“His magnificent panoply of death,” as Howard Carter, the man credited with finding his tomb, once said. There are more than 5,000 artifacts to conserve from Tutankhamun alone. The experts working within them need intense concentration, a good eye and a steady hand. The labs themselves are enveloped in an almost monastic silence. It’s a seemingly endless corridor leading to no fewer than 10 different laboratories, all devoted to the art of conservation. The Conservation Center for the Grand Egyptian Museum is the largest of its kind in the Middle East. The intention is to exhibit all of them together – for the very first time.Ĭonservators need a good eye and steady hand. In tandem with the building, an extraordinary program is underway to conserve every single one of Tutankhamun’s treasures. The museum is manifestly a matter of huge prestige for Egypt. That Great Pyramid less than a mile away took roughly, it’s thought, 20 years to build, when Pharoah Khnum Khufu wanted to create a burial place for himself back in the 26th century BCE using more than two million granite blocks – each weighing over two and a half tons.įrom architectural competition to planned opening in 2021, the Grand Egyptian Museum has also taken almost 20 years.

And then there are the real pyramids – visible through gigantic windows. Upright and sometimes inverted, huge triangular designs built into the museum’s monumental structures and mosaic surfaces. Wandering through the museum, visitors may spot a familiar recurring motif. Grand Museum, grand view KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images While ancient Egyptians crafted great monuments to their dead, wonders of granite and limestone including the Pyramids at Giza, modern Egyptians have been building a new home for Tutankhamun and his ancestors just over a mile away. All the children ask about one thing, Tutankhamun.” “I made a Skype last week to a school in the States. “You know, if you ask a child from the age of eight and you tell him Egypt, and he will tell you King Tut,” Zahi Hawass, an Egyptian archaeologist and former antiquities minister, tells CNN. Once entombed in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, the mask has toured the world, entrancing audiences with its aura of opulence and millenia-old regal mystery. It’s probably the most recognizable artifact we have from antiquity. His death mask was sublimely, breathtakingly crafted over 3,300 years ago from 24 pounds of beaten gold, with eyeliner of lapis lazuli and eyes of quartz and obsidian.

For almost a century, King Tutankhamun has been the poster boy for Ancient Egypt.

Gold mummy mask