Both Jose and I had President’s Day off work, and I was determined to take advantage by doing something fun. I got tickets to the Tutankhamen exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts and was congratulating myself on being clever enough to get them for a weekday, when it would be less crowded. But I didn’t know that all the kids were out of school yesterday too. And I didn’t know that Jose would come down with a nasty head cold on Sunday. Still, we headed up to the exhibit and had a fun time. It was crowded, but not unbearably so, and fortunately Jose felt ok while we were there. (Then felt much worse as soon as we headed home.)
Fun with pharaoh coffin cutouts
The Egyptian government has stayed pretty protective of the items found in King Tut’s tomb. Most of the artifacts have never left Egypt, and the mummy itself has never even left the tomb. This exhibit had a replica of the mummy though, produced from a CAT scan of the actual mummy — and if you hadn’t told me, I would have never known it was a replica! They also had a lot of small items — statues, jewelry, canisters, and other items. The best two items, in my opinion, were a huge stone bust of Tut’s father, Amenhotep IV, and an incredibly intricate gold-and-jeweled canopic coffinette that held his Tut’s stomach after he died.
I knew that the discovery of King Tut’s tomb back in the 1920s was a big deal because it was found almost entirely intact, but it was cool to learn why it ended up that way in the first place. Amenhotep IV (also known as Akhenaten) had shifted Egypt’s religion towards a focus on a single god, but the people weren’t really interested. After his death, they shifted back to their traditional religion. Because Tut was the son of the pharaoh who tried to change the religion, and because his reign was so short and he died so young, he was essentially forgotten. His tomb (which was smaller than normal since he died young) was robbed a couple times in the months immediately following his burial, but after that it lay undisturbed for 3000 years. The exhibit noted that it’s interesting that Tut was forgotten in his time, but is now the most famous pharaoh of all. So in a sense, he’s the one who really DID live on long after his death.
I have actually been in Tut’s tomb in Egypt. One of the very coolest experiences of my life!
Oh wow, that is awesome! I’d love to go to Egypt some day.
Pro tip: School field trips to museums are almost always in the morning, so if you’re going on a week day, go for the afternoon tickets to avoid the crowd of kids.
Also, museums are only open on Mondays if it’s a holiday, which means even more people than usual will go that day because they’re all off work/school.
Kev & I were mesmerized by that canapic coffinette. The detail was AMAZING!! Great exhibit.