It was Tut time in the Big Apple yesterday.
A line snaked halfway up a West Side block, as people eagerly awaited the opening of a Times Square exhibit of artifacts from the young king’s tomb.
“Seeing [ancient] Egypt in New York City is cool,” said Alex Moffson, 12, of Manhattan, as he and his mom walked around the “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” show at the Discovery Times Square Exposition on West 44th Street.
“The part that I liked the most is when they tell you who King Tut’s relatives were through DNA samples,” Alex said, as visitors marveled at 50 amazing objects, including gilded and gleaming funerary ornaments and jewelry from the boy king’s tomb, and more than 80 other items from the sarcophaguses of his ancestors.
David Elmsley, 80, of Manhattan, a former museum curator in Pittsburgh, gazed admiringly at a collar necklace that had been worn by the teen pharaoh, who died when he was about 19 some 3,000 years ago.
“The detail of the work is just magnificent,” Elmsley said. “The use of the semiprecious stones and gold and glass and carnelian is so complex. You’d think this was made in the 1920s, not just discovered in the 1920s. It looks so art deco.”
The exhibition’s opening day yesterday was sold out, a spokeswoman said. The tickets — $27.50 for adults, $25.50 for seniors and $17.50 for kids ages 4 through 12 — are timed.
The ancient royal is making his encore here 30 years after many of his treasures were displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sparking national Tutmania — capped by Steve Martin’s hit comedy tune “King Tut.”
“I had to come today because I gave away my tickets 30 years ago,” said Theresa Licursi, 50, of Long Island, examining the 3-D replica of King Tut’s mummy fashioned with the aid of CT scans.
“The mummy was cool and grotesque at the same time,” she said. “You could tell he walked with a cane. His knee looked so diseased.”
Brandon La-Sala, 10, of Switzerland was drawn to the stunning mini-coffin made of gold and inlaid with gems that once held Tut’s mummified liver.
“It was very colorful,” he said. “I like the clash between the blue and the gold.”
Kristan Pearson, 14, of New Hampshire, who is such an Ancient Egypt buff that she is teaching herself hieroglyphics, said she liked the gilded coffin of Tut’s great-grandmother, Tjuya.
“She seemed like she was a really nice person,” she said.
As for King Tut, “everything about the content of [his] tomb is beautiful, even his dagger,” she said.