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A world tour exhibition

Presented by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and IMG at the Grande Halle de la Villette, in collaboration with the Louvre in an advisory role, the exhibition’s curated collection features more than 150 original artefacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb including a number of the young sovereign’s personal objects that accompanied him in both life and death: gold jewellery, sculptures and ceremonial objects.
For ancient Egyptians, death was also considered to be a new birth. However, this life after death was only possible if the body was preserved and underwent the right rituals. To ensure this post mortem rebirth and survival in the afterlife, the ancient Egyptians created a whole host of rituals, objects, images and texts that can be found inside and on the walls of the tomb. Visitors to the exhibition will follow Tutankhamun’s journey into everlasting life, discovering along the way what each funerary object was used for on this perilous journey, as well as the story of one of the key discoveries in modern archeology.
At the conclusion of this exhibition’s 10-city world tour, the items will go on permanent display at the Grand Egyptian Museum being constructed in Cairo. The money raised from this exhibition will provide financial support to the Grand Egyptian Museum and to archaeological sites in Egypt. The Grand Egyptian Museum will be situated adjacent to the Giza Plateau within 2.5 kilometres of the Giza pyramids. Once completed it will be a world-leading scientific, historical and archaeological study center that will cover approximately 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history and house more than 100,000 artefacts. This stunning location will serve as a backdrop to a display of priceless artefacts, including the final resting place of the Tutankhamun collection.

Introduction

The exhibition experience begins in a widescreen intro theater. The action starts in the Valley of the Kings, the burial site of the pharaohs for more than 500 years. The camera pans over the mountainous desert landscape, picking out active archaeological sites where groups of men pore over plans and maps and dig, hammer rocks, or sift sand. All are intent on finding the pharaohs’ hidden tombs and their buried treasure.
A narrator sets the scene and introduces Howard Carter, an English Egyptologist. It’s 1922 and Carter describes the many years he spent excavating the tombs of Egyptian monarchs, and how he learned of new finds in the Valley of the Kings that caught his attention and sparked his imagination: a faience cup inscribed with the name of an obscure pharaoh, Tutankhamun, and fragments of gold foil containing the names of the king and his queen. Carter became convinced that Tutankhamun’s tomb was somewhere in the Valley, its contents possibly intact. Rigorous in his research and obsessive in his quest, Carter’s patron was the wealthy aristocrat Lord Carnarvon. But now, after eight years of fruitless searching, Carnarvon is ready to pull the plug. Carter has one last chance to find the tomb. The voice goes silent and the action suddenly shifts.
High-speed images swirl around and overhead as the years, centuries, then millennia flash past. Finally, a timer settles on the year 1323 B.C. Aerial shots of the extravagant pharaonic palaces and temples of Luxor dissolve into an animation that shows Ra making his daily voyage across the sky. The commanding voice of the high priest rings out, narrating the story. He describes how, after nightfall, Ra travels through the underworld and then is reborn each morning where he again begins his journey across the sky.
The sun god, magnificent in his solar barge, fades to a giant image of Tutankhamun that fills the space. As reenactments of the king’s life appear, the priest recounts the few facts known about Tutankhamun: the son of the controversial Akhenaten, ascended to the throne when only 9 or 10, restored Amun as the principal god of Egypt and reestablished the other deities banned by his father, married his half-sister Ankhesenamun, then died unexpectedly at the age of 19.
The narrator explains that before Tutankhamun’s Ba, or soul, can begin the journey to eternity, his body must be prepared according to protocols set down since ancient times. Footage follows the deceased’s final voyage down the Nile from Luxor to the preparation tent in the Valley of the Kings. Priests, seen in silhouette, are carrying out the final preparations when the camera cuts to the High Priest performing the ritual Opening of the Mouth ceremony. As his words ring out, the video fades and large doors to the next passage open ethereally as the film fades out. Beyond, beckoning you forward, soft lights glimmer on the first artifact case.

60 artefacts have left Egypt for the first time

Let's focus on one: the Gilded Wooden Hawk with Solar Disk
This figure of a solar falcon was found in the southeast corner of the Antechamber behind the chariot. An image of the scarab god Khepri covers the front and back faces of the disk upon the falcon’s head. Broad bird wings spread out from the god’s insect body. Above the beetle’s head is the solar disk flanked by a pair of uraei, from whose serpent bodies hang ankhs. Each uraeus wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. Three additional ankhs hang from the sun disk. Below the beetle are three plural strokes and a neb basket. So within the solar disk we have an elaborate writing of Tutankhamun’s throne name, Nebkheperure. This falcon is the god Horus, who embodies the king and is closely associated with Re.

25 artefacts presented in 1967 are displayed

Let's focus on one: Gold Squatting Figure and Chain of King Amenhotep III
In a nest of miniature anthropoid coffins inscribed for Tutankhamun, Carter found a lock of hair bound in linen and this gold pendant. An inscription on the linen identifies the hair as belonging to Queen Tiye, Tutankhamun’s grandmother. Carter and some others after him have believed that the figure represents Tutankhamun’s grandfather, Amenhotep III. However, the indentations in the little figure’s ears indicate that they are pierced and that, consequently, this must be Tutankhamun himself. Amenhotep III never appears with pierced ears. The features of the face, costume, and scepters are extremely detailed, attesting to the skill of the artisans to work on so small a scale. The king squats, a position often assumed by child gods such as Horus, son of Isis. Instead of holding a finger to his lips, as child gods often do, the king holds his left hand in a gesture of adoration. His right hand grasps the royal crook and flail. On his head is the khepresh crown and uraeus. The bronze disks that would have been affixed to an actual leather crown are suggested here by round impressions. The coffinettes and their contents were treated as if this was the king’s own burial. Unguents were poured over the miniature coffins, adhering them together as was the case with the king’s own full-sized set. The lock of hair was without doubt a treasured keepsake from Tutankhamun’s grandmother.

Is there such a thing as the Tutankhamun ‘curse’?

As famous as Tutankhamun and his burial treasure, deaths that occurred in the years that followed the discovery of the tomb revived the idea of a curse of the mummies, which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. Lord Carnarvon’s untimely death in 1923 probably sparked off the idea and gave free reign to rumours about the curse of Tutankhamun, attributed to the poisons left by the ancient Egyptians in their tombs, and to mushrooms and toxic microorganisms, which affected all those who dared to enter the royal hypogeum. Yet, the man who discovered his tomb, Howard Carter, only died in 1939, at the age of sixty-four, and was probably spared from the young king’s vengeance.
It is also said that the two trumpets discovered in the tomb had magical properties, and, in particular, the power to summon war. Hence, on the evening they were played for the first time, in 1939, a power cut plunged Cairo’s Egyptian Museum into darkness and the recording was made by candlelight. Several months later, war broke out in Europe. The trumpets appear to have been played again before the Six Day War in 1967, before the 1990 Gulf War, and, more recently, before the Egyptian revolution of 2011. That was all it took to associate a new legend with the name of Tutankhamun.


Tutankhamun’s tomb was the most complete Egyptian tomb ever found. The story gripped the imagination of the entire world. So extraordinary were the contents that the press declared that Carter and Carnarvon had discovered Aladdin’s Cave! Tutankhamun became a pop culture icon, the inspiration for songs, plays and film, and the source of Egyptian-themed motifs in fashion, jewellery, architecture, and interior and product design.

By Sarah Sergent