The Tomb & Museum of King Tutankhamen at the Luxor Las Vegas closed its doors in June as part of a hotel exhaustive thematic overhaul; however, instead of storing all its "old stuff" in the basement, the eccentric Las Vegas hotel took the decision to donate a large portion of its items formerly exhibited as part of the hotel attractions to the Las Vegas Natural History Museum. Luxor provided the museum with more than 500 of items plus a replica of every single artifact, including Egyptian funerary sculptures, funerary masks, idols, canopic jars, ritual instruments, and maybe even a Cat mummy.

The Las Vegas Natural History Museum is currently raising funds to finance an interactive exhibition featuring the former Luxor replicas, Marilyn Gillespie, the museum's executive director, said the main objective will be the creation of an interactive space to make Egypt and its culture relevant to children and young adults.

"We want to be able to make connections for them, that this is a wonderful culture that was in the desert and, guess what, we live in the desert, too. There will be connections of the reliance on the Nile to this culture, and how important the Nile was for food and transportation and water and irrigation. Then, we also want to bring in about how, today, we are still very reliant on water, and that the original settlers of Las Vegas even came to this spot because there was water here." Gillespie said.

The exhibit will cover more than the usual funerary masks and sarcophaguses exhibited in every show, according to Gillespie, the museum wants to show expand how life was like for ordinary young people 3000 years ago.

Gillespie also said that the first step will be to restore a 4,000-square-foot patio area to house the future exhibition, the total costs of these changes are estimated at about $500,000 for the renovation and $200,000 for the exhibit itself, she said. "We are just overwhelmed by the Luxor's generosity," Gillespie said.

Even when the exhibition is only a project, Gillespie said she hopes the new exhibit will open early next year. She also expressed that the museum "had been thinking about creating an Egyptian exhibition for a long time," but Luxor's donation drastically changed the museums priorities.

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