A remarkable exhibition of artefacts from the King Tut tomb

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I debated with myself whether to go to the Tutankhamun - His Tomb and His Treasures exhibition in the RDS – well, I did have the feeling that the collection being made up of reproductions, might be a little like going to a museum to see a copy of the Mona Lisa, or admiring a reproduction of some other work of art.To some extent the decision was eventually forced

 by the fact that, considering recent events in Egypt, the chances of seeing the originals in the museum in Cairo, seemed rather remote. That, plus the fact that there have been reports of some of the original King Tut artefacts disappearing in the recent rioting.

I have to be honest and say that at my age, the odds are very long indeed on my going on a trip as ambitious as Cairo. Some years ago I did what might be termed ‘the grand tour’ in the Middle East taking in Israel and Jordan and found it exhausting, but hugely rewarding.

The highlights included a visit to the Sepulchre in the Basilica in Jerusalem and walking the Via Dolorosa. Of course there was the visit to the extraordinary Petra, in Jordan, though the nights in the desert sleeping in tents Bedouin-style as we followed the Lawrence of Arabia trail, were also never to be forgotten.

But the remarkable story of the finding of the tomb of King Tutankhamun, the extraordinary artefacts found there, and the sheer magic, the scale and grandeur that seemed to surround the era of pharaohs, left me with a feeling that, some day, I would dearly love to see the treasures of King Tut.

Time slipped right on by, of course, and I was no nearer to seeing them . . . other than on screen and in television documentaries about the discovery by archaeologist Howard Carter of the tomb in 1922, after six years of searching in the desert.

In fact, he was on his last dig, the money having run out, when the chance finding of a cut stone step by one of the diggers led to the extraordinary discovery of an intact tomb for the first time ever. 

I have to say that I approached the exhibition in the RDS last weekend with a dread that I would be disappointed. After all, I was one of a generation raised on stories of the pharaohs – including the tales of the Curse of King Tut, not the least of them being the death of the financial backer of the King Tut excavation, Lord Carnavon, who appears to have died when a mosquito bite became infected.

Now the queuing was interminable, but we were lucky that it was one of those unseasonably warm and sunny days that you can get in this country – even in the middle of February.

I need not have worried. The exhibition gave me the first real impression of the sheer scale of the funerary finds which were made when they opened the tomb of King Tut for the first time in thousands of years.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.