I don’t know why, but the whole King Tut deal was one of the very few things that stuck with me in history class.
There is something spooky yet exciting about pharaohs and mummies, and King Tut is the 3500-year old mummy of all mummies. Unbound in the 20th Century by an English dude who died shortly after (apparently from the ‘curse‘ of having the balls to open Tut’s tomb!), his story seems to be forever looming in mummy context.
This probably explains why 225,000 tickets have been pre-sold in London for a Tutankhamun Treasures exhibition that will be held there from November 15, 2007 – August 31, 2008. The exhibition will then move to Dallas for 7-months, sometime in October 2008.
King Tut began his rule in Egypt when he was nine, and died at 19 — how and why remains unclear, but his mummified body lay untouched until 1922. Ever since, forensic scientists have tried to reconstruct his face and body, but not without debate on it’s structure and real skin color. In this exhibition for the first time ever, his ‘true’ face will be revealed!
This is fascinating, and if I was in London I would definitely go, but what I fail to understand is that with over 8.6 million tourists visiting Egypt every year, why does Egypt let this treasure tomb tour the world?