As Egypt celebrates the 83rd anniversary of the discovery of the boy king's tomb, the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition has arrived to Florida on the second leg of its American tour. Nevine El-Aref looks at how the young king is acclaimed at home and abroad As 2005 drew towards a close, the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square celebrated the 83rd anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb with a gala party. This featured the opening of a landmark exhibition of 50 black and white photographs portraying the legendary discovery in 1922. The photographs, which are courtesy of the Grift Institute, Oxford, show British explorer Howard Carter at various stages of the discovery; entering the intact tomb, brushing the sand of Tut's golden sarcophagus, examining the golden mask and precious amulets decorating the mummy while a young Nubian child listens to his explanations, and walking through the Valley of the Kings with Lord Carnarvon, who funded Carter's excavations in Egypt. Portraits of Carnarvon and Carter are also on show in the exhibition, along with copies of Carter's birth and death certificates. Photographs of Tutankhamun's collection of treasures, seen piled on one side of the tomb on the day of the discovery, were also on show. A small Arabian tent decorated with swathes of white chiffon was erected in the garden, set against the museum's deep rose, neo-classical façade. It welcomes spectators who are invited to watch a 20- minute documentary film highlighting the recent CT scan carried out on the 3,300-year-old mummy of Tutankhamun. The scan was carried out in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor by an all-Egyptian team led by Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), using a portable CT scanner provided by the National Geographic Society and Siemens AG. The film shows step-by-step how the fragile body of the Pharaoh -- which, except for X-rays taken in 1978 and 1988, had lain undisturbed since it was examined by its discoverer, Carter -- was carefully carried to the scanner inside the wooden tray filled with sand in which Carter had left it in 1926. The CT scan was able, with minimum disturbance of the mummy, to distinguish different densities of soft tissue and bone. During the scan more than 1,700 high-resolution images were captured and were then used to create the three-dimensional models, both virtually and actually. Through such images, the Egyptian scientific team concluded that Tutankhamun died from natural causes at the age of 19 and that there was no sign of violence, thus excluding speculation that he had received a blow to the head. They also noted a bad fracture just above the left knee that may have occurred a day or two before his death, and which possibly became fatally infected and led to the king's death but was not the direct cause of death. During his lifetime Tutankhamun was well-nourished and showed no sign of childhood disease or malnutrition. A further revelation was made. In three independent attempts to reconstruct the Pharaoh's facial features using the latest forensic techniques, French, American and Egyptian teams each reached some surprising conclusions. The results revealed a face completely different from the familiar image on the golden mask and different again in style from his statues on display in the Egyptian Museum. A colour book entitled The legacy of Tutankhamun and Howard Carter was distributed among those attending as a valuable historical memento. The British Embassy in Egypt also took part in Egypt's week-long celebration by organising two lectures about the boy king, his tomb, his collection and his discoverer Carter delivered by Hawass and British Egyptologist T G H. James. During his lecture Hawass announced that Carter's house on the Luxor West Bank would be converted into a museum to demonstrate how the great archaeologist lived while searching indefatigably for Tutankhamun's tomb. In southern Florida, the celebration is rather different. For the coming six months the sunshine state will be the home of the roaming Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition. Booking one of the most anticipated exhibitions in recent times has been described as a major coup for hosting South Florida Museum, the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale (MOAFL). The museum is lending its first floor to the 130 treasures from the tomb of the celebrated Pharaoh and other contemporary Valley of the Kings tombs and additional ancient sites in the exhibition. According to Irvin Lippman, executive director of MOAFL, the opening of Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACAMA) provided a glimpse of what was to come for MOAFL. He anticipates that King Tut will do for Fort Lauderdale what Art Basel has done for Miami Beach, creating a lasting impact on the institution and the community. "The residual value is huge," says Lippman. He is enthusiastic about hosting the exhibition and welcoming the expected hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to see the New Kingdom treasures. "But for the next 20 years those people will recall having seen the exhibition in Fort Lauderdale." Visitors to MOAFL will have their attention drawn to a thrilling pyramid laser light sculpture on the museum's roof as they make their way to the exhibition. Organised in a similar manner to that at LACAMA, it has dimly-lit chambers to evoke an atmosphere reminiscent of Tutankhamun's tomb in Luxor. Audio tours will be provided in English and Spanish. The exhibition is dramatically laid out across a series of dark rooms and galleries relating the story of the most interesting and perplexing eras in ancient Egyptian history -- the period before and during Pharaoh Tutankhamun's reign from about 1343 to 1333 BC. Each section showcases the dazzling craftsmanship of the ancient artisans that exemplified the earlier Tutankhamun exhibition. Each gallery addresses a specific theme, such as "Daily life in ancient Egypt", "Traditional religion" and "Death, burial and the afterlife", and builds up to the final galleries where Tutankhamun's treasures reside. These include a gallery dedicated to the five items on tour that were found on the Pharaoh's body when Howard Carter entered the tomb in 1922. The room also includes the visual effect of superimposed items on a projection of Tutankhamun's body to depict where they were positioned when the coffin was opened. The final gallery features scans of Tutankhamun's mummy obtained as part of the five- year Egyptian research and conservation project, partially funded by National Geographic, which is set to CT-scan the ancient mummies of Egypt. The scans allow researchers to see through the mummy wrappings, and have enabled the researchers to compile a three-dimensional picture of Tutankhamun which is also on display. "The faces of Tutankhamun,", which includes the latest image of the boy king amidst a collage of sculpted images and gold masks, statues, gold coffinettes, furniture and everyday items such as perfume jars and ornamental boxes will be displayed in clear plastic cases and on pedestals. Tutankhamun fever has struck the whole state, and when Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs opens its doors it will be hard to avoid. At the Trina restaurant on Fort Lauderdale's beach a cocktail named a "Tutini" is being served. Starting in mid-December, the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort and Spa will offer several new spa packages: The Sphinx, Queen of the Nile and Pharaoh's Ritual. And at the Day's Inn Bahia Cabana Resort, a King Tut Crab Cake Oscar will make its menu debut. "We expected to see Palm Beach, Broward and Dade schools coming to the museum," Lippman says. "But we're getting school groups booked from as far away as Wisconsin. That gives a whole new meaning to the Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale." The reason for all the excitement -- and the onslaught of gimmick marketing -- is that the exhibition allows Fort Lauderdale to attract a group of tourists unreachable before now: luxury travellers in search of a vacation with a cultural focus. "Last year when the Queen Mary II was running cruises out of Port Everglades. and this year with King Tut, we're becoming the vacation spot of kings and queens," said Nicki Grossman of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors' Bureau. "We're calling them people who are looking for a bling experience." According to the American press, the visitor's bureau has even coined a new phrase -- "The original king of Bling" -- for its $3 million advertising campaign. For the first time, print advertising is targeting a more cultured vacation audience with spots in Smithsonian, Harper's Bazaar and The New Yorker. There's even an advertisement in the premier issue of Men's Vogue. The bureau's online contest for tickets to the show, which includes three nights in a "Tomb with a View" at the Fort Lauderdale Marina Marriott, has attracted 7,000 entries, more than double any previous contest. The museum is contemplating painting a blue line. -- a faux Nile River -- down the centre of Las Olas Boulevard that will lead visitors to the museum's door. For the first time in South Florida, See's Candies, the California chocolatier established 84 years ago, will open a special five-week holiday gift shop at Fort Lauderdale's Galleria mall. See's has created a commemorative one-pound box of assorted chocolate truffles. "We always wanted to be in that area," said Richard Van Doren of See's. "This has really given us the opportunity to say I want a location in the southern part of Florida." Alyssa Lovitt, sales manager for Timpano Italian Chop House and Samba Room on Las Olas Boulevard, said the restaurants were still working on their King Tut menu items. So far, there is a Blue Nile martini and a chocolate pyramid dessert. Fort Lauderdale-based Muvico Theaters, whose Muvico Paradise in Davie has an Egyptian theme, will offer discounts on entrance the exhibition with a movie ticket stub. Palm Beach Opera hopes to tie in its production of the set-in-Egypt Aida with the exhibition. The theme of this year's Winterfest Boat Parade, which attracts 850,000 sightseers, is "Jewel of the Nile". Lisa Scott-Founds, the executive director, told Al-Ahram Weekly that for this year's parade the organisers are encouraging the boaters to illuminate the Interacoastal Waterway to celebrate the opening of the exhibition with decorations of pharaohs, sphinxes, golden idols, jewels, pyramids and more. "Of course, holiday decorations are always a favourite," she commented, adding that his year Hawass would be the judge of the 2005 Seminole Hard Rock Winterfest Boat Parade on 17 December. "It is truly a privilege to have Hawass participate in the 34th anniversary of South Florida's most beautiful and unique holiday attraction," Scott-Founds said. Hawass told the Weekly that Egypt was set to gain the largest amount ever in the history of holding exhibitions abroad. From Los Angeles, Egypt earned the sum of $9 million and more is expected from Florida.
