Feb 23, 2007  |  By: TROY PETENBRINK  | COMMENTS     

McGillin’s Olde Ale House, Philadelphia’s longest continuously operating tavern, has a new drink on its menu: a golden King Tut-tini. It’s made with vanilla vodka and Goldschlager and served in a golden, sugar-rimmed martini glass. 

The Tut-tini is a pretty fancy drink for a place that’s more accustomed to pouring pints than frou-frou cocktails, but it’s part of a mass celebration (and marketing effort) to honor Philadelphia’s hosting of “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” an exhibit at the city’s Franklin Institute Science Museum on display until Sept. 30.

More than 400,000 tickets have already been sold, and organizers expect the final number of visits to top one million. Since opening in June 2005 for its four-city U.S. run, the exhibition has drawn more than 2.5 million visitors, breaking records in each city it has visited, including Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale and Chicago.

Many people were too young to remember, or weren’t even born, the last time the collection of exquisite objects toured the U.S. in the 1970s. And Philadelphia will be the last stop for the exhibit before heading back across the Atlantic.

But even if you were lucky enough to see the previous exhibit, the new show is larger and contains many pieces that have never previously been seen outside of Egypt. And though many items from the priceless collection are not on display, including Tut’s death mask that was the centerpiece of the last exhibit, there are more than 130 objects from the tombs of King Tut, as well as treasures of several of his relatives and 18th dynasty contemporaries. All of the treasures in the exhibit are between 3,300 and 3,500 years old.    

Highlights include Tutankhamun’s gold diadem — the crown discovered encircling the head of the king’s mummified body that he likely wore while living — and a small, gold and precious-stone inlaid canopic coffinette that held his embalmed liver.

Another amazing piece is a painted wooden mannequin of Tut, which may have served as a clothes dummy or used in certain religious rituals. Though lacking the bling factor of some of the other items, the enigmatic statue portrays him much more as a youthful figure than a divine being.



THE EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS the glamor and humanity of Tutankhamun. As you enter, you are greeted by a stunning, near life-size stone carving of the boy king, who became Egypt’s ruler at age nine and was only 19 at the time of his unexplained death. The statue appears to be seeking your allegiance before granting you entrance to the treasures that follow.

Beyond the sentinel, you make your way through a catacomb of galleries and narrow connecting hallways, with many rooms lit only by the lights that shine on the exhibits. At various points, you feel as if you’re playing the role of Howard Carter, the English explorer who discovered Tut’s tomb in 1922.

“What I like to do when staging an exhibit is provide a guiding story — to let the artifacts speak,” said Dr. David Silverman, the curator of the current exhibit and the earlier U.S. tour. “Compared to the 1970s, the story I am able to tell this time is much broader and deeper.”

While the original exhibition focused primarily on the discovery of Tut’s tomb, the current exhibit provides an expanded glimpse into a turmoil-filled period of Egyptian history. An audio guide, scripted in part by Silverman and masterfully narrarated by Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, who played the romantic lead in movies such as “Funny Girl” and “Dr. Zhivago,” helps to provide some of the context.

Some gays and lesbians have expressed reticence about paying to see the exhibit given Egypt’s intolerance of homosexuality, which has included undercover police arrests and torturing of gays.

Silverman, who is gay, has lived part of his life in Egypt and continues to visit often, understands the concern, but he makes it clear that the money raised from the exhibit will help pay for antiquity site restoration and help finance the building of a new in museum in Giza, which will cost more than $500 million once completed.



IN CONJUNCTION WITH the Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has also staged a visually and intellectually engaging exhibition of part of its expansive collections of Egyptian artifacts.    

The special exhibition, “Amarna, ...