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CHICAGO - Here's why we love King Tut so much: There's a tiny, 18-inch Tut coffin that is so elaborate, so gorgeous, it takes your breath away.
And that golden coffin was crafted to hold the boy king's liver. That's right. His liver.
This coffinette is just one of the marvels of the new "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" show, which opened May 26 at the Field Museum. It is the first time King Tut has been back in Chicago since the blockbuster 1977 exhibition.
This exhibit features more than 130 ancient Egyptian objects selected to give the public a sense of King Tut and the times in which he lived.
The exhibition is spectacular, well designed and well edited. This is not a 200-funerary-pots-in-a-row kind of show. Instead, it's more of a greatest-hits tour of ancient Egyptian objects from the 18th Dynasty.
That King Tut has returned to Chicago at all is something of a miracle.
For years, Egypt has prohibited Tut relics from traveling after a scorpion piece atop a statue of the goddess Selket fell and broke during the 1970s global tour. That stance changed when famed archeologist Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, persuaded the Egyptian government to allow a limited tour of objects to raise money for the restoration of monuments in Egypt.
But you won't be seeing the solid gold death mask, the highlight of the 1977 show, or Tut's coffin. Those will stay put in Egypt.
And, it must be said, there are no mummies.
If you're a mummy-phile, you're going to be disappointed (though there are some to see in the museum's permanent collection).
"This is not about gold and the curse," said Hawass, in town for the opening of the exhibition.
Instead, the aim is to educate the public about the life and times of the boy king, he said.
The exhibition begins in a small room as dark as a tomb, lit only by sconces. A brief movie sets the scene for what lies ahead. You learn how British archeologist Howard Carter found the tomb in 1922 and how Tut ruled after a period of great change in ancient Egypt. After the movie, a curtain is supposed to whoosh open to reveal a large black granite statue of King Tut, but on the day we previewed the exhibition, the curtain wasn't working.
The exhibit quickly creates a sense of drama. In one room, you walk onto a golden marble floor imported from Egypt and suddenly you're in a temple, complete with massive columns.
In another, you walk into near darkness, with hieroglyphs from the Book of the Dead projected onto the walls. In the center of the room sits the coffin of King Tut's great-grandmother, massive and golden. The exhibition contains a number of objects related to Tut's family.
Objects are well spaced, a good thing considering the crowds expected to jam the exhibition.
Luckily, many pieces are large, such as the granite statue of Tuthmosis IV and His Mother, seated next to each other and looking over the crowds who have come to see them thousands of years after their deaths.
But others are small, such as the shabtis (statues) meant to be servants in the afterlife: these may be difficult to glimpse from behind two or three other visitors.
Labels and wall text are easy to read and interesting, though they may be a little sophisticated for the show's youngest visitors.
Hawass' edited selection makes for a manageable exhibition - one that won't leave you exhausted by the end. That said, should checking out the 131 objects become tiring, there are few benches to rest your feet, so wear comfortable shoes.
As you move from room to room, a few objects besides the coffinette stand out. A delightful stool in black and white decorated with flowery shapes could have been designed by artist Henri Matisse. A golden knife and sheath found on King Tut's mummy are so intricately detailed they look like they could not have been made by human beings but only by a miniature craftsman. CT scans, which revealed that the 19-year-old didn't die of a blow to the back of the head as once thought, also show the teenager had buckteeth and a receding chin.
All these items make the boy king both more human and more unreal. That he had a cosmetics case makes him accessible - that it is a masterpiece work of art in precious materials makes him ethereal.
Over and over, the exhibit invites visitors to marvel over this dichotomy - the life of a human being just like us who lived a life so sumptuous that even the items accompanying him in death were unimaginably gorgeous.
The exhibition ends with a rendering of what Tut might have looked like.
And with that image - a bucktoothed, teenaged king - in your mind, you walk into the gift shop, where, of course, you can buy all kinds of Tut kitsch.
And if you don't leave with your own Tut bookmark, you will likely leave with a feeling that you know the king just a little and with a sense of wonder that ancient Egypt seems to conjure up so effectively.
As exhibition curator Jim Phillips, who fell in love with ancient Egypt as a young boy, said: "(Ancient Egypt) is embedded in our psyche."
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TUTANKHAMUN AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE PHARAOHS
Through Jan. 1
The Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago
312-922-9410 or www.fieldmuseum.org
Cost: $25; $22, seniors and students with ID; $16, children 4-11; discount available for Chicago residents; special "Tut Membership" ticket packages available.
Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily (open at 8 a.m. through Sept. 4).
Tut at Twilight Viewing Nights (20 dates through Jan. 1): 5:30-10 p.m.
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TUT TRIVIA
How much do you know about King Tut? Take this quiz:
1. How old was Tutankhamun when he became king?
2. How old was Tut when he died?
3. Did archeologists uncover Tut's tomb?
4. When did the last Tut exhibit tour the U.S.?
5. How many artifacts were found in Tut's tomb?
(Answers to quiz: 1) 10; 2) 19; 3) 1922; 4) 1977 5) More than 5,000)
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Trine Tsouderos: ttsouderos@tribune.com
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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
