Spending the night with King Tut
The golden diadem, inlaid with colored glass and semiprecious stones, was still around the head of Tutankhamun when Howard Carter opened the royal coffin more than 3,200 years after the young king died. The two protective deities, represented by the vulture and the cobra, originally projecting from the front had been removed and placed near the thighs of the mummy to allow the golden face mask to be put into place. Dynasty 18, reign of Tutankhamun 1332-1322 BCE (Photo by Andreas F. Voegelin, Antikenmuseum Basel and Sammlung Ludwig)
At 9:30 p.m. Saturday night, my family – husband Patrick, 14-year-old son Chris, 2 1/2-year-old son Gabe and I – hit the road for Dallas and a late-night date with King Tut.
The Dallas Museum of Art stayed open 34 straight hours Saturday morning through this evening for the final weekend of the grand exhibition “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.” From midnight to 8 a.m. Sunday, the museum slashed tickets to half price, so we bought a pack for 1:30 a.m. entry to the museum.
We zipped to Dallas, with a quick stop at the Jack in the Box in Ardmore for a late supper, unsure of what kind of crowd to expect. We found the exit to Pearl Street backed up, along with the way to the nearest parking lot. When we approached the museum, we saw the line for will call extended for about a block, while the line to buy tickets stretched down the street for several blocks in the opposite direction.
We were a bit worried about making our entry time, since it took 20 minutes just to retrieve our tickets, but the museum staff moved the huge crowd along fairly efficiently and assured us we would get in to the exhibit, which closed at 7 p.m. today.
While in the will call line, Gabe and I passed the time admiring the top of Jonathan Borofsky’s towering sculpture “Walking to the Sky,” which stands across the street in the Nasher Sculpture Center’s garden. The sculpture features seven life-size figures walking up a 100-foot stainless steel pole to the sky. From the line, we could see the four or five figures nearest the top, and Gabe was fascinated with the monumental work of art.
Once we got through two other queues, we found many incredible artworks to admire inside the King Tut exhibit. We entered at about 2 a.m. and it took us about an hour to wind our way through the various galleries. The gallery was quite crowded, causing us to become impatient – although Gabe was the only one to get vocal about it, sometimes calling out “Go!” to whoever was carrying him and any dawdlers – but the vast array of Egyptian antiquities were definitely worth the trip.
It would be virtually impossible to list all the highlights, but they included the calcite bust of King Tut that was used as a canopic stopper, the grand gilded coffin of Tjuya (believed to be an ancestor of Tutankhamun), a tiny board game complete with pieces, a small child-sized ebony and ivory chair with footrest that belonged to King Tut and was found in his tomb, a sculpted head of a princess (thought to be another of Tut’s relatives) featuring an unusual elongated skull, and a statue of the falcon-headed god Horus the Elder.
The golden canopic coffinette that was the exhibit’s featured image was just as gloriously beautiful and detailed as advertised. The tiny coffin held Tut’s liver and was a small version of the actual coffin, which doesn’t leave Egypt. The exhibit did a good job of working around the lack of the coffin and mummy, which remain in the Valley of the Kings.
Gabe was fascinated with a digital representation showing the many layers of the sarcophagus and coffin, and several fine artifacts found on the mummy were on display, including a gold falcon collar, gold dagger and sheath, and the finally crafted golden diadem, inlaid with colored glass and semiprecious stones, that was still on Tut’s head when British archeologist Howard Carter first opened the royal coffin back in 1922.
After I saw the King Tut exhibit on a travel and entertainment junket back in March, I knew I wanted my family to see it. Despite the late hour, they enjoyed seeing the artwork, though there was only too much to see in one trip.
But we’re glad we made that trip, even if we didn’t get back to Oklahoma City until after daybreak.
-BAM
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that is a very interesting peice.