It stands only 39cm tall but, in concept and craftsmanship, the mini-coffin of beaten gold that safeguarded Tutankhamun’s liver ranks with the most spectacular of objects from the tomb.

During mummification several internal organs – liver, lungs, stomach and intestines: the heart was left in place – were removed and in effect mummified separately, each under the care of a different god. The statuette, named for the god Imseti, guardian of the liver, and decorated in a breath-taking feather pattern of coloured glass and carnelian, is given special treatment in the exhibition too.

“It stands alone in a room,” says Mark Lach, the designer, “and because its detail is so important and so fascinating – and yet the object so comparatively small – we have made a video to show every detail, from back and front, in wonderful close-up.”

Dr Abla Omar, head conservator at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, was understandably cautious about the idea of placing the coffinette on a stand to be filmed from all angles.

“But we approached it very carefully and the result is spectacular,” Lach says.

In the tomb, the mini-coffin and its three companions were placed upright face to face in a shrine carved from semitranslucent calcite, then enclosed in a 2m-tall gilded shrine protected by golden statuettes of four goddesses, arms outstretched. The mini-sarcophagi were each covered with a calcite bust of the pharaoh, one of which is also on show. These acted as stoppers for the mini-coffins’ compartment in the shrine.

Intriguingly, the coffinette provides a clue to the turbulent times. The name inscribed on its interior was changed from Ankhkheprure – perhaps Akhenaten’s co-regent – to Tutankhamun. Which may suggest why Howard Carter believed that the calcite stoppers for the canopic shrine did not look like the boy king: they had been made for somebody else.

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