king tut and the golden age of the pharoahs

Zahi Hawass tells BusinessWeek that the touring exhibits including the King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs exhibition have netted Egypt $100 million USD since 2005. Considering that none of the major coffins or the ultimate, iconic piece the Death Mask are included in these shows (click here to see where they're hiding) it is quite an impressive yield for brand Tut and Egypt Inc. (King Tut's contracts are worth about as much as the world's most highly paid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo).

The first visitor numbers are in for the number of people visiting the King Tut exhibition. The Art Gallery of Ontario, which is hosting King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, announced that more than 100,000 tickets have been sold to date –That works out to at least $3.2 million in sales (Canadian currency). The exhibit has only been open for one month.

Now I should caution that tickets have been available for three months (you could buy them in advance). I should also add that it doesn’t appear as if Tutankhamun will top the 750,000 visitors it attracted in 1979. That show featured King Tut’s death mask. You can read a comparison of the two shows here.

The blockbuster exhibition 'King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs' will not tour Australia because museums cannot afford it - not surprisingly if you look at the price tag. Egypt wants to prolong the world's most successful tour of artefacts from the tomb of the boy-king but offers to host the exhibition have been underwhelming, to say the least. The Director of the Australian Museum, Frank Howarth, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the show's $10 million price tag and its size were too big for Australian institutions to handle.

As I write this piece, we are only hours away from the opening of King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto Canada. I was at the media preview on Friday and wrote an in-depth article on what to expect.

For me the Toronto show was the first time in my life that I saw Tut’s treasures in person. It’s a very remarkable experience to see them with my own eyes and one that I’m never going to forget.

I thought I would take the opportunity to point out a few of Tutankhamun's treasures which, for various reasons, are not part of the show.