Exhibition: Tutankhamun unaffordable for Australia

Sydney Morning Herald (Catharine Munro and Jason Koutsoukis)

A BLOCKBUSTER exhibition of King Tutankhamun will not tour Australia because museums cannot afford it.

Egypt wants to send the world's most successful tour of artefacts from the tomb of the boy-king but offers to host the exhibition have been underwhelming, to say the least.

The director of the Australian Museum, Frank Howarth, said the show's $10 million price tag and its size were too big for Australian institutions to handle.

Zahi Hawass, who is Egypt's Vice-Minister of Culture and secretary-general of its Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the exhibition could travel to Australia early in 2012 if a museum was willing to host it.

''I want to see King Tut go to Australia,'' Dr Hawass told the Herald in his office in Cairo last week. ''I have been planning for it to go to Australia but no one from Australia has asked me at all.''