Exhibition
Treasures of the golden pharaoh
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Saatchi Gallery, London, From 2 November to 3 May 2020
LIFE after death was a complicated business in Ancient Egypt. The volume of treasures found in Tutankhamun’s tomb show that Egyptian royals didn’t travel lightly to the afterlife. When King Tut’s crypt was discovered nearly 100 years ago – the only tomb of a pharaoh to be found unplundered – it contained thousands of objects to help his bid for immortality.
Now, 150 of these objects are on a world tour. Sixty of them have never travelled out of Egypt before, and some are probably personal objects from his life. This stunning exhibition, which focuses on the significance of these funerary items for Tut’s journey to an everlasting afterlife, arrives in London after a sell-out stint in Paris.
Tutankhamun is a household name today, but he was only a minor pharaoh, ascending to the throne aged 9 or 10 in around 1334 BC and reigning for less than a decade until his untimely death. Interred in a tomb meant for someone of lower status, he was later erased from the records due to his heretic father, with no funerary cult to keep his memory alive.
The forgotten pharaoh burst back onto the scene more than 3000 years later in November 1922, when archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered a rock-cut staircase leading to Tut’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings after five years of searching. “At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact,” wrote Carter in a telegram to his benefactor.
Untouched since ancient times, it was a treasure trove of 5398 funerary artefacts. As well as the boy king’s mummy, interred in a sarcophagus and three inner coffins, the tomb contained a “strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects”, said Carter. These included a silver trumpet (that still makes a beautiful sound), statues of the gods and six chariots.
Traditionalists might baulk at the exhibition’s format. Rather than a dry parade of artefacts, it is an immersive experience that attempts to conjure the mystique of dark chambers and the intricate details of the Egyptian afterlife through lighting and sound.
King Tut himself isn’t here – his frail mummy remains in its original resting place, chamber KV62 in the Valley of the Kings – but his likeness is everywhere, most strikingly in an extraordinarily lifelike black and gold statue that originally guarded the burial chamber. Gold symbolised the sun to the Egyptians, and there is plenty on display, from slippers that adorned the mummy’s feet to a gilded wooden bed carved with figures to keep evil forces at bay.
But the burial hoard wasn’t all bling. The priests who interred Tutankhamun seemingly thought of every item he would need to overcome obstacles on his voyage to the next life and to thrive when he got there. On display at the exhibition are linen gloves he might have worn when riding a chariot and a collection of boomerangs for hunting birds and warding off evil spirits adopting their form, as well as some of the vessels that contained sustenance for the afterlife, including meats, breads, spices and wine. Visitors can also see some of the 413 different workforce figurines called shabti that Tut was interred with to carry out his labour in the next world.
After London, Tut’s objects head for Sydney, Australia, and six other cities before reaching their final destination at the Grand Egyptian Museum, under construction near the pyramids at Giza.
