Scores of reporters flocked to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for Thursday's media preview of Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, which looks to be one of the museum’s biggest exhibitions in decades.

Before opening the doors to the show, MFAH curator Frances Marzio, who helped arrange the exhibit, led a series of brief speeches from curators and financial supporters. Mayor Annise Parker also made a special introduction, which proved to be one of the highlights.

“I was in New Orleans when I saw the last show,” Parker recalled of the blockbuster Tutankhamun exhibit that toured the United States in the late 1970s. “I still remember the experience and am thrilled that the MFAH is bringing that same experience to Houston.

“This show is sure to have a lasting impact on the city, so come early, come again and share the exhibit with friends — especially those from a younger generation.”

Parker, who holds an anthropology degree from Rice University, closed with a light-hearted joke about the troubles of finding work as an anthropology major.

Mark Lach — senior vice president of Arts & Exhibitions International, which organized the show with National Geographic — followed with a speech that drove home the reality of this touring Tut exhibit as it reaches its final show in Seattle next year.

“When the tour ends,” he said, “these objects will be placed in the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), where I believe they will remain forever.” The new museum, also called the Giza Museum, will open in 2013 to be the largest archaeological museum in the world.

On view upstairs at the MFAH’s Caroline Wiess Law Building, Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs divides itself into two distinct parts. The first half attempts to situate the boy king within the larger spectrum of pharaonic rule in ancient Egypt, while the second focuses solely on artifacts in Tutankhamun’s tomb.

The initial group of exhibits look at the society into which Tutankhamun was born in 1341 BCE. The son of Akhenaten and Akhenaten’s sister (as revealed by National Geographic in 2010), King Tut ascended the throne at the age of nine or 10, inheriting many of the administrative issues brought about by his father’s abandonment of polytheistic worship.

Massive statuary and reliefs from Tutankhamun’s precursors fill the first few galleries, offering a glimpse into the complex social order and religious practices of the 18th Dynasty, which spanned from 1596 to 1292 BCE. A rare statue of Tut’s father Akhenaten, originally called Amenhotep IV, holds courts near end of the dynastic history portion of the show.

Unearthed in 1922 by a young worker on a dig directed by British archaeologist Howard Carter, Tutankhamun’s tomb encompassed four full chambers, each of which gets a dedicated room at the end of the exhibition: The antechamber, the annex, the treasury and finally, the burial chamber. Evoking a sense of the original tomb, the rooms are considerably darker than the rest of the show with lights shining directly onto Tut’s treasures.

In the first room, CultureMap ran into gallery owner and journalist Lloyd Gite, who was covering the exhibition for his TV show Straight Talk with Lloyd Gite, airing Saturdays at 7 a.m. on KUBE-TV Ch. 57.

“When I visited the Valley of Kings 20 years ago, you could view the main burial chamber,” said Gite, who also runs the Gite Gallery at 2024 East Alabama. “The four walls were covered in images that showed people of varying skin colors. We often forget that ancient Egypt was a distinctly multi-racial society.

“It’s wonderful to get a sense of the full tomb now.”

Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs opens at the Caroline Wiess Law Building at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Sunday and will be on view through April 15, 2012. Tickets can be pre-purchased at 888-931-4TUT or on the exhibition website.