Exhibition: Pharaohs for all ages

Last week, residents of Indianapolis fell under the spell of the art and history of ancient Egyptians as the "Tutankhamun, The Golden King and The Great Pharaohs" exhibition opened its doors to the public. Streets, kiosks, restaurants and hotel forefronts were decorated with huge Egyptian and US flags, as well as posters of some of the stunning objects featured in the exhibition -- among them the exquisite gold canopic coffinette of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, a limestone head of the monotheistic ruler Akhenaten, a marble statue of Queen Hatshepsut, and a colossal seated statue of Pharaoh Sobekhotep of the Middle Kingdom.

At the forefront of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis (CMI), where the exhibition is taking place, stands a colossal replica statue of the necropolis deity Anubis greeting visitors as they pass through an ancient Egyptian-style gate guarded by two athletic-looking bodyguards wearing the ancient nemes head dress and a short white gown tied at the waist with a coloured belt decorated with lotus flowers.

After crossing the museum garden, which is decorated with gypsum replicas of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, visitors are taken back in time to the life, death, faith and afterlife of those innovative Pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Strains of oriental music filled the evening air of the CMI's reception hall, where women and men, girls and boys dressed as Pharaohs, courtiers, servants, priests and deities roam about guiding visitors to the different sections of the "Tutankhamun, the Golden King and the Great Pharaohs" exhibition.

"Now, come, travel back in time. See where and how these rulers lived," beckons the deep voice of Hollywood's Indiana Jones, aka Harrison Ford, while a two-minute video accompanies the narrative. When the screens go quiet, massive double limestone-coloured doors, edged by a pair of carved columns decorated with lotus flowers, swing open into a labyrinth of seven galleries displaying 130 splendid ancient Egyptian artefacts from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, many of which have never left home before. These objects focus on the splendour of the Egyptian Pharaohs, their function in the earthly and divine worlds, and what kingship meant to the Egyptian people. Fifty of the pieces are from Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb while the rest feature the treasures of his ancestor rulers from the pyramid builders' era through the Late Period.