King Tut’s last stand: Egyptologist warns Australian Museum show will be boy-king’s last Sydney visit
Sydney will be one of just ten international stops in a final lap of honour by artefacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb before they return to Cairo, never again to be seen outside of Egypt.
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SYDNEY will be one of just 10 international stops in a final lap of honour by artefacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb before they return to Cairo, never again to be seen outside of Egypt.
Australian Museum director Kim McKay this week announced a $50 million State Government grant to expand the museum’s touring exhibition halls ahead of “the largest and most impressive Tutankhamun exhibition to ever leave Egypt”.
The blockbuster, arriving in Sydney in 2021, is currently in Los Angeles. It contains 150 objects from King Tut’s tomb, including 60 that are outside Egypt for the first time. But the show’s real significance relates to a recent law passed by the Egyptian government, making this the final international loan of objects from the Tutankhamun collection.
“(The exhibition) is a one-off. Absolutely,” says leading Australian Egyptologist Professor Naguib Kanawati.
An object on loan to the US a number of years ago had been broken, prompting Egyptian antiquities authorities to act to protect their heritage, Professor Kanawati says.
In Cairo, about 2km from the Giza Necropolis with its pyramids and sphinx, the Grand Egyptian Museum is being built. This is where the 5000-item King Tut collection will be housed, never to leave.
Prof Kanawati says the Grand Egyptian Museum will be the largest single-culture museum in the world. It includes huge laboratories for the further examination of antiquities — including those relating to Tutankhamun, who died circa 1324 BC at the age of 19.
More than 150 artefacts will make up the exhibition coming to Sydney.