Issue date: 12/4/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Alexandra Milin Visitors to the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology get a taste of ancient Egypt from the time of King Tut. The exhibit is a precursor to the much-anticipated February Tutankhamun exhibit at the Franklin Institute. [Click to enlarge]

A 3,000-year-old king's treasures are coming to the East Coast after 30 years.

This February, the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia will display artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamun, who ascended the throne, ruled Egypt and died - all before his 21st birthday.

The exhibit, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs," will stop in Philadelphia as part of a two-year world tour.

To complement the work, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is hosting "Amarna, Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun." The exhibit, which opened last month, will feature over 100 items, including religious statues and golden jewelry from the city where King Tut grew up.

Curator David Silverman, who manages the current world tour of King Tut's artifacts, also helped design Penn's exhibit. Jennifer Wegner, a co-curator of the Amarna exhibit, says this makes the two events excellent complements to each other.

"Our exhibit tries to provide an idea of where King Tut grew up and what religious and political structure he faced," she said.

The Amarna exhibit is a part of the Penn Museum's so-called Year of Egypt, during which the Museum will showcase some of its 40,000 Egyptian artifacts in a series of events leading up to the King Tut exhibition.

"We have one of the best Egyptian collections in the world," Museum spokeswoman Pam Kosty said. "You can get a fabulous perspective on several thousand years of civilization."

Amarna is an anomaly in Egyptian history, Wegner said.

King Tut's predecessor "placed more importance on the worship of the sun over other Egyptian gods," she said.

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