The 10-year-long world tour of "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" exhibition will be extended for another 12 months in Japan with the aim of giving more Japanese the opportunity to admire the boy king’s treasured collection.

Upon request of the Japanese government, Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim agreed to extend the stay in Japan of the exhibition. In the past six months more than half a million Japanese have visited the exhibition and another half a million are expected by the time the exhibition closes at the end of the year.

Ibrahim told the Japanese representative that if the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) approved extending the exhibition, the Japanese side should approve new conditions. First is to review Egypt’s share in the income of the exhibition. Second is to allocate a percentage of the contribution of the exhibition’s sponsors to the MSA as well as offering the ministry a special amount of money after every 100,000 visitors to the exhibition. Giving Egypt the sole right to sell replicas of exhibited artefacts is another request, as well as allocating one dollar on every ticket to the medical insurance fund of MSA employees.   

The exhibition includes 122 artefacts carefully selected from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, 50 of them from the collection of King Tutankhamun.

Since its opening in 2002, the exhibition has travelled to Brazil, Switzerland, Germany, France, the United States and Australia.