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King Tut Mummy Scans Featured In
'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs'

After a 26 year absence, the treasures of King Tut are traveling again across country, but the final stop in Philadelphia in 2007 may not be America's last chance to see them.

Check out details on the exhibit along along with related King Tut links, pictures & resources, below ....

King Tut Comes to Texas

Late breaking news in October 2007 revealed that the wild popularity of the Tut exhibit has given it new life America, where plans are underway to extend the tour in 2008 to several more locations targeting Texas and Colorado.

The Texas venue will be the Dallas Museum of Art, opening on October 3, 2008 and extending to May 17, 2009.

Groundbreaking CT scans of the celebrated pharaoh King Tut are on display in the National Geographic exhibition "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," which began a four-city, 27-month tour of the United States beginning on June 16, 2005, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Tickets for the three other tour cities, Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale (opened December 2005); The Field Museum, Chicago (opened May 2006) and The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (opened February 2007) went on sale as the show traveled the country.

Modern CT scanning gives the most complete picture ever of King Tut's mummy. Learn more here...

The scans of Tutankhamun that are featured in the exhibition were captured through the use of a portable CT scanner, which allowed researchers to see through the mummy's wrappings and for the first time, to compile a three-dimensional picture of Tutankhamun.

These never-before-seen images are on display in the final room of the exhibit, along with other dramatic images and video footage. The scanning of Tut's mummy is part of a landmark, five-year Egyptian research and conservation project, partially funded by National Geographic, that will CT-scan the ancient mummies of Egypt.

The extensive collection of more than 130 treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun, other Valley of the Kings tombs and additional ancient Egyptian sites draw visitors back in time with inventive design to explore and experience the world and times of King Tut and his contemporaries.

Tutankhamun was one of the last kings of Egypt's 18th Dynasty and ruled during a crucial, turmoil-filled period of Egyptian history. The boy king died under mysterious circumstances in 1323 B.C., in the ninth year of his reign. He was probably only about 18 or 19 when he died. Some Egyptologists believe he was murdered by his successor, Ay.

The exhibition places fifty of King Tut's burial objects found when Howard Carter discovered the tomb in 1922 in their historical, religious and sociopolitical context to show the changes occurring in Egypt in the late 18th Dynasty (1555 B.C. to 1305 B.C.).

Key items include Tutankhamun's royal diadem -- the gold crown discovered encircling the head of the king's mummified body that he likely wore while living -- and one of the gold and precious stone inlaid canopic coffinettes that contained his mummified internal organs.

The exhibition also includes 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. All of the treasures in the exhibit are between 3,300 and 3,500 years old.

The layout, flow and scholarly conception of the show was 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 1970s tour.

Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and director of the Giza and Saqqara Pyramids, has written the exhibition companion book, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," and a children's book, "Tutankhamun: The Mystery of the Boy King," both published by National Geographic in June 2005.

Treasures from King Tut's tomb were last displayed in the United States during a seven-city tour from 1976 to 1979, which included LACMA and set traveling exhibition attendance records with some eight million visitors.

For more information on the exhibition, visit www.nationalgeographic.com/tut or www.KingTut.org.

Related History, Pictures & Facts

also see in Travel -> Egypt Tourist Attractions