In the late days of the 19th century and the early 20th, with the birth of the science of archaeology leading to the discovery of many treasures of the ancient world, including the 1922 revelation of King Tutankhamen's almost-intact tomb, the Anglo-American public went Egyptian-crazy, with various signs, symbols and visual images — pyramids, obelisks, mummies, sphinxes, pharaohs (especially Tut) and queens (Nefertiti in particular), chariots, winged mythological gods and goddesses, lotus blossoms, serpents, scarab beetles and hieroglyphs — found on everything from jewellery to tableware to fabric to dolls to advertising art.

This Egyptian revival material is still popular among collectors today.

A new book, "Egyptian Revival Jewellery & Design" by Dale Reeves Nicholls, with Shelly Foote and Robin Allison (Schiffer), provides a comprehensive picture and history of the phenomenon, displaying a wide selection of the objects themselves, each thoroughly described and given a current market value. Copiously illustrated in luminous colour, it deals with the meanings of the symbols — the various animals and plants, gods and goddesses, kings and queens represented — and their influence on the decorative arts, identifies the main makers and manufacturers, and devotes a useful chapter on what to look for in collecting Egyptian revival...

, Dale Reeves Nicholls, Shelly Foote, and Robin Allison, Schiffer Publishing, 2006.

Collect like an Egyptian, Linda Rosenkrantz, The Canton Repository, Ohio, USA, January 08, 2007.

This year the hospitality industry will revolve around King Tut.

"Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," on view at The Franklin Institute from Feb. 3 to Sept. 30 [2007], is expected to be a blockbuster. Already, more than 303,000 tickets have been sold and up to 1 million are expected to be sold. Such a milestone would surpass past shows like "Body Worlds" and a retrospective of Salvador Dali works.

"The King Tut exhibition will be in Philadelphia for nine months and through three seasons, giving us a blockbuster show to promote throughout most of 2007," said Meryl Levitz, president and CEO of Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp., or GPTMC.

Philadelphia is Tut's only stop in the Northeast. The exhibit has been in Los Angeles; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Chicago, but this will be the only stop on the Boston-to-Washington corridor...

2007: The year of King Tut, Peter Van Allen, East Bay Business Times, Pennsylvania, USA, January 08, 2007.

King Tut Visits Philly

For the first time since the 1970s, Delawareans and other Philadelphia-area residents will have a chance to view some of the spectacular items found in Tutankhamun's tomb.

Beginning Feb. 3 [2007], "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" opens at The Franklin Institute, the fourth and final U.S. stop on the tour. When the exhibit ends on Sept. 30, the collection travels to London.

Only a few of the 130 priceless treasures on display were part of the first Tut exhibit, which toured from 1976 to 1979. (Most noticeably missing is the death mask, now an icon for Ancient Egypt. It is considered too important to travel...)

2007: The year of King Tut, Pam George, The Delaware News Journal, Pennsylvania, USA, January 09, 2007.

Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni reasserted on Sunday that the Pyramids of Giza remained the greatest and most magnificent among the World's Seven Wonders, ruling out possibility of a re-vote on a new list of world wonders. "It is meaningless to re-vote on the Pyramids as a world wonder, as the Pyramids stand as a miracle in terms of architecture, engineering, astronomy, and astrology," Hosni told reporters here.

Over thousands of years, the Pyramids defied erosions and earthquakes, he underscored.

The minister deemed the proposed vote on a new list of the world's seven wonders as a pursuit for fame by sponsors of the idea who do not recognize the historical status and archaeological value of the Pyramids...

The Pyramids, the greatest of World Wonders, Kuwait News Agency, Kuwait, January 07, 2007.

cf. New 7 Wonders of the World Website where you can vote.

This write-up is taken from a lecture given by Robert K. Ritner at the inaugural dinner for University of Chicago president Robert J. Zimmer on October 26, 2006 and published in the University of Chicago Record.

Thirty years ago, an earlier Tut exhibit, of which I was a part, initiated the phenomenon of “blockbuster exhibits,” and our own presence here tonight is the direct result of the little diminished cultural sway of such installations and of Tutankhamun in particular. Yet why are we here? Media pundits have regularly derided these types of exhibits as pandering to the unsophisticated, a criticism — it could be argued — that is motivated perversely by their very popularity. Kevin Nance, art critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, has uncharitably characterized “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” as “glitter” for “the crowd who just want to see the shiny stuff.” If you are tempted by such anti-populist arguments, then you must augment tonight’s viewing with a visit to the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, which is the permanent repository for both the most imposing statue of Tutankhamun outside of Cairo and a large collection of the crockery used during the funeral banquet of the king, ceremonially buried and wrongly assumed when discovered in 1907 to be the full burial regalia of Tut. The statue is imposing and the pottery dishes humanizing, yet neither glitter and we have adequate crowd control. It is, however, a useful corrective to know that the “boy-king” buried with so much gold was fêted at death with little clay cups holding “7 grapes” and that the king’s monuments were posthumously usurped by his own former major general...

Tutankhamun for the Twenty-first Century: Modern Misreadings of an Ancient Culture, Robert K. Ritner, The University of Chicago Record, University of Chicago, Illinois, USA, Volume 41, Number 2, December 07, 2006, via Archaeologist at Large.

Before the great pyramids, ancient Egyptian kings left less grandiose monuments to themselves: fortress-like sanctuaries enclosed by mud-brick walls. Inside these mortuary complexes, people presumably gathered to worship and perpetuate the memory of their departed ruler.

The crumbling, almost vanished remains of such structures, archaeologists say, attest to the political hierarchy and religion of the newly unified Egyptian state, beginning more than 5,000 years ago. As symbols of the early power of kings and their roles in the cosmic order, these mysterious funerary centres are considered ancestral in purpose to the classic pyramids of Giza.

The last and largest of the cult centres — the only major one still standing in clearly recognizable form — was erected for King Khasekhemwy, who ruled in the second dynasty around 2780 B.C. Known today as Shunet el-Zebib, the two-acre enclosure stands on a desert plain at Abydos, 300 miles [480-kilometres] south of Cairo near the burial grounds of early Egyptian rulers.

Now, in an ambitious effort to preserve this ruin, archaeologists, engineers and teams of artisans and labourers are shoring up the walls and gates of Shunet el-Zebib, ravaged by time and the elements and in danger of imminent collapse...

Restoring a Mud-Brick Tribute to a Departed Egyptian King, John Noble Wilford, The New York Times, New York, USA, January 09, 2007.

cf. An ambitious effort to preserve an ancient Egyptian sanctuary, John Noble Wilford, International Herald Tribune, France, January 10, 2007.

cf. Previously: Egypt restores world's oldest wall made of mud bricks, January 08, 2007.