In 1922, the British archaeologist Howard Carter began excavating the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, near Thebes in Upper Egypt. It quickly became one of the most famous sites in the history of archaeology, and publicity around the excavation contributed to a worldwide wave of “Egyptomania” in the years that followed. In recent years, a series of popular exhibitions has marked the centennial of this event with replicas of famous artifacts and modern virtual reality technology. Such exhibitions include the National Geographic Society’s Beyond King Tut: The Immersive Experience, currently completing its North American tour in Mexico City, and Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures, which recently opened at the Rhode Island Center in Washington, DC, following previous stops in Brussels and Atlanta.
These exhibitions recall perhaps the most famous Tutankhamun exhibition of all, which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the tomb's discovery and played a key role in restoring the ancient pharaoh to popular consciousness: the 1972 Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum in London. (The subsequent North American tour of the exhibition left its own impact on American popular culture.) Today, Treasures of Tutankhamun is generally remembered as a great triumph—a “blockbuster,” in the words of Alice Stevenson, that spurred a renewal of public interest in such institutions. Over the years that it took to plan and execute the exhibition, however, such an outcome seemed unsettlingly uncertain. A behind-the-scenes look at Treasures of Tutankhamun can tell us a great deal not just about how its success was judged at the time, but also about how empire is remembered (and forgotten).
During the late 1960s, British policymakers were interested in developing a new relationship with Egypt and the wider Arab world in the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Crisis and the withdrawal of British forces from Aden in 1967. At the same time, British Egyptologists wanted to showcase their contributions to the UNESCO Campaign for Nubia, an international effort to survey and salvage archaeological sites in Egypt and Sudan that were threatened by the construction of Egypt’s Aswan High Dam. The confluence of interests led to discussions of an exhibition of Tutankhamun artifacts in London. Despite the exhibition’s clear associations with imperial nostalgia, British organizers found willing partners in Egypt. By the 1970s, Egyptian officials were interested in marketing the country’s rich cultural heritage to the world, and a London exhibition of famous Egyptian antiquities would be useful in raising funds for UNESCO’s Nubia campaign.
From the late 1960s through the exhibition’s opening in early 1972, the British press looked forward to it with breathless anticipation. The Times tried to secure exclusive publicity rights, similar to what the paper had enjoyed during Carter’s excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb in the 1920s. When this failed, it nevertheless agreed to contribute heavily to its promotional expenses. This included posters on British Rail and the London Underground; bus sides in London; advertising in the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Guardian, the Evening News, the Evening Standard, the Observer, and other national and regional newspapers; and full-page ads in various magazines and London theater programs. In late January 1972, two months before the opening, the British Museum hosted newspaper, radio, and television news crews. The BBC archaeology program Chronicle highlighted the exhibition with a series of thirteen twenty-minute episodes and an additional fifty-minute special. Booksellers marketed countless tomes on ancient Egypt, and souvenirs proliferated.
When the exhibition finally opened in late March of 1972, the public excitement was palpable. Large crowds began to queue up enthusiastically at dawn, hours before the museum opened. However, feedback from visitors was decidedly mixed. In particular, there were consistent complaints about the crowded conditions in the exhibition rooms themselves. Attendance figures were in fact significantly lower than expected by the organizers, yet visitors still reported feeling rushed. Amidst the positive publicity that Treasures of Tutankhamun received at the time (and in the years since), it has been easy to miss what was obvious to museum administrators by the summer of 1972: halfway through its planned run, the exhibition was failing to meet its attendance goals. This meant that it was also on track to fall short of its goal as a fundraiser for the UNESCO Campaign for Nubia—a potentially embarrassing setback for an event intended to showcase partnership between Britain and Egypt.
Numerous changes were considered to make the exhibition more accessible. One rejected proposal would have kept it open until 2 AM, but advance bookings were eventually made available for evening visitors. In mid-July, displays were rearranged to allow an additional 1,500 people to move through the exhibition daily—though not necessarily in greater comfort. Attendance spiked dramatically after these adjustments, and more than 50,000 people visited during each week of August. But by the end of the month, neither attendance nor gross proceeds had yet reached the one-million mark. There was only one viable course of action: the exhibition would have to be extended beyond its scheduled closing date of September 30.
Officials at the British Museum had initiated discussions about such an extension shortly after the opening. Officials in the Egyptian government were reluctant to agree, expressing concern that an extended exhibition in London could divert tourists away from Egypt. But in early September, just weeks before the scheduled closing, they agreed to an extension through the end of December. During the last three months of the year, 563,761 more people would visit Treasures of Tutankhamun, bringing with them an additional £380,985.60 in revenue to fund archaeological work in Nubia. Though the extension was billed as a mark of the exhibition’s popularity, in reality it allowed its organizers to avoid an embarrassing failure.
What can we learn from the 1972 exhibition? In many ways it was a product of a unique moment in global politics. Leaders in both Britain and Egypt were invested in presenting their countries as co-guardians of world culture, not just through the educational work of the exhibition but also through raising funds for the UNESCO Campaign for Nubia. There are also enduring lessons that might be drawn from that moment. The fraught process of planning and then extending Treasures of Tutankhamun, which involved a wide range of government officials along with archaeologists and curators, highlights the complicated state politics that can be revealed through such an international undertaking. This is certainly the case in a postcolonial setting, such as existed between Britain and Egypt. Mathura Umachandran has used the term “mismonumentality” to describe a subversion of the public memory of empire. One way that we could understand Treasures of Tutankhamun is to see it as a joint British-Egyptian project to celebrate the cultural achievements of empire while deliberately forgetting colonial and postcolonial violence. Of course, huge numbers of people have learned this version of imperial history in settings such as this exhibition, posing a challenge for us as historians seeking to evaluate the legacies of the British empire amidst ongoing “history wars.”
Adam C. Hill is an assistant professor of History and chair of the Humanities department at Greenville University. His research centers on the role of science and cultural heritage in modern imperial and international histories, and he is especially interested in how archaeology has linked Britain, Africa, and the Middle East since the First World War. He is currently working on a book project tentatively entitled A Movable Antiquity: Egypt, Archaeology, and the Ends of the British Empire.
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