Dozens of ancient Egyptian artifacts from the newly discovered lost city of Aten—built under King Amenhotep III in the 1300s B.C.E.—will debut in the United States this summer at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The exhibition, titled “Treasures of the Pharaohs,” features 130 objects spanning over 2,000 years of Egyptian history, including 20 relics from the Aten site itself. The show premiered in Rome in November 2024 and is organized with loans from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Luxor Museum, with a catalog by famed archaeologist Zahi Hawass.
The exhibition matters because it brings to American audiences the first major display of finds from Aten, a remarkably preserved ancient city often called “the Pompeii of Egypt,” offering rare insights into daily life, governance, and religious beliefs of the pharaonic era. The de Young has a strong track record with Egyptian blockbusters—its 2022 show “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” was its most popular since 2019—underscoring the enduring public fascination with ancient Egypt and the cultural diplomacy of heritage loans between nations.