A Little Culture

Last weekend, we went to Atlanta for a dose of culture. Manda Panda pointed out that the Atlanta Civic Center was hosting the King Tut Exhibit while the High Museum of Art was displaying the Chinese Terracotta Soldiers down the street. She was able to purchase tickets in advance for us at < half price!

The King Tut exhibit, going on in Atlanta through May, was pretty good. It featured a good movie on the discoveries of the mummified Pharaohs of Egypt and the 1923 discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamum, as well as a ton of artifacts from within the tomb and all over Egypt. It was pretty interesting.

As most people know, King Tut became king when he was around 8 or 9 years old and died mysteriously around age 19. What I was most surprised by was the state of his tomb. It wasn't a grand pyramid, but a hole in the ground comprised of three or four small rooms with items stacked up in piles in them. It could have been a different tomb than where he was originally buried, meant to protect his tomb from looters. It is amazing that it avoided discovery and looting, and that it was found and emptied shortly before the tomb collapsed.


My favorite exhibit was the Chinese Terracotta Soldiers display. It was in the High Museum of Art (get there early, or go on a weekday... it was packed!) - which I could have spent several more hours at perusing the other galleries (your ticket gives you access to the entire museum). This display will be in Atlanta until April 19th, and I would highly recommend it. By the way... if the line for the exhibit is really long, you can get to it by going through the Art Museum's adjacent/attached building instead of waiting with everyone else to take the elevator.

The Terracotta Army was very interesting. China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, had a whole clay city built for him to govern when he died. It consisted of over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, 150 cavalry horses, clay animals, minstrels, acrobats, court officials, mercury rivers, a whole palace complex, and the tomb of the emporer in the middle. The whole complex covers a huge area, estimated at 2 square miles, and has over 600 pits with buried clay figures.

Matt's uncle has a jade replica of one of the Chinese generals (only nine have been excavated) in his home. We made friends with him this summer.

The complex was built around 210 BC and discovered in 1974. The excavators have been working for over three decades and have yet to unearth a lot of the items. The tomb has not been excavated yet and is believed to remain largely intact.

Check out the High Museum's info on the history of the tomb.