• Time for America to say ta-ta to Tut

    Sandro Vannini / National Geographic

    This "shabti," or funerary servant figure, is from the antechamber of Tutankhamun's tomb. Shabtis were inscribed with a spell from the Book of the Dead that ensured the king would do no forced labor in the afterlife. The figure is part of the "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs," an exhibit that is winding up its U.S. tour in Seattle.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    Two major exhibits of ancient artifacts relating to the best-known figures from ancient Egypt, King Tut and Cleopatra, are in the last stages of their U.S. tours — and their departure could signal the end of an era.

    "Cleopatra: The Exhibition" opened at the California Science Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday, while "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" began its run at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle today. By the end of next year, the more than 250 artifacts from the two exhibitions will be back in Egypt, possibly for good.

    The return to Egypt marks the end of a Tut-centric "Comeback Tour" that began back in 2005 and sparked the kind of enthusiasm that was seen back in the 1970s, during an earlier Tut exhibit. Like that 1976-1979 "Treasures of Tutankhamun" show, millions have turned out to see the glittering gold and the 3,300-year-old artifacts associated with the boy-king's short reign. More than 90,000 advance tickets already have been sold for this year's Seattle exhibit.

    Transplanting Tut-mania
    Among the featured objects in Seattle are a 10-foot-tall statue of the pharaoh, Tut's golden sandals and the golden funerary mask of King Psusennes I. (Tut's golden mask, which was such a hit since the '70s, was judged too fragile and valuable to travel out of Egypt this time around.)

    After Seattle, the more than 100 artifacts will go to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, which is currently under construction and due for completion in 2015. At one time, Egyptian officials saw the revenue generated by traveling exhibits as a means to cover the museum construction costs. But last year's revolution dealt a heavy blow to the country's tourist industry, and now officials think it's more important to bring museumgoers to the treasures in Egypt than to bring the treasures to museumgoers outside Egypt.

    View highlights of the treasures on view in "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs."

    "They're eager to see these [artifacts] return to Egypt," said Bryan Harris, vice president of sales and marketing for Arts and Exhibitions International, which helped organize the Tut tour. And they're eager for tourists to follow Tut's trail.

    That came through loud and clear during a Seattle news conference on Wednesday. "Please, we need your help," Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said. "We need you to support our revolution. We need you to support our movement toward peace and democracy."

    Cleopatra's sunken treasures
    The stars of the Tut exhibit are artifacts that were found 90 years ago in a long-hidden tomb by British archaeologist Howard Carter, but it's a different story for the more than 150 "Cleopatra" artifacts now on display in Los Angeles. They were brought to the surface just in the past few years during underwater excavations at the sunken sites of Alexandria, Heracleion and Canopus.

    "All those artifacts were completely covered by sediment," French archaeologist Franck Goddio, leader of the underwater excavation, told me.

    Slideshow: In search of Cleopatra’s palace

    Christoph Gerigk / AP

    Divers explore the submerged ruins of a palace and temple in Alexandria's harbor.

    Launch slideshow

    Video previews "Cleopatra: The Exhibition."

    The project made a splash, so to speak, when the "Cleopatra" tour was first announced a couple of years ago, and since then it's been on display in Philadelphia, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. One more U.S. city, yet to be determined, could join the list after Los Angeles. But by the end of 2013, the statues, jewelry, coins and other items will be distributed among several Egyptian museums, Goddio said. Egyptian authorities are considering the construction of an underwater museum in Alexandria Harbor, and if that project goes forward, "all the artifacts will go in that museum," he said.

    Goddio said the artifacts recovered so far suggest that Hellenistic Egypt, the culture in which Cleopatra lived during the first century B.C., was less Greek and much more Egyptian than experts previously thought. "The Egyptian sensitivity is much stronger than what it was thought to be at that time," he said. And that's all the more reason for present-day Egyptian officials to want those treasures back in their home country.

    Fortunately, Goddio and others have been able to continue their work amid all of Egypt's political changes, including the run-up to this week's presidential elections there.

    "Up to now, the authority has not changed," he told me, "and it's not expected that there will be any change from a scientific view." So even though the long-traveling treasures may be going home for good, there might be fresh archaeological finds available for future road trips.

