LOS ANGELES - The highly touted King Tut comeback exhibit has drawn massive crowds its first six weeks and more than a few complaints that his mummy isn't there.
The exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the sequel to the hugely successful King Tut tour in the 1970s.
But many of the 200,000 visitors to see the display have panned it because of the absence of mummies and other key artifacts such as the sacred mask of King Tut, which was a highlight of the show nearly 30 years ago.
"I would like to see Tut's mummy," said 13-year-old Christopher Haverkamp, who studied Egyptian culture in school in Oklahoma and saw the exhibit with his family.
The new exhibit, titled "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," features more than twice as many gold and jewel-encrusted artifacts as its predecessor. There are 50 objects from the pharaoh's tomb and 70 more from the graves of his noble relatives. All the artifacts are at least 3,300 years old.
David Silverman, national curator of the exhibit, said the show was built around the legacy of King Tut, and his mummy was the one organizers were interested in displaying.
But the Egyptian government did not make that mummy or Tut's mask available because the national treasures are too fragile and culturally significant to move.
"As far as I know, the traveling of any mummies was not an issue in this exhibition. It never came up," Silverman said.
Visitor Michelle Raitano, 38, a photographer, said she was impressed with the pharaoh's furniture but complained that the crowd grew thick at the end of her tour.
To accommodate so many visitors, museum officials have expanded the hours of the exhibit. Viewing now starts at 8 a.m. and will end on some nights at 11.
"There are certain points in the exhibit where people bottleneck," museum spokeswoman Felicia Wesson said. "We're adding additional labels to cases, on two or three sides, to help with that."
Officials also bought more MP3 players and earphones to provide audio explanations of the artifacts.
Thus far, 500,000 tickets have been sold for the show - a number that includes advance sales. A final profit figure for the Los Angeles run won't be known until the exhibit ends on Nov. 15, when it moves on to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chicago and Philadelphia.
The previous exhibit ran from 1976 to '79 and attracted 8 million visitors in seven cities.
On Thursday, a number of people took advantage of the newly added 8 a.m. tour. Many emerged wide-eyed and excited.
"The exhibit was just kind of mind-boggling," said Maria Myers, 60, a retired financial analyst who saw the show with her 20-year-old daughter, Alexandra. "My eyes hurt. It was breathtaking."
Myers said she particularly liked the pharaoh's baby chair and a collection of Egyptian glassware.
Cristina Maldonado, 40, who was born in Colombia and now lives in Simi Valley, was with her husband and two teenage children. They were unimpressed.
"It was very superficial," she said. "Americans are very good with advertising, so that was better than the presentation itself."
Maldonado said she preferred an exhibit of mummies and Egyptian artifacts she had seen at the British Museum in London.
That show is now on display about 40 miles down Interstate 5 at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.
"Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt" is a collection of 126 objects and 14 mummies being shown for the first time in this country.
"That's what puts our exhibit on par with LACMA's: the mummies," Bowers spokesman Rick Weinberg said.
Even without the publicity of the King Tut show, the exhibit has sold more than 40,000 tickets since opening in April.
"LACMA is like the New York Yankees, and we're still like the Minnesota Twins," Weinberg said. "The Twins are always in the run for a World Series championship, but they don't have the payroll of the Yankees."
On the Net:
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