Los Angeles ? Six weeks after opening, the highly touted King Tut comeback exhibit has drawn massive crowds and more than a few complaints.

At least 200,000 visitors have viewed the ancient Egyptian treasures displayed in “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” since it opened June 16 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The sequel to the hugely successful King Tut tour in the 1970s features more than twice as many gold and jewel-encrusted artifacts from the world’s most celebrated archaeological discovery.

There are 50 objects from the pharaoh’s tomb and 70 more from the graves of his noble relatives.

All the artifacts are at least 3,300 years old.

The show has received rave reviews from many visitors.

But others have panned its overcrowding and the absence of mummies and the sacred mask of King Tut.

The mask was a highlight of the show nearly 30 years ago.

“I like the sarcophagus of Queen Tjuya, but I would like to see Tut’s mummy,” said 13-year-old Christopher Haverkamp, who studied Egyptian culture in school in Oklahoma and saw the exhibit with his family.

Museum spokeswoman Felicia Wesson said the mummy and mask of King Tut were not on display because Egyptian authorities now consider them too fragile to leave the country.

“It’s a different show than it was in the ’70s,” she said.

Accommodating the crowds

Photographer Michelle Raitano, 38, said she was impressed with the pharaoh’s furniture but complained that the crowd grew thick at the end of her tour.

To accommodate so many visitors, museum officials have expanded the hours of the exhibit. Viewing now starts at 8 a.m. and will end on some nights at 11.

“There are certain points in the exhibit where people bottleneