Seven institutions in Egypt will loan more than 200 works to the Hong Kong Palace Museum later this year for a blockbuster show focused on King Tutankhamun, the young pharaoh who ruled Ancient Egypt from around 1332-23BC.
Tutankhamun and the Secrets of Saqqara, billed as “the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of ancient Egyptian treasures in Hong Kong in recent decades”, is due to run for nine months, from late November until late August next year. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo and Luxor Museum are due to lend works, while other participating institutions are yet to be announced.
Objects featured include a statue in quartzite of Tutankhamun dating from the 18th dynasty (1550–1295 BC) on loan from the Egyptian Museum. The show will also highlight “significant new archaeological discoveries from the large tombs at Saqqara near Cairo. The exhibition illustrates the legendary life of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun while exploring statues, coffins and animal mummies found in Saqqara since 2018,” says a museum statement.
The new Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo will house numerous objects from Saqqara, according to National Geographic. Sixty per cent of the largest archaeological museum in the world, which has been repeatedly delayed since it was first announced in 2002, is now open. During an interview on a popular Egyptian talk show, the chief executive, Ahmed Ghoneim, said the museum would celebrate its official opening on 3 July.
Tutankhamun is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser; in 2019, a touring show of artefacts linked to Egypt’s boy-king, Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh, drew more than 1.3 million visitors in Paris at the La Villette space. At the Saatchi Gallery in London, also in 2019, tickets for the same show cost £37.40 at peak times. Eternal Life: Exploring Ancient Egypt, a major exhibition held at the Hong Kong Science Museum in 2017 which was co-organised by the British Museum in London, attracted 850,000 visitors.
In mainland China, the Shanghai Museum’s blockbuster Egypt exhibition, On Top of the Pyramid: The Civilization of Ancient Egypt, (until 17 August) features a section titled 'The Age of Tutankhamun' and welcomed 1.3 million visitors before the end of 2024.
The British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the 18th-dynasty monarch in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor in 1922.