Tutankhamun in Luxor and Cairo

The Telegraph (Nigel Tisdall)

This has been slotted into the Travel section, but it is a very good commentary about the way in which the Tutankhamun collection is displayed - both in the king's tomb itself and in the Cairo Museum. Tidsall highlights that funds from the touring exhibition, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs, are much needed for the benefit of the Cairo collections:

The pressing need for something to be done, and fast, is glaringly obvious to anyone visiting the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo. Opened in 1902, this is where most of Howard Carter's finds are still exhibited in grand halls crammed high with the glories of Ancient Egypt.

Dusty sunbeams, peeling ceilings, venerable glass cases and faded labels punched out on antique typewriters create a superbly romantic atmosphere. With its enormous mummified crocodiles, wizened corpses of long dead kings and mighty statues of bygone gods, this is the sort of museum that ought to be put in a museum.

There is no air-conditioning, lighting is far from perfect, information is sparse - yet somehow there is a mood of enchantment you just don't get in the earnest, hands-on, hyper-interactive exhibition spaces of today. . . .

Should the Egyptian Museum possess anything so fancy as a mission statement, it would surely be "display and decay". In one case, an ivory-handled royal fan with ostrich feathers lies ringed with its own dust, poignantly disintegrating.

There are more than 150,000 exhibits here, plus another 30,000 languishing in storage, so it is welcome news that plans for a new Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza Pyramids are making progress.

I've taken an extract that looks at the Cairo Museum, but the article also picks out one or two special details of some of the items, considers the impact of the new display of Tutankhamun himself in his tomb, and links to a slideshow which shows various Tutankhamun-related photographs and artefacts. The final page offers travel advice.