King Tut

After much anticipation I took the family to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia today to see the King Tut Exhibition.

We had tickets to go through it at 4Pm so we spent two hours visiting the Institute before going in. The kids, O., Suresh, mom, and I had a great time fiddling around with the hands on stuff. Even G. slept the entire time in her sling.

But then it was finally 4 O'clock and time to enter the "Golden Age of the Pharaohs."

My anticipation was so intense I even got choked up a couple times as I waited. We squished in a room with a whole lot of other people and watched a 90 second introduction film narrated by Omar Shareef (sp?).

And then, and then... we were let in.

I casually walked through crowded room after crowded room, trying to be interested in the pots and grave gods and other incidental items. But I was really waiting for the big ShaBang at the end.

At last I reached the end of the exhibit after fighting my way through lots of people and fending off whiny kids (mine) , I passed the sign of "no Re-entry" with my eyes ready to take in the big "ahhhhhhhh." And then there it was in front of me - the Gift Shop.

That was it. There wasn't any ShaBang. Definitely no Ahhhhhhhh. The entire exhibit was just - Average.

I overheard one lady in the gift shop say to her friend. "Well, I'm really disappointed. I think we were all expecting to see his head." I think she was referring to the Gold Death Mask thingy. Yeah. Tell me about it.

Save your shekels people. I saw this exhibit in Egypt at the Cairo Museum in 1994 and it was way better - even with the dust and a weird Egyptian man who latched himself onto my hand and wouldn't let go.

For the amount of money you spend for entry into the Tut Exhibit at the FI you could FLY to Egypt- go dig up a tomb of a pharaoh for yourself.