New Yorkers go wild for Tutankhamun

Press, 20 December 1978, Page 9

New Yorkers go wild for Tutankhamun

By ARTHUR SPIEGELMAN,.< of NZPA-Reuter p New York’ Although # « the Christ- j mas seaso#* jn York, the city see» s . be c ® le ’ beating at ® e sbr * ne a new cult -* the boy king Tutankhamsn who ruled Egypt morf*™ 3000 years, ago. I Xn exhj#* on °1 55 trea ’ sures frofc Tutankhamun’s tomb go cfiublic display in New York® s and the c Vs m> nts L are P re -, paring to> the event - I x'ot evdf* Santa Claus is getting S .Mmosri* r >’ thm 2 for sale ’ his the gs* king’s name or )( st vie to it T-Airts W'Hows, books h bo"kends> hiske y bottles ’i and b?kinK Haird r essers are; offer’nff <rjVt-cuts. The Al thing left is fori; somt fj® oo<i P haraob t 0

declare one of his wares a tutburger. i King Tutankhamun is a fad whose time has come in New York and the jingles of jthe cash register are profitably banging this message 'out in the millions of dollars. And to think when the young king first appeared on jthe scene, he lasted about as 'long as one of today’s pop Some of the highest Tutankhamun profits seem to be in the black-market sale of tickets to the four-month-.long exhibit of Tutankhamun treasures at the Metropolijtan Museum of Art. Ticket scalpers are demanding up to BUS2O a tickjet to get into the exhibit — ;about 10 times their original; Icost. j j The museum sold out its’ <900.000 tickets for the event jin five days last September. | [Since then, the talk of the 'town has been how to get’

into Tutankhamun Scalpers are not the only profitmakers. Almost anyone who can put an Egyptian motif on something is doing well.

Also doing well are the owners of genuine Egyptian art works as a sale at Sotherby Parke Bernet proved on Thursday. The sale, taking solid commercial advantage of Tutmania, set a record for antiquities, bringing in SUSI.SM.

The main item was a small, well-muscled statue of a pyramid builder done some 500 years before Tutankhamun was king. It fetched SUS2BO,OOO, a worldrecord auction price for a piece from the ancient world.

i If one cannot see King ’Tutankhamun, one can read about him in some 40 books ’published about him in this country in the past two years.