The exhibition's official image is the face on a small coffin discovered in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, the famed boy-pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

The unofficial symbol might be found in the museum gift shop: A tissue box in the shape of a pharaoh's head, with the paper dispensed through its nose. Price: $24.99.

After drawing nearly a million visitors in Los Angeles, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" opened Thursday at Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art. From the start, the exhibition was designed to be a profit-making "blockbuster."

After all, the King Tut show that toured the U.S. from 1976 to 1979 was an eye-popping success. It pioneered the age of the blockbuster exhibition — heavily marketed spectacles devoted to popular artists or subject matter and featuring well-stocked gift shops.

After Tut, instead of offering dry, what-you-see-is-what-you-get exhibitions, some museum officials took off their tweeds and got into the entertainment business.

Tut-mania is a proven psychosis...

Exhibit Sells Tut as the Boy King of Bling, The Ledger, Florida, USA, December 18, 2005.

Assembling “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” must have been much like recording a favourite mix tape: The first few tracks should feel like a warm-up, an invitation to search further for the jewels tucked within. You might start by throwing on a bit of ambient lounge; then take it up a notch with some swirling, dark guitar work. Slowly, you coax your audience deeper into the realm you've imagined.

The Tut exhibit at Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art follows this tack: Visitors enter a small foyer for a quick 90-second mini-flick introducing them to the show. A soundtrack of soft chanting and bells is heard. The initial gallery, "Egypt Before Tut," offers statues of lioness and serpent goddesses, ancient model boats set against a wallpapered backdrop of dunes and rivers and the green scrub that fringes Egypt's deserts. The spell is cast, but its force doesn't take hold until one arrives at the entrance to the underworld.

Yes, it sounds dramatic, and it most certainly is. Shaded in Hades black and ghostly hieroglyphs, The "Death, Burial & Afterlife" gallery is described as a "miniature universe for the deceased." Its contents were excavated from the tombs of Yuya and Thuya...

The king and I, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, December 17, 2005.

The new issue of Archaeology Magazine is out now and contains a review of Hatshepsut The Female Pharaoh at the de Young Museum.

After the death of Hatshepsut, Egypt's most famous female pharaoh, her stepson and successor, Thutmose III, looking for a return to tradition, set out to erase the identity of this aberrant ruler by defacing her monuments and omitting her from an official record of kings.

"Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh," at San Francisco's rebuilt M.H. de Young Memorial Museum (through February 5), celebrates this singular ruler and the richness of her time. A collaboration of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the exhibition features some 250 objects, from tiny ornaments to colossal statuary, loaned from museums in the United States, Europe, and Egypt...

The Female Pharaoh, Blake Edgar, Archaeology Magazine, New York, USA, Volume 59, Number 1, January / February 2006.

The latest issue of Ancient Egypt Magazine arrived on my doorstep on Saturday. Here is a rundown of its contents.

• Replicating and Egyptian Relief
  Annemarie La Pensée describes how an important artefact from the World Museum Liverpool was replicated, at the request of Egypt’s SCA, using the latest technology.
• Ancient Egyptian Medicine
  Ancient Egyptian literature contains some surprisingly modern diagnoses and treatments for illnesses, as Dr. George M. Burden discovered.
• Made in Egypt
  Zaghloul Ibrahim is interviewed by Ayman Wahby Taher about his work re-creating replicas of Egyptian masterpieces.
• A Lion of Amenhotep III
  AE investigates a lion at the Citadel in Cairo, and compares it with other well-known sculptures carved in the reign of the great pharaoh.
• Black Athena
  Who is or was “Black Athena”? Janet Robinson gives some answers and sees the concept as opening up the world of ancient Egypt to many who felt excluded in the past.
• Ancient Egypt on the Small Screen
  The BBC’s new series on ancient Egypt reviewed by AE’s Editor, who finds a great deal to criticise.
• The Temple of Ptah at Karnak
  Charlotte Booth gives readers a guided tour of this rarely-visited corner of the Karnak site.
• Mummies at the Movies
  Mark Walker examines the influence of ancient Egypt, especially the modern fascination with mummies, on the fantasy world of the Big Screen.
• The Baron’s Palace
  AE tells the story of one of Cairo’s most unusual landmarks.
• Sphinx
  Bob Partridge looks at some of the many examples of sphinxes in Egypt.

Ancient Egypt Magazine, Empire Publications, Manchester, UK, Volume 6, No. 3, Issue 33, December 2005 / January 2006.