Do not be mistaken, do not be disappointed. Tutankhamun’s great golden
funerary mask – the knockout star of the BritishMuseum exhibition 35 years
ago – will not be on display. The thought that visitors to the new show
might be misled leaves Mark Lach, its designer, aghast. “
I would be heartbroken if people bought tickets believing that the mask was
going to be here,” he says. “We are making every effort to ensure that
everyone knows the true picture.”
Although the mask brought the crowds flocking in 1972, the new spectacular
does more than enough to compensate for the absence of an object too
fragile, too heavy, too precious in all sorts of ways. It will never again
leave the country where it was made more than three millennia ago.
“We have approached the display in an entirely different way from 1972,” says
Lach. “The objects are still spectacularly beautiful but now we aim to see
them as more than just pieces of art – to set them in context, to make sure
they tell the story of Tutankhamun, who he was, how he lived.”
Of more than 130 objects selected to go on show, 50 come from the tomb itself.
The gleam of gold is everywhere: the displays, spread over a dozen airy
rooms, are designed to explain as well as to catch the eye with truly
spectacular beauty.
Before the objects arrived I was shown how the exhibition develops. Visitors
are introduced to the show by a brief video and the velvet tones of the
Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, followed by a series of rooms setting the scene
through objects belonging to Tutankhamun’s family. Among them is the massive
gilded coffin of Tjuya, probably his great-grandmother. More important to
the Boy King’s development, however, was his relationship with his father,
Akhenaten, the man who changed the country’s religion from worship of
anything that seemed to have superhuman powers to devotion to a single god,
Aten, the sun, giver of all life.
His wife was the staggeringly beautiful Nefertiti, and statue heads of both
will be sure-fire winners: the couple are also shown worshipping the sun’s
disc in a stunning carved limestone relief.
After the death of the truly weird Akhenaten, Tutankhamun returned the country
to its traditional pantheon, brought the capital back to Luxor from the city
his father invented in the desert and changed his name from Tutankhaten. All
this is explained in a series of displays filled with wonderful examples of
the religion and daily life of the people of the time, with a text by the
Egyptologist Dr David Silverman, at one time Dr Zahi Hawass’s supervisor for
his PhD studies at Pennsylvania.
The scene set, it is time to embark on the second half of the exhibition,
dealing with Tutankhamun himself. He is introduced as a delightful wooden
mannequin of a young man with a golden crown, from the waist up and without
arms.
Among other objects from the tomb are two golden statues of the King
represented wearing the crowns of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, a gold-sided
chair on which the boy King may have sat, ornately embellished jewel chests,
a golden shrine decorated with scenes of Tutankhamun and his queen on which
a statue once stood, a mirror case shaped as an ankh – the Egyptian word for
life, an ornate golden fan; objects indicating his humanity as well as his
power and prestige.
The “burial chamber” has no coffin, of course, but in its place is a dais on
which original photographs from Howard Carter’s excavation are displayed in
sequence, giving an eerily realistic idea of the original scene.
Around the walls is a series of half a dozen objects that are truly stunning:
artefacts found within the linen swaths when the mummy was unwrapped. They
include the golden diadem, inlaid with semiprecious stones, found on the
pharaoh’s head, its protective cobra and vulture gods removed for lack of
space and placed near the mummy’s thighs.
At his waist was a fabulous 32cm dagger of highly polished gold, set in a
sheet gold sheath. On his chest were pectorals, one spelling out his name in
a winged scarab of gold and semiprecious stones, another in openwork gold
showing the Pharaoh worshipping the gods Ptah and Sekhmet; around his neck
was a collar of sheet gold in the shape of the god Horus, the winged falcon.
From the “tomb” the visitor continues to a reconstruction of how Tutankhamun
may have looked. Painstaking reconstruction in the round from the bones of
the skull as indicated by CT scan reveal a young man of charm and strength.
People will have their own opinion about the reconstruction. But the
portrait bust proves a fitting finale to an exhibition that will be
spectacular from start to finish.
Ticket and travel information
Admission is 10.30am-7pm daily. Entrance times are staggered but there is no
time limit on the duration of the stay.
Prices
Single tickets: adult weekday £15, weekend £20; children 5-15 weekday £7.50,
weekend £10. Underfives free. Concessions weekday £12.50, weekend £16;
family (2 adults and 2 children) weekday £45, weekend £50; Group tickets
(minimum of 10 paying people; underfives free): One free adult with every
ten children; adult group weekday £13.50; weekend £20; concs weekday £10.75,
weekend £16; school and youth weekday £6.75, weekend £10.
Audio tour
Audio tours narrated by Omar Sharif (available in English, French and Spanish)
are available for £2.50 per person booked in adavance, £4 on the door
Tickets online
www.visitlondon.com/tut
www.king.org. Tutankhamun Visitor Oyster cards can be purchased with
tickets at www.visitlondon.com/tut
By phone
Individual tickets 0844 8440003. Group tickets 0870 594494
In person
Visit the O2 box office, London SE10 12noon-7pm
Travel
By boat: river transfer available through Thames Clipper, www.thamesclipper.com
By tube: North Greenwich Tube stop on the Jubilee Line
By car: The M25 (London orbital), the A2/A20 (from the South East) and the M11
(from the North) all offer good access and The O2 is clearly signposted.
I have just read that Mark Lach said he would be heartbroken if he thought that people would be disappointed to find the golden death mask was not in the exhibition. My son bought tickets for us last weekend as a Mother's Day present and I had absolutely no idea that it was not going to be there. Although I thought the exhibition was atmospheric and very well designed, I have to say that I was bitterly disappointed. I was expecting to see the mask exhibited on its own in the final room, although in retrospect I now realise that if it was going to be anywhere it would have been in 'The Tomb'. I just could not believe that it wasn't there as I would have thought that such an iconic artefact was central to the exhibition and would be its crowning glory. Precisely how are people to know the mask is not there? Most of the web sites advertising the exhibition even feature it on their pages!
Kathie Dubben, Carmarthen ,