King Tut one stop in Canada at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario

The Golden Pharaoh Exhibit will debut its showcase in Canada, exclusively at Toronto's centrally located Art Gallery of Ontario, on November 24, 2009 to April 2010.

Four sections of the AGO will be devoted to King Tut's 10 year reign exhibit (Tutankhamun ruled Egypt between 1336 and 1327 BC) whose mysterious death at age 19 continues to intrigue millions of people around the world. 


SCIENCE: New scientific discoveries, x-ray analysis and three-dimensional CT scans of King Tut's mummy emerged from an Egyptian research and conservation project, partially funded by the National Geographic Society, providing gallery visitors with new insight into Tutankhamun's life and death. The exhibition tour experience will be enhanced with a narration by award-winning actor Harrison Ford in an audio video documentary provided by the National Geographic.

HISTORY: King Tutankhamun (inscribed as 'Neb, Kheperu and Re' means Tutankhamun) was one of the few kings worshiped as a god and honored with a cult-like following in his own lifetime and is so famous because his tomb was in almost perfect condition when it was found.  

MURDER MYSTERY: The veil of mystery about his death was also recently lifted early this year due to a new x-ray analysis medical examination of the remains conducted by a trauma specialist at Long Island University in the USA, that suggest King Tut may have not been murdered in his sleep but died instead from an infection caused by a broken leg.  The x-rays displayed a thickening of a bone in the cranium which could occur only after a build-up of blood. The examining scientists suggest that the king was most probably hit on the back of his head while asleep and nursing an injured leg. The injuries indicate that the King might have been left bleeding for about two months before he actually died. 

THE TOMB'S CURSE: More than 87 years have passed since the discovery of his amazing tomb, the mummy of King Tut was found in 1922 by Howard Carter and the wealthy Lord Carnarvon who had searched for many years before the find. With further excavation they arrived to a hopeful find but the first room they came to had a hidden door that led to the main chamber that just so-happened to be a deadly trap. Many workers died of the so-called curse on King Tut's tomb but we now know that airborne bacteria sealed in the tomb fed on organic matter and killed the workers when it got in their lungs. There was a secret storage room in the burial chamber where the real mummy of King Tut had been laid to rest. 

The new show, currently setting attendance records in Atlanta will make its only Canadian stop in Toronto from Nov. 24, 2009 to April 18, 2010. 

Organizers in charge of the recent showcase say that record crowds of roughly 750,000 visitors packed the AGO 30 years ago to see the first Tut exhibition and anticipate a larger crowd attraction which will be creatively disbursed across the interior of the gallery through careful exhibit programming supported by carefully screened volunteers.

Since King Tut was first announced in April 2009 the Gallery has seen a large influx in new members and thus anticipate a very high demand for King Tutankhamun.

When visitors arrive at the AGO  they will first be greeted by a 26-foot statue of Anubis (the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld) towering over them outside the Gallery entrance.

More information about tickets for members found at: www.ago.net/membership

and those interested in general public tickets can pre-register at: www.kingtut.org.

~Tomitheos reporting from Toronto

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