    And after all, Egypt isn't the only place that offers archaeological wonders. Just this month, for example, Penn Museum opened a "Maya 2012" exhibit featuring sculptures and replicas of monuments from the Maya civilization.

    Harris acknowledges that Egypt doesn't hold a monopoly on ancient mysteries and marvels. Nevertheless, he says there's something special about old King Tut. "An exhibit like 'Tutankhamun' is really like lightning in a bottle," he told me. "For some reason, Egyptian culture, and particularly Tutankhamun, seems to captivate the imagination more than any other. ... To be honest, there's only one."

    More about Egyptian treasures:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Archaeologists assess Tut tragedy

    NBC's Kate Snow reports on the damage done to Egypt's antiquities.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Update for 4:30 p.m. ET Jan. 31: Despite the best efforts of the Egyptian army and a human shield, some of the ancient treasures inside the century-old Egyptian Museum were damaged during a brief wave of looting, authorities in Cairo say. Among the damaged artifacts are two pharaonic mummies and a priceless statuette from the tomb of Tutankhamun.

    The country's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, described the damage in a series of statements, including an update that was posted to his blog on Sunday. He said looters ransacked the museum's gift shop and went on to vandalize authentic treasures as well. More than a dozen display cases were broken into, including one that contained the Tut statuette. "The criminals found a statue of the king on a panther, broke it, and threw it on the floor," Hawass wrote. "I am very thankful that all of the antiquities that were damaged in the museum can be restored, and the tourist police caught all of the criminals that broke into it."

    The looters scattered pieces of the mummies across the museum floor — and judging by the photographs that were released Monday (graphic content below), restoring those relics will be challenging to say the least.

    Roger Wood/CORBIS

    A figurine from Tutankhamun's tomb shows the boy-king riding a panther.

    Al Jazeera via EloquentPeasant.com

    A video frame from Al Jazeera shows what appears to be the panther in pieces, with the figurine of Tutankhamun missing.

    Based on video footage that was shot inside the museum, some observers suggest that other treasures from Tut's tomb may have been damaged as well. Margaret Maitland, an Egyptologist at Oxford University in England, suggested that at least one other gilded statuettes of the boy-king pictures may have been broken off its pedestal.

    This one shows Tut standing on a boat with a harpoon at the ready:

    Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis

    A wooden statuette shows the gilded figure of Tutankhamun standing on a boat, holding a harpoon.

    APTV via msnbc.com

    This video frame from the looted Egyptian Museum shows what appears to be the boat, with the Tut figure broken off.

    Maitland also pointed to another video showing a wooden block with the broken-off feet still attached. At first, she assumed that this suggested yet another statuette of a standing Tut was snapped off, but later analysis made it seem more likely that these were the broken-off feet from the "Tut on a panther" statuette. Check out Maitland's blog posting at the Eloquent Peasant for those comparisons.

    Hawass said two mummies in the museum were destroyed, with their heads ripped off. In one of the most upsetting pictures from the museum, shown below, the mummies' heads and bones can be seen spread across the floor.

    AP

    This photo was taken early Saturday in the Egyptian Museum and made available on Monday. Parts of unidentified mummies, including the heads, are seen damaged on the floor.

    Over the weekend, experts wondered whether two mummies may have been the mortal remains of Tut's great-grandparents, Yuya and Tuya. That surmise was based on a comparison of a gilded mummy case seen in the video with photographs of the case that was laid over Tuya's mummy. Discovery News' Rossella Lorenzi focused on that angle.

    On Monday, however, Aidan Dodson, an Egyptologist from the University of Bristol, reported that the mummies were unlikely to be those of Yuya and Tuya. As explained in an update from Maitland, the mummy case had been separated from Tuya's mummy and was being exhibited in the museum by itself.

    Maitland noted that two more ruined displays matched up with well-known items from Egypt's antiquity: an array of soldier figurines and a wooden model boat from the tomb of Mesehti, a provincial governor during the 11th or 12th Dynasty (roughly 2025 to 1700 B.C.). Here are pictures showing those damaged artifacts:

    MSNBC TV

    A video grab shows damage done to a display case that apparently contains an array of soldier figurines from the tomb of Mesehti, a provincial governor from the 11th or 12th Dynasty.

    MSNBC TV

    An armed security guard stands watch next to a display case containing a damaged model boat from the tomb of Mesehti.

