Of the hundreds of kings buried in the magnificent tombs during Egypt's Golden Age, only a few of their tombs were discovered largely intact, the legendary Tutankhamun's being one of them. When in 1922 British archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun with its thousands of treasures, he made one of the greatest archaeological finds in history. And when those treasures came to America in "Treasures of Tutankhamun," they became the greatest museum draw of the time, attracting more than one million people to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and hundreds of thousands more in Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle in 1978 and 1979.

"Tutankhamun was a turning point in museum-going," says Kathleen Orffmann, who, as manager of visitor services at the Metropolitan, devised the date-and-timed ticket concept for the exhibition. "After Tutankhamun, people became permanently interested in museum events."

The fifty-five objects comprising the NEH-supported exhibition were carefully selected from the five thousand originally excavated: alabaster cups, gold sculptures of Tutankhuman, furniture, and jewelry. The exhibition's major object, and the tomb's most famous find, is Tutankhuman's solid gold mask, found in place over the mummy's head and shoulders.

Besides the fascination with the objects, museum-goers were enthralled by the stories of the young king's life and of the archaeological discovery and excavation of the tomb. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., recreated the tomb for visitors, enhanced with photomurals and wall captions from Carter's three-volume journal of the expedition.

While the exhibition planners knew it would be a blockbuster, they never dreamed it would attract the huge crowds it did. According to Orffmann, the exhibition was the largest selling event of any kind--including concerts and sports events--in the history of computerized ticketing.

"The exhibition sold 900,000 tickets in five days," she says of its New York stay. What brought out so many to a museum exhibition? Orffmann says there were a number of reasons.

"There is a fascination with the subject--Egypt and early civilization and with mummies," she says, noting that the Metropolitan's permanent exhibition is second only to European paintings in popularity. "There was also interest in seeing the objects made of gold, and in knowing it was the greatest archaeological find in history."

When the exhibition closed, it contents were returned to Egypt where they are now on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. A survey by the Metropolitan showed that twenty-nine percent of those visiting the King Tutankhuman exhibition were first-time museum visitors.

"That 29 percent were introduced to museum-going and came to other exhibits after that as well," says Orffmann. "The exhibition put museum-going on the map as a leisure time interest. It had never been as popular as after that event." And that may be the real treasure of Tutankhuman.