Tutankhamun Exhibition

It was our anniversary, and because of this we organised an entire weekend dedicated to ourselves and the things we want to do. We believe in making memories and that's our gift to each other. It makes our relationship stronger and means we have stories to pass on and experiences to behold.

Our actual anniversary was Sunday the 27th of April, but Saturday was the day we decided to dedicate to our chosen topic of interest. 

Lauren: I have always been drawn to Ancient Egypt. I've studied their beliefs, practises, their written language, and their people. I have several diplomas dedicated to it as an overall topic, and it helped to define my passion for history and the wider scope of ancient mythologies and legend. So when I heard that the Excel in London was running a limited Tutankhamun exhibition, I immediately turned to Jamie and said how cool it was to go. It was this point he had nominated it as our anniversary activity and the rest is history.

We rolled into the Excel an hour earlier than expected, we'd gotten an early train in case a repeat of what had happened during our Labyrinth trip occurred, but luckily no cancellations. The staff handling the tickets were so lovely and said as long as we didn't make a massive thing about it then they didn't mind us going in early. Keeping schtom, we took our entry photo with the photographer and went on our journey. 

This is supposed to be an interactive event, but sadly it was a bit of a let down. 

The exhibition is housed in the same area as the F1 exhibition was, so when we walked in we were met with a similar wall of writing in order to paint a picture of what we would see next. After having numerous people push in and block said wall (despite an entire corridor of space) we finally managed to read the wall and move on a little worse for wear to the next section. 

This next bit was an attempt to transport you to Egypt. The actual intention was to give you something to look at while you waited for the half an hour projection room to reloop. The artefacts on show were all replicas which was a little disappointing especially as Lauren had visited the Tutankamun exhibit at the Saachi gallery a few years prior. These replicas just seemed a little- well fake to be honest. You'd have thought that an exhibition boasting about its limited run would have been a little more legit, but if anything it was simply an event to promote the lavishes of technology and one avenue of King Tut's origin.

This exhibition strayed toward Tutankamun's parentage, specifically that his mother was Nefertiti which has never been proven. His mother has never been accurately confirmed due to the Pharaoh having several wives and mistresses. Lauren especially felt that this bias damaged the credibility of the exhibition somewhat as an exhibition should display fact to learn from and not assumptions of favouring an avenue of exploration. 

Despite this, we moved on. The next section was the half an hour 'immersive' King Tut origin. This was a room which played a projection on the four walls around us which was primarily pretty colours and spiritual guessing. It felt as though they'd taken imagery from what we know about the Egyptian afterlife and fed it into an AI machine which spat our a bunch of gold and purple pictures that moved and the imagery somehow depicted how Tut was chosen by the gods to be Pharaoh. We were not thrilled with this section. It seems cheap and insulting to be quite honest. 

Having abandoned said projection room we moved off into yet another projection area, however this one was much better. I this room we witnessed a 3D projection of how a body was prepared during Ancient Egypt for mumification, specifically a Pharaoh. This was a detailed and accurate example and was much needed compared to the half an hour fever dream from the previous room. 

Next up  another room for technology buffs, this was a room where we sat and were given VR headsets to experience what it may have been like for Tut when he moved into the afterlife. We were met with a vision of having our hearts weighed against the feather, then fiery pits and destruction until we moved off into paradise. This again seemed like an AI nightmare. Lots of purple, lots of images which look like those 3D images that are weird and merge into each other that toured social media for a while. 

Once this experience had ended we moved off into a new VR experience and this was of Howard Carter who discovered King Tut. Using our headsets we were to move around an enclosed space which we could see was reimagining of Carter's workspace during his dig. What we must have looked like to the workers at Excel, bumbling about, arms flailing in front of us in case we walked into a wall or another person. This was immersion, this was a fun and decent part of the experience and helped gained an insight into archaeology of the time. 

This marked the end of our adventure aside from the tiny overpriced gift shop. We left quite disappointed actually. We thought we were on for an educational 90 minutes and instead were met with nightmare fuel and forgeries. While we suppose it's a decent introduction to Tutankamun for kiddies, it's not worth a visit for those serious for this sort of thing. Not much learning went on, it was just a way to remarked VR headsets. It was very much reminiscent of Bubble Planet from last year. A fun fad but with less fun. 

Haunted: N/A

Worth the visit: 4/10

Giftshop: 3/10

Ghost count: 0

Dog friendly: No

DISCLAIMER: Now for the official bit. This blog does not receive any paid promotions from the places mentioned above. We have not been approached to promote or act as spokespersons for any attraction mentioned within this post and this is simply a post intended to act as a day in the life of a couple on a cute date. All photos included are taken by ourselves and as such the rights for these images our ours, no links, brands, or companies mentioned otherwise belong or are associated with Phantom Adventures UK. We are responsible only for this blog. Opinions are our own and not influenced by any third party source.. 

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