Antiquities Museum & King Tut

We have an after-hours private tour of the Antiquities Museum. This is the museum whose crowning jewel until this evening is the King Tut exhibit. After tonight, the King Tut exhibit will be housed in the Great Egyptian Museum starting 2 November. Our scheduled visit to the GEM was cancelled since it is closed from 15 October (2 days after our arrival) to 2 November to allow preparation for the relocation of the Tut exhibit and final preparations for the GEM Grand Opening.

In the course of being walked through the museum by our Egyptologist, museum officials notify us that they are delaying the Tut move for our visit but cannot delay much longer. We rush to get a look. Everything has been removed from the exhibit already except for the face mask and the large sarcophagus. The funerary face mask is made of solid gold and weighs 22.5 lbs or 10.23 kg.

 

King Tut was buried in three coffins. The innermost, the one containing his mummy was made of solid gold. It is the last artifact remaining at the exhibit. The innermost coffin, known as the solid gold coffin or the innermost shrine, is made entirely of gold and weighs approximately 110.4 kilograms (243 pounds). Inside it lay the king’s mummy whose head was covered with the iconic gold mask of the boy king. This is the third and innermost of three mummiform coffins of Tutankhamun.

Quite literally seconds after the last of our party exits the room, the iron-barred doors and closed and locked and workmen begin preparing the final two pieces for transport. As we exit the museum, TV crews are arriving to document the move of these and other top artifacts.