Ancient Treasures From Lost Egyptian City Head to San Francisco

In 2020, Egyptian archaeologists discovered the lost “golden city” of Aten—built under King Tutankhamun’s grandfather Amenhotep III in the late 1300s B.C.E. then abandoned by his heretic son, Akhenaten. “I don’t think you can oversell it,” Salima Ikram, the head of the American University in Cairo’s Egyptology unit, said as crews announced the discovery. “It is mind-blowing.” This summer, dozens of relics unearthed there will debut to American fans in the show “Treasures of the Pharaohs” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

The exhibition made its global premier in Rome last November. All of its offerings are on loan from Egypt’s storied institutions, like the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Luxor Museum. The country’s famed archaeologist Zahi Hawass wrote the catalog.

The de Young is no stranger to ancient Egypt, though. The museum holds over 500 of Egyptian artifacts of its own, though none will appear in this show. Visiting artifacts often travel through, too. In fact, according to the , the last traveling Egyptian exhibition that the de Young hosted—“Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs,” in 2022—remains its most popular offering since 2019, welcoming 312,114 visitors.

At the de Young, “Treasures of the Pharaohs” will closely resemble its Roman predecessor. “The layout by nature of the galleries will be different, and the thematic arrangement has been devised differently for the de Young,” a representative told me over email.

The show will present 130 artifacts hailing from the ancient Egypt’s origins (around 3100 B.C.E.) through its penultimate Third Intermediate Period (1076 through 655 B.C.E.) across six sections in eight galleries. Per press materials, the full spectacle will offer “rare insights into Egyptian society and beliefs” while “deepening our understanding of their world, government, and gods.”

“The Egyptian pharaohs were considered both deities and leaders,” added Renée Dreyfus, ancient art curator at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “As the exhibition reveals, their rule depended not only on their position but also on their families, those who served them, traditional symbols of power, and the religious beliefs that shaped their world and afterlife.”

“Treasures of the Pharaohs” will begin with a section explaining Pharaoh-hood itself. Next, it will introduce the hierarchy of subjects surrounding the pharaoh, who made the leader’s reign possible. After that, the show will explore ancient Egypt’s noted spiritual side, which permeated “all aspects of Egyptian thought,” according to press materials.

The following section, centered on the connection between daily life and death in Egyptian culture, will offer an “idealized portrait” of everyday experience crafted from especially elegant jewelry, cosmetics, tools, and furnishings.

Called “the Pompeii of Egypt,” the newfound Golden City also offers its own unprecedented view into Egyptian daily life. The 20 new Golden City relics, featured in a standalone section, will include a stone mill, glass vessels, limestone statues. “Treasures of the Pharaohs” concludes with a section on the Egyptian notion of mortality. Of course, for the Egyptians, death was only the beginning.