King Tut swaps pyramids for the Dome

Precious: a gold inlaid coffinette that contained King Tutankhamun's mummified liver
Tom Teodorczuk5 April 2012

It promises to be the biggest exhibition of them all.

Tutankhamun And The Golden Age Of The Pharaohs will open in a new, 60,000 sq ft exhibition centre at O2, the £500 million venue inside what used to be the Millennium Dome, in November.

It will showcase 130 Egyptian treasures, all between 3,000 and 3,500 years old and including 50 from the tomb of Tutankhamun.

There had been fears the exhibition would be canned after the Greenwich site lost out to Manchester in the race for the first supercasino.

But Anschutz Entertainment Group, the company behind the O2, confirmed today that it is pressing ahead with the display.

It is hoping to eclipse the 1.7 million people who viewed the artefacts the last time they came to London in 1972, when The Treasures Of Tutankhamun exhibition became the most popular show in the history of the British Museum.

The new exhibition will be twice the size of the previous show and will include many major objects not previously seen outside Egypt.

Some of the antiquities were discovered during a five-year research and conservation project on the site of Tutankhamun's tomb that was completed in 2005.

Highlights of the exhibition will include the royal diadem (the boy king's gold crown) and one of the gold and inlaid canopic coffinettes which include his mummified organs.

Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings remained undiscovered for more than 3,300 years until it was found by British Egyptologist Howard Carter, who was excavating on behalf of his patron Lord Carnarvon.

A spokeswoman for the exhibition said: "This will be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the remains of the Pharaoh's tomb.

"The aim is to make it even more visually stimulating than what people witnessed in 1972."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in