Tutankhamun is back in the United States 27 years after his first historic visit. Nevine El-Aref reports on the blockbuster touring exhibition a week after its official inauguration in Los Angeles. Last Thursday the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) was transformed into an ancient Egyptian necropolis as Egyptian and American officials unveiled the long-heralded exhibition "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs". The extravagant opening took its attendees back in time to the 18th Dynasty, with strains of early Egyptian music filling the air and waiters wearing ancient Egyptian costumes greeting visitors as they made their way over a gold carpet to meet the famous boy king. For the next six months, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will display more than a hundred magnificent objects from the collection that has captivated American attention since its first tour there in the late 1970s. The exhibition "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs", dramatically laid out in 11 galleries, relates the story of one of the most interesting and perplexing eras in ancient Egyptian history -- the period before and during the Pharaoh Tutankhamun's reign 3,300 years ago. Each section showcases the dazzling craftsmanship of ancient artisans that characterised the earlier Tutankhamun exhibition. Each gallery focuses on 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. All the treasures on show are between 3,300 and 3,500 years old. The final gallery features scans of Tutankhamun's mummy that were obtained as 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 scans were captured through the use of a portable CT scanner donated by Siemens Medical Solutions which allowed researchers to see through the mummy's wrappings and compile the first three-dimensional picture of Tutankhamun, which is also on display. Several American newspapers and news agencies point to striking differences between the show unveiled in Los Angeles and the 1970s exhibition. One of the items absent now is the spectacular solid gold coffin mask by which the tragic royal figure is most widely identified. The greatest difference, however, is that this show includes 80 artefacts from tombs of earlier royal tombs from the 18th Dynasty - the tomb of Tutankhamun's grandparents Yuya and Tuya, and the mysterious KV55 burial tomb. It also boasts innovative design- and technology-driven features that allow visitors to experience their Tutmania to the fullest. Among these are an exact replica of Tutankhamun's burial chamber, immense black and white photographs of the various stages of the tomb's discovery, and interactive displays highlighting the fascinating times in which the young pharaoh lived and how his short reign changed history. As an added bonus, while viewing the galleries visitors may use an audio- guide recorded by the Egyptian renowned film star Omar Sherif. The most important ancient artefacts include a 40-centimetre high gold coffin, the gold diadem from Tutankhamun's mummy, a gold fan featuring an ostrich hunt, a small gold canopic coffin ornamented with faience, and a silver trumpet used for religious ceremonies. A gilded wooden sarcophagus of Tuya, a gilded mask of Yuya, a painted wooden throne of the Princess Satumun, and a long-faced statue of the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten are other highlights. LA museum's president and director Andrea Rich is thrilled that the Tutankhamun's treasures have returned to the US. "I am gratified to give the people of Southern California the opportunity to see them here at LACMA," he told reporters. "The exhibition features the finest treasures of ancient Egypt, and offers our visitors the experience of a world of artefacts they might otherwise never see." Los Angeles is the third leg in a three-year tour that began in April 2004 in Basel, Switzerland and Bonn, Germany. The US circuit -- which will include the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale (opening December 2005); The Field Museum, Chicago (May 2006) and The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia (February 2007) -- is organised by National Geographic, US sports and entertainment promoters AEG Live Exhibitions, Arts Exhibitions International, and Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). It is sponsored by the Northern Trust Corporation. According to the LACMA web page some 250,000 tickets have been already been sold since sales began in March, and it is expected that thousands more people will be drawn to the exhibition from far afield. "People of all ages have an enduring fascination for Tutankhamun," SCA secretary general Zahi Hawass told the press conference. "Now a new generation will discover the wonders of the pharaohs and ancient Egypt." Hawass estimates that the exhibition will earn $30 million for Egypt, which will go towards building new museums -- including the Grand Museum overlooking Giza pyramids -- as well as helping to restore and explore more of Egypt's hidden treasure. Egypt's minister of Tourism Ahmed El-Maghrabi expects that the exhibition would raise the number of Americans visiting Egypt as it did 27 years ago. " After this splendid inauguration, we are expecting to receive 200,000 American this year and by the end of Tutankhamun's tour the number could reach over half a million," Maghrabi said. Terry Garcia, National Geographic's executive vice-president for mission programmes, says the treasures currently on show are among the world's greatest cultural legacies. "They are amazing artefacts from ancient Egyptian sites, including more than 100 objects that have never been seen before in the U.S.," he says. "This is an extraordinary opportunity that may not come again." The Tutankhamun exhibition which toured the world in the 1970s gave birth to the trend for blockbuster exhibitions. Its tour of seven US cities from 1976 to 1979 attracted more than eight million visitors. This time organisers expect an even greater phenomenon that will break all previous attendance records. The current exhibition comes on the heels of a week-long celebration in Washington DC entitled "Egypt's Other Pasts", which aims at introducing Americans to different facets of Egypt's culture. A controversial figure in life for reinstalling the old polytheistic religion in Egypt, Tutankhamun even today is blowing up a storm in LA. As visitors viewed the exhibits a group of African-American activists demonstrated at the LACMA gates chanting slogans: to the effect that the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition was certain of one thing: he didn't look white. The Los Angeles Daily News said that following an appearance before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, activists from the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the Committee for the Elimination of Media Offensive to African People and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilisations planned to protest against the LACMA exhibition on the grounds that the three busts configured from Tutankhamun's mummy and a CT scan depicted the ruler as being white, and were therefore, inaccurate and racist. ``Those images are so critical for our children," said Legrand Clegg, Compton city attorney and a spokesman for the protesters. "We want them to focus not just on rappers, athletes and entertainers, but on figures who are high achievers. What could be more elevating than a little boy who ruled the world?" Hawass said three separate teams of researchers reviewing the data from the mummified corpse had concluded that Tutankhamun was a Caucasoid North African. Garcia told the Los Angeles Daily News that there was a large variable in skin tone. "Egyptians and North Africans, we know today, had a range of skin tones from light to dark. In this case we selected a medium skin tone, and we say, quite up front: 'This is mid-range'. We'll never know for sure what his exact skin tone was or the colour of his eyes with 100 per cent certainty. "Maybe in the future people will come to a different conclusion. From what we know, there is no doubt this individual was of North African descent."
