De Young Opens ‘Treasures of the Pharaohs’ With 130 Egyptian Antiquities on August 1

The de Young Museum opens Treasures of the Pharaohs on Saturday, August 1, 2026, and keeps it up through January 31, 2027. The show brings 130 ancient Egyptian antiquities to Golden Gate Park, all on loan from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Luxor Museum, and it is the exhibition’s United States debut.

The objects span roughly 3,000 years, from ancient Egypt’s origins around 3100 B.C.E. through the Third Intermediate Period that ended around 655 B.C.E. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco have arranged them across six thematic sections in eight galleries, moving from the idea of the pharaoh and the officials who served him to Egyptian religion, daily life, and beliefs about death.

The Golden City section

One section is given over to 20 objects from an ancient settlement near Luxor that archaeologists uncovered in 2020. The site, sometimes called the Golden City, was built under Amenhotep III, the grandfather of Tutankhamun, and it has produced everyday items rather than royal treasure. The de Young’s group includes a stone mill, glass vessels, and limestone statues.

Renee Dreyfus, curator of ancient art at the Fine Arts Museums, organized the San Francisco presentation. The Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass wrote the catalog. The exhibition had its global premiere in Rome in November 2025 before traveling to San Francisco.

Planning a visit

The de Young is at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive in Golden Gate Park and is open Tuesday through Sunday. Treasures of the Pharaohs requires a timed special-exhibition ticket that is separate from general admission; dates and prices are on the museum’s website.

The de Young has drawn large crowds for Egyptian shows before. Its 2022 exhibition Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs drew 312,114 visitors, the museum’s most-attended show since 2019, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Across town, the de Young’s sister museum, the Legion of Honor, is showing Miro: Proof Against All through July 2027.

Details come from the de Young’s exhibition page. The San Francisco dates were also reported by Artnet News.

Photo: Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.