the National Geographic, AEG LIVE Exhibitions and Arts and Exhibitions International. The LACMA hosted the original King Tutankhamen tour back in the late 1970's when some of the treasures from King Tut's tomb were last displayed in the United States. Over eight million visitors were able to view the artifacts during the seven city tour and attendance records were broken. The layout, flow and scholarly conception of the exhibit is being organized by curator David Silverman, the Eckley B. Coxe Jr. professor of Egyptology and curator-in-charge, Egyptian Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum, who also helped curate the 1970's tour. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities wrote the exhibition companion book, "Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," and a children's book, "Tutankhamen: The Mystery of the Boy King," both were published by National Geographic in June 2005. AEG is one of the leading sports and entertainment presenters in the world, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Anschutz Corporation, which has never participated in an art exhibit in the past, but is now betting some $40 million that the company can run this blockbuster. That $40 million will go to the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, and will help pay for antiquity site restoration in Egypt, as well as help finance the building of the new Grand Museum in Cairo. However, this type of "for profit" exhibit is also creating waves among museum curators. Several museums, including New York's famed Metropolitan Museum of Art refused the exhibition. Nevertheless, ticket sales, promoted through radio, print, billboard, television, direct mail, retail tie-ins and electronic marketing, suggest another wave of Tut-mania, despite the world's most famous art museum snubbing the world's most famous mummy. The Tut Exhibit actually began on June 16th, 2005 and runs through November 15th, 2005 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, one of the same venues of its last visit to the US. It is currently resting in Fort Lauderdale until April. That first tour of King Tut's artifacts, which was only half the size of this the new one, is widely considered to be the first museum mega-event. It generated eight million visitors nationwide. Since then, such museum road shows have become commonplace and an opportunity for the various venues to generate new members and revenue. Michael McDowell, senior director of cultural tourism for Los Angeles, said that the LA museum expects about one million people to attend the show, topping the Van Gogh exhibit in 1998-99 that brought 821,000 visitors during a 17-week run. Tickets are currently on sale. Afterwards, the exhibit moved on to three other cities where it will be on display at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale (began in December 2005), the Field Museum in Chicago (beginning in May, 2006) and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (beginning in February 2007). The exhibit will include about fifty objects belonging to King Tut that were discovered when Carter unearthed Tutankhamen's Valley of the Kings tomb. In addition, there will be scans of Tutankhamen's mummy captured through the use of a portable CT scanner and donated by Siemens Medical Solutions. These scans have allowed researchers to see through the mummy's wrappings for the first time and have never been on display in the past. Other documentary media, including videos, will also be on show. The exhibition also will include more than 70 objects from tombs of other 18th Dynasty royals as well as several non-royal individuals. These stone, faience and wooden pieces from burials before Tut's reign will give visitors a sense of what the lost burials of other royalty and commoners may have been like. They include objects from the tomb of Amenhotep II, the tomb of Tuthmosis IV and the rich, intact tomb of Yuya and Tuyu. All of the treasures in the exhibit are between 3,300 and 3,500 years old. Interestingly, the excitement of this exhibit seems to be spawning a number of others. For example, various science centers such as the McWane Center in Birmingham, Alabama will be featuring a Tut exhibit featuring 120 high quality replicas of the original treasures. Egypt owns the antiquities and wants the $40 million to let Tut travel. That's a far cry from the almost nothing it got 26 years ago when Tut-Mania ruled U.S. museums. Egypt's chief archeologist says there's no free lunch anymore. It needs to turn the king's gold to hard cash to restore other crumbling monuments. REFERENCES Aldred, Cyril, Tutankhamun's Egypt, (New York: Scribner's, 1972). Baines, John and J. Malek, Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt, (New York: Facts on File, 2000, rev. ed.). Carter, Howard, The Tomb of Tutankhamen, (New York: Dutton, 1972). Frayling, Christopher. The Face of Tutankhamen. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992. Grimal, Nicholas, A History of Ancient Egypt, (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992). Reeves, Nicholas. The Complete Tutankhamen: The King, the Tomb, the Royal Treasure. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1990. Silverman, David P. (ed.), Ancient Egypt, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Read More