The Tutankhamun Collection at the Grand Egyptian Museum — Complete 2026 Guide

British archaeologist Howard Carter spent six unsuccessful seasons searching the Valley of the Kings for Tutankhamun’s tomb before his team uncovered the first step of KV62 on 4 November 1922. Three weeks later, Carter chipped a hole through the sealed antechamber door and held up a candle. His patron Lord Carnarvon asked what he could see, and Carter’s reply, ‘wonderful things,’ became the most-quoted sentence in archaeology. The tomb contained more than 5,000 items, and the cataloguing and removal took ten years.

KV62 survived intact because of three accidents of history. Tutankhamun was a minor, short-reigned pharaoh whose burial was smaller and less ostentatious than his predecessors. The tomb of Ramses VI was cut into the cliff directly above it a century later, and the workers’ huts and debris buried the entrance to KV62 under metres of rock. Tomb robbers entered twice in antiquity but only reached the outer chambers before being interrupted. By the time European archaeologists arrived in the 1800s, KV62’s location had been completely forgotten.

From 1922 to the 1930s, the artifacts were catalogued at the tomb itself and the Theban necropolis. In the 1930s and 1940s, they were transferred to the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square in Cairo, where they remained for over 80 years, though only a portion was ever on public display, with the bulk in storage. Between 2020 and 2024, the entire collection was carefully moved to climate-controlled storage at the Grand Egyptian Museum on the Giza Plateau, in preparation for the November 2025 grand opening of the dedicated Tutankhamun galleries.

The GEM is the first museum in history to display the complete Tutankhamun find together in one space. The Tahrir display had perhaps 1,700 of the 5,398 catalogued objects out at any time; the GEM has the lot. The galleries occupy roughly 7,000 square metres of the upper floor, and the layout, chronological by Carter’s excavation sequence, lets you walk through the tomb’s antechamber, annexe, burial chamber, and treasury arrangements as they were originally found.

The most famous object in Egyptian archaeology. Eleven kilograms of solid gold, inlaid with lapis lazuli, carnelian, quartz, obsidian, and turquoise glass. The mask was placed directly over Tutankhamun’s mummified head and bears the protective cobra and vulture of the dual crown. At the GEM it is displayed at eye level in a dedicated environmentally sealed case so you can see the inlay work up close, including the cosmetic lines around the eyes and the subtle modelling of the lips.

Tutankhamun’s body lay inside three coffins, each fitted inside the next like Russian dolls. The outermost coffin is gilded wood; the middle coffin is gilded wood with semi-precious stone inlays; the innermost coffin is solid gold, weighing approximately 110 kilograms, making it one of the largest single gold objects in the ancient world. All three are now displayed side by side at the GEM so you can see how they fit together.

Tutankhamun’s mummified organs were stored in four miniature gold coffinettes that mirror the design of his full coffins, each inside a calcite jar bearing the king’s name, all four jars protected inside a gilded wooden canopic shrine guarded by four protective goddesses (Isis, Nephthys, Neith, and Selket). The shrine’s gilded statuettes of the goddesses are some of the most quietly beautiful objects in the collection.

Carter’s team found six dismantled chariots in the tomb, four ceremonial gold-leafed chariots, one lighter hunting chariot, and one stripped-down everyday vehicle. The chariots have been reassembled and conserved over the past two decades and are now displayed in a dedicated gallery at the GEM. The hunting chariot is the lightest known from ancient Egypt and shows wear patterns consistent with actual use.

A gilded wooden throne with inlaid figures of Tutankhamun and his wife Ankhesenamun on the backrest, depicted in the warm Amarna-period style with the rays of the Aten falling between them. The throne is one of the most personal objects in the collection, the relaxed posture of the two figures suggests it may have predated Tutankhamun’s restoration of the traditional Amun cult, dating from the brief Atenist transition.

Three ritual beds were arranged in the antechamber of KV62, each carved as a different sacred animal, a lion (representing the goddess Mehet), a cow (representing Mehet-Weret or Hathor), and a hippopotamus-crocodile hybrid (representing Ammit, the devourer of unworthy hearts). The beds were used in the funerary ritual to transport the king to the afterlife.

Two life-size black-and-gold wooden statues stood guard at the sealed entrance to Tutankhamun’s burial chamber, depicting the king in two slightly different aspects, one wearing the nemes headcloth, the other the khat. The statues were positioned to face each other across the doorway. Their dark skin tone, reserved in Egyptian art for the deified dead, marks them out from the gilded statuary elsewhere in the tomb.

Carter recorded more than 200 individual pieces of jewellery in the tomb, pectorals laid out across Tutankhamun’s mummy, rings stacked on his fingers, gold-and-glass amulets layered between the wrappings. The pectorals include the famous Boat of Horus pectoral with its lunar disc and scarab beetle imagery, and a pair of golden-vulture pectorals symbolising upper and lower Egypt.

The tomb contained 130 walking sticks, including several that show wear consistent with Tutankhamun actually using them, evidence that the young king may have had a foot deformity. The ostrich-feather ceremonial fan from the antechamber is one of the rare cases where the original feathers (largely decomposed) and the gold staff have both survived.

Four complete game boards were buried with Tutankhamun, including elaborate inlaid Senet sets and the rarer Twenty Squares game (a forerunner of Egyptian board games). Senet was both a game and a metaphor for the soul’s journey through the underworld, the gaming pieces, made of glazed faience and ivory, are displayed at the GEM with explanatory diagrams showing how the games were played.

Two ceremonial trumpets, one bronze, one silver, were found in the tomb’s annexe. They were played for a BBC broadcast in 1939, making them some of the few ancient instruments whose sound has been recorded. At the GEM the trumpets are displayed alongside a small audio station where you can hear the 1939 recording.

A solid-gold pectoral featuring a large scarab beetle (representing Khepri, the rising sun god) carved from yellow-green Libyan desert glass, a natural glass formed approximately 28 million years ago by a meteorite impact in the Western Desert. The pectoral is one of the most scientifically remarkable objects in the collection because the desert glass itself predates human civilization.

The Tutankhamun galleries occupy roughly 7,000 square metres of the upper floor of the museum, accessed via the Grand Staircase. The layout is chronological by Carter’s excavation sequence, you enter through a reconstruction of the antechamber arrangement, move through the annexe contents, then into the burial chamber displays culminating in the mask and innermost coffin, and end at the treasury contents including the canopic shrine. The whole route is roughly a kilometre of walking and takes 90 minutes to two hours to do properly.

Lighting is kept deliberately low to protect the gold leaf and the painted wood from UV damage, and the temperature and humidity are tightly controlled. Photography is permitted in most galleries (phones and small cameras only, no flash) but is restricted in the gallery containing the funerary mask itself. Two to three hours minimum is what we recommend for the Tutankhamun galleries alone, on top of whatever time you allow for the rest of the museum.

The Tutankhamun galleries may be bundled into your standard GEM ticket or may require a small supplement, depending on the day’s pricing policy. The photography permit applies the same way, if you have paid for camera access in the main museum, it typically extends to the Tutankhamun galleries (with the exception of the mask gallery itself). For the full ticket breakdown including current 2026 prices, opening hours, and how to buy, see our GEM tickets and entry guide.