King Tut's Treasures Are Finally Reunited

For the first time since Howard Carter uncovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, all of the boy pharaoh's treasures are back under one roof. The Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, poised for its grand opening on Saturday, is putting more than 5,300 artifacts from King Tut's tomb on display, including his iconic gold and blue death mask and intricate armor made of textiles and leather. Most of the pieces have never been seen by the public, per NBC News. The museum's general director, Hussein Kamal, says the process of restoring and displaying the artifacts has been years in the making, with 150 conservators working since 2017. Reconstructing King Tut's armor, he notes, meant relying on "investigation and analysis" since nothing like it survived for comparison.

Tutankhamun ascended Egypt's throne at age 8 or 9 around 1334 BC and ruled for a decade before his death. Now, his regalia and treasures help anchor the largest museum in the world devoted to a single civilization, sprawling across 117 acres just north of the Great Pyramids. The museum itself, first announced in 1992, has been decades in the making, with construction repeatedly delayed by political upheaval and the pandemic. The final result is a sleek, modern building with its own solar power plant, per Deutsche Welle. It's meant to serve not just as a showcase of antiquities, but as a symbol of the country's resilience and ambition. Still, some 100,000 antiquities dating as far back as 700,000 BC are the draw, per NBC and Euronews. The public can check out Tut's treasures, as well as the funerary boat of Pharaoh Khufu, beginning Tuesday.