'Treasures of King Tut' replicas come to home show

Southern California Home Improvement & Landscaping Show

What: "The Treasures of King Tut" exhibition of replicas; also, displays on remodeling, landscaping, home improvements, solar power, insulating window coverings, energy-efficient roofing and stucco, flooring, spas, saunas, outdoor kitchens, patio furniture, pavers, artificial turf and other home products and services.

When: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and March 13, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 14.

Where: Hall C, Long Beach Convention Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd.

Admission: Free.

Information: 800-999-5400 or http://www.longbeachhomeshow.net/.

When you open a new theme park attraction, probably the worst thing that could happen is if terrorists show up in the area and start shooting at tourists.

Everything was going well when Tarek Ragab opened his replica of King Tut's tomb in the Pharaonic Village theme park in Cairo on Sept. 26, 1992. Many governmental dignitaries were there, including Egyptian first lady Suzanne Mubarak.

Even more important, thousands of members of ASTA (American Society of Travel Agents), the world's largest organization of travel professionals, were there for their annual convention.

"One week later, the fanatics started to shoot at tourists in upper Egypt," said Ragab in a phone interview from Toronto, Canada. "They'd shoot at the Nile cruises, at the trains and at the buses.

"My uncle, Dr. Hassan Ragab, who was the owner of the Pharaonic Village and the man who financed this project, came and told me, `Tarek, you cost me 5 million pounds to build the tomb, and now tourists will not come to Egypt. How can I get my money back?"'

Ragab laughs about his uncle's question now, but at the time it was a deadly serious necessity that was the mother of an inventive idea.

"I told him, `Dr. Ragab, if the tourists will not come to us, we will go to the tourists. We will take our replicas and we will display them outside of Egypt.' He said, `It's a good idea, go ahead."'

That's why beginning Friday you can see "The Treasures of King Tut" as part of the Southern California Home Improvement & Landscaping Show in Hall C of the Long Beach Convention Center. And the whole show, including the replicas of King Tutankhamun's treasures, is admission-free.

For the Ragab family, the King Tut replicas were an extension of a family business built on antiquity.

"My uncle and father brought the papyrus industry back to life after it disappeared," Ragab said. "So we have a papyrus plantation and a factory for producing papyrus in Cairo. I started working in this branch in 1970, and I spent a lot of time in the Egyptian Museum and in Luxor and Aswan.

"The Treasures of King Tut" is part of the Southern California Home Improvement & Landscaping Show in Hall C of the Long Beach Convention Center.

"After we were the only place producing papyrus for 10 years because we had a patent, a lot of the workers who worked for our company started to make the papyrus in their own factories and competed with us, so I started thinking of doing a new project."

That new project was the Pharaonic Village, an Egyptian version of Colonial Williamsburg, with actors demonstrating the arts, crafts and daily life of ancient Egyptians.

"At the beginning, I found a lot of difficulty convincing the tourist companies to come to the village, because they had to spend at least half a day for the tour and the gift shops and restaurants," Ragab said. "Most of the companies spent two nights in Cairo and then they had to fly to Luxor. And they told me the Egyptian Museum and Old Cairo were more important."

Ragab was watching a movie on television of Howard Carter discovering King Tut's tomb in 1922, when the idea of the replica tomb came to him as a way to enhance his theme park.

The theme park still exists in Cairo and is now on the itinerary of most tours, but after the rocky beginning for the replica Tut tomb, Ragab ordered the manufacture of an additional set of 300 of the most important artifacts, and the first place he displayed them was at the Tokyo International Trade Fair in May 1993.

After that, Egyptian officials asked him to bring the show to the Canadian National Exhibition, an annual fair in Toronto. Except for a limited exhibition in Hong Kong, the Tut replicas have stayed in the United States and Canada ever since.

An exhibit called "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" is on display through March 28 at the de Young Museum of San Francisco as part of an American tour, and admission is around $30. It contains some of the same original artifacts that were such a hit all over the world when they went on tour from 1960 through 1980. After that, Egyptian officials decided the exhibit would not leave Egypt again.

"But Egypt is building now the largest museum in the world beside the pyramids at Giza," said Ragab. "In 2004, to raise funds, they agreed to send some treasures to be displayed in a tour of the United States."

The "real" tour does not include King Tut's solid gold death mask because the Egyptian government has decided it's too valuable and fragile to travel. Ragab has the death mask, but like his other replicas, it's gold leaf.

"In fact, of the pieces of Tutankhamun, only the mask was made of solid gold," he said. "All the other stuff discovered was gold leaf."

The material under the original gold plating is wood and plaster and various complex combinations of the two, Ragab said, but his replicas are made with modern materials such as fibrous glass and resins.

In between shows they are stored in semi-trailer trucks, and Ragab tailors the exhibits to the venue. For shows in convention centers, as in Long Beach, where there is only one day to put the display up and one day to tear it down, there are about 100 pieces. For larger shows, there are some bonuses, such as a copy of the Rosetta stone, which Ragab points out is in England, not Egypt.

The Long Beach show does include someone who wasn't in King Tut's tomb, Queen Nefertiti.

"The original head of Nefertiti is in a Berlin museum, but of course she will be there," said Ragab. "After all, she was Tutankhamun's stepmother."

Al Rudis 562-499-1255 alrudis@yahoo.com