    In his blog posting, Hawass provided specific information about the Tut-on-a-panther statuette (which is actually one of two similar statuettes from the tomb), but not about the other items that appear to be damaged in the video. Why not? It could be because Hawass is still trying to get all the facts of the story straight, or because he's reluctant to publicize the full extent of the damage at this time. It's also possible that some of the items shown in the video are display-case replicas or gift-shop knock-offs rather than the real things.

    In any case, Hawass sees the damage and looting as a national tragedy.

    "My heart is broken and my blood is boiling," he wrote. "I feel that everything I have done in the last nine years has been destroyed in one day, but all the inspectors, young archaeologists, and administrators, are calling me from sites and museums all over Egypt to tell me that they will give their life to protect our antiquities."

    The good news
    That's the good news about the saga of Egypt's endangered heritage. The current chaos in Cairo easily could have left all the priceless artifacts at the Egyptian Museum, including Tutankhamun's 3,300-year-old golden death mask, vulnerable to widespread looting. After all, that's how the situation played out for Baghdad's national museum in 2003 after the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

    It didn't happen that way in Cairo because of the high-mindedness of the government as well as its critics.

    When fire broke out on Friday night at the ruling party's headquarters, Khaled Youssef, an Egyptian film director who has made movies critical of government policies, issued an urgent call on the Al Arabiya television channel: "I am calling on the Egyptian army to head instantly to the Egyptian Museum. There is a fire right next to it in the party headquarters," he said in a report relayed by Reuters.

    As the fire raged, would-be thieves started entering the grounds surrounding the museum, The Associated Press reported. But other young men, some armed with truncheons taken from the police, formed a protective human chain outside the museum's main gates. "I'm standing here to defend and to protect our national treasure," one of the men, a 40-year-old engineer named Farid Saad, told AP.

    AP quoted 26-year-old Ahmed Ibrahim as saying that it was important to guard the museum because it has "5,000 years of our history. If they steal it, we'll never find it again."

    Another defender at the gates pleaded with the crowd not to let the looters in, shouting, "We are not like Baghdad!"

    Finally, four of the army's armored vehicles took up posts outside the museum. Soldiers surrounded the building and moved inside.

    AP said the soldiers rounded up would-be looters who made it onto the museum grounds and lined them up in a row. As the soldiers corralled one man toward the line, crowds outside the fence shouted, "Thief, thief!" A couple of the troops hit the man with the butts of their rifles and sat him down with others who were apparently caught inside the gates.

    The army and the people are continuing to keep watch on the museum and its riches amid Egypt's crisis.

    Treasures galore
    Tut's golden mask is arguably the most precious of the museum's treasures — so precious that authorities will no longer let it travel out of the country, even though many other artifacts from Tut's time are currently on the road. (I had the chance to see the mask in Seattle in 1978 during the "Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit.) The 109-year-old museum serves as the central repository for the riches from Tut's tomb, which was discovered by Egyptologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. But there's lots more to protect. The highlights range from monumental statues of Amenhotep III and his family to Roman-era gold treasures dug up from Egypt's Western Desert.

    Amr Nabil / AP file

    The golden mask of Tutankhamun is the best-known treasure at Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

    Elizabeth Bartman, president of the Archaeological Institute of America, told me she was heartened to hear that the Egyptian people were so keen to protect their cultural heritage.

    "If the reports about the human cordon around the museum are true, that's a very moving thing for me," she told me. "They regard their archaeological finds as so precious that it's worth their lives to protect them."

    University of Pennsylvania archaeologist C. Brian Rose, the institute's past president, wasn't surprised by the reports.

    "It's not possible to plan for the future unless one understands the past, and I think this is something that all Egyptians understand very well," Rose told me. "There's a great respect for the cultural heritage of Egypt — shared, I think, by I would say nearly all Egyptians. I hope that respect will keep the archaeological sites and museums safe from any harm during this period of conflict."

    Even if the protesters and government forces share that respect for the museum's antiquities, the situation could still lead to unintended and unwelcome consequences.

    "Especially with Egypt being such a dry place — they have all these organic materials, they have textiles, they have ancient food, they have lots of wooden items — fire is a very scary proposition," Bartman said. "Let's just keep our fingers crossed that the museums are not going to be caught in the crossfire."

    More tales from the museums:

    And other sagas of endangered antiquities:

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