Tutankhamun at O2

Tutankhamun show opens in London

The last exhibition in 1972 attracted 1.7m visitors.

An exhibition of 3,000-year-old artefacts excavated from the tomb of Egyptian boy King Tutankhamun has opened in London.

More than 130 items are on display at the Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of The Pharaohs show.

Organisers said 325,000 tickets have already been snapped up for what is the first such display of the treasures to be held in the UK for 35 years.

The exhibition at the O2 in Greenwich runs until 30 August 2008.

Among the treasures are the royal crown that was found on the mummified head of Tutankhamun and one of the gold and precious stone caskets that contained his embalmed internal organs.

The last time such an exhibition was displayed in London, in 1972, it attracted more than 1.7 million visitors, and set a new record for travelling shows.

An event in aid of the Prince's Trust helped launch the exhibition at the O2 on Wednesday night.
On Tuesday, the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall made a tour of the artefacts, which the prince described as "fascinating".

One gallery in the exhibition is dedicated to the life of British archaeologist Howard Carter, who unearthed the treasures in 1922.

Earlier this month, Tutankhamun's mummy was put on public display for the first time inside his tomb complex in Luxor's Valley of the Kings.

Review: Tutankhamun's treasures are glorious
By Christopher Howse

The absence of the golden mask of Tutankhamun from this show at the Dome is a blessing in disguise, even though it was the main draw of the blockbuster exhibition at the British Museum in 1972.

There is a miniature version, 16 inches high - the coffinette used on the publicity posters - which depicts the boy king in gold and obsidian, rock-crystal and blue glass. It housed his mummified entrails.

But the lack of large-scale treasures focuses attention on 50 beautifully made objects from Tutankhamun's tomb, with 80 more from other pharaohs.

Take the child's chair of ebony and ivory. Perhaps Tutankhamun sat in it about 1340BC.
The back is slightly rounded, the armrests bowed and the slatted seat doubly curved. All is smooth and exact, held firm by bronze-gilt rivets. Panels each side show an ibex feeding from a bough.

This we can understand. It is not alien, as the bird-headed gods or sacred dung beetle are.

Like the silver trumpet, the ivory games box, the gilt hand-mirror case and a dozen other items it is a perfectly preserved part of Egyptian life 3,000 years ago.

Each is a work of art. Nothing made today demonstrates any advance on these.

Mystical links with another world do feature in the exhibition too.

A pair of gilded wood statuettes show Tutankhamun as king of Upper and of Lower Egypt.
In the days of the heretic Akhenaten, probably Tutankhamun's father (who worshipped one god alone), men were sculpted with swelling breasts and pot bellies.

The statuettes of Tutankhamun soften these conventions, and they stand serene, one foot forward, a kingly flail in one hand and a long crook in the other.

One wears the bottle-shaped crown of Upper Egypt, tinted reddish by the gilders; the other a flat crown with a cocked tail, symbolic of Lower Egypt, the twin kingdom of the life-bearing Nile. At the brow of each is poised a uraeus or cobra ready to strike.

The figures' eyes and eyebrows are of inlaid glass, bringing them alive. But as exhibits, visible from every side in clear plastic boxes under strong light, they have lost the sacral aura they bore in 1926 when Howard Carter found them in one of the last parts of Tutankhamun's tomb opened.

Then they wore tasselled linen shawls. They seemed to stride from the next world to meet the archeologists.

I bumped into Lord Carnarvon in the souvenir shop and he said the presentation of the objects was more striking and informative than in the Cairo museum. Certainly an hour or two at the Dome, now the O2, should leave a strong impression.

A little homework beforehand would pay off, even though there's a helpful audio tour.

Having seen pictures of all the exhibits, I wondered if it would be worth a £20 visit. It is and more.