King Tut-n-common

King Tut probably would have gone the path of historical obscurity when he died at 19 , and was buried in the Valley of the Kings in the 1300's bc. He was only 9 when he took the throne.
His big accomplishments? He changes his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamen. He reverts back to monotheism, and a bunch of cults worship him as the God King. Then, 9 years later he bites the dust...
Over 3000 years later his tomb is discovered by a western archaeologist who has been digging for 4 years, on a hunch, to find it. He's pumped, though slightly disappointed that his lunch ticket isn't the most accomplished pharaoh. However, gold outshines history, and there was a looot of gold in that tomb.
Today, the contents of Tuts tomb, the only pharaoh's tomb found completely intact, are making the museum circuit, and I went with my fam see it at SF's De Young a few weeks ago.
My two cousins, Delfi and Frankie, are 9 and 11, so I already knew they'd be over this pretty fast. We got little radios that explain the exhibits and they were pumped about that.
"cshp. Hello. are you there?" "cshp. code red. cshp."
Then we were ushered in a mock tomb entrance to watch a movie about King Tut...When the lights came back on and we were shown into the exhibit, a series of rooms filled with articles from Tut's tomb preserved behind glass cases. The artifacts were really beautiful. A lot of the pottery was painted and glazed in a beautiful bright turquoise blue, a color that signifies life, and the boxes and masks were inlaid with gold and stones in intricate geometrical patterns. They created mini tombs to lay on the real tomb, so if the Pharaoh was feeling lazy he could send his mini spirit to do work in the afterlife for him. My favorite was a dark wood chair inlaid with gold, and woven on the seat. It looked like it was made a hundred years ago...I can't believe it held up so well for 3,000.
Room after room of artifacts and my cousins were getting antsy so we skimmed the last couple of rooms until we got the the end of the exhibit.
There......the Grand Finale! The Tomb of King Tut! ......Projected onto a white platform...wait what?!?!!? Man...we were jipped!
We spent the next hour looking at King Tut paraphernalia in the gift store which they seemed to enjoy a lot more. The kids wanted to buy their parents all kinds of stuff...pens, toys, their names in hieroglyphics. I'm sure their parents were ecstatic to get all these useful gifts. Frankie decided to get his mom a bag of stones. You can fill a bag with as many stones as will fit, for $4. So he stuffed that thing until it wouldn't close and they overflowed onto the counter when he was paying.
Finally we rounded up the gang, my aunt, uncle, cousins, and dad, and squeezed into the car to grab dinner.
A lovely day. Everyone enjoyed it. On the way back, Delfi remarked "Man that exhibit was soo fake."
Getting through to the children, one museum at a time.