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A close up on the face of Tutankhamun's death mask.
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Tutankhamun Exhibition Highlights from the Saatchi Gallery, London

To mark the centenary of the opening of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 and the lead up to the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, a temporary exhibition, ‘Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh’, made up of 150 precious artefacts made a ‘final’ world tour. An extraordinary collection of objects from the Pharaoh’s tomb, 60 of which have never been seen outside of Egypt before. The touring exhibition stopped in Los Angeles, Paris and London, before its itinerary was halted in 2020 due to the global pandemic. The photographs on this page are show the highlights from the London exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery.

The exhibition King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh was hailed by authorities in Egypt as the last exhibition of the famed Pharaoh’s funerary objects to tour internationally. “See them, visit them, before they return back to Egypt forever”, said Dr. Mostafa Waziry, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The collection was on tour from March 2018 to earl 2020, was made up of 150 objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun. Jewellery, sculptures and ritual objects join what is thought to be the oldest glove on earth, and the world’s oldest trumpet. Sixty of these artefacts have never travelled before. That is more than the number of artefacts that has ever been seen at once outside of Egypt. To put the hype around this exhibition into perspective, previous major travelling exhibitions contained only 55 of King Tut’s funerary artefacts.

But why the last? Until recently the 1000s of objects recovered from Tutankhamun’s tomb were in the Cairo Museum, many of which were on display. One of the gold chariots was on display in the Egyptian National Military Museum. In 2018 the last of King Tut’s objects were moved from these museums to the new museum near the Giza Pyramids. Scheduled to open fully in 2024, the Grand Egyptian Museum will tell the story of 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history with over 100,000 artefacts. The new museum will also be the final resting place of the Tutankhamun collection. It is reported that around 7,000 square metres of display space has been allocated to this extraordinary collection of funerary objects.

A gold fan base with intricate detailed engraving of King Tut on a chariot.
This gilded wooden fan held 30 ostrich feathers, which would provide a cooling relief from the Egyptian heat. The inscription on the stick says that Tutankhamun hunted ostriches himself, in the desert near Heliopolis, which is depicted in the incredible detail.
Three white vases with intricate detailing in a glass case at the Saatchi gallery.
Egyptian calcite vases. The central vase is inlaid with faience, a ceramic material with a brightly coloured glaze.Traces of a brown residue was found inside, from an oil which was essential for rituals and highly valued.
A close up of the detailing around the neck of a vase in the Tutankhamun exhibition.

A close up of the neck of the vase. Faience was known as ‘tjehenet’ in the ancient Egyptian world, which means ‘dazzling’ or ‘brilliant’. It was a synthetic material and could be made in a variety of colours, although turqousie was the most common, as it was believed to represent life and fertility.

A white calcite vase with intricate inlay decoration.
This calcite vase rests on a stand with cartouches of Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun inscribed on it. Ankesenamun was his half-sister and also his wife. They shared a father, but her mother was Queen Nefertiti, known by her exquisite bust in the Neues Museum in Berlin.
A white calcite vessel with hieroglyphic instriptions.
This alabaster vase with a stopper, has the name of Tutankhamun’s ancestor, Thutmose III, inscribed upon it. Thutmose III was considered one of the greatest Pharoahs, and a military genius. The vase was used to store perfume or oil for rituals.

This painted calcite box, with a floral decoration on the valuted lid, contained two bundles of human hair. These probably belonged to Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamun. Found with a small ivory pomegranate, this may well have represented their marriage contract.

Archaeology Travel Writer

Sarah Nash

Sarah has a Bachelors degree in Philosophy and a Masters degree in Archaeology. Besides an interest in archaeology and history, Sarah is also a travel obsessed bookworm. Given her aim to get her children to be equally interested in history and travel, Sarah started our History with Kids series of articles. Sarah has also written about places and museums to visit in Salisbury and London.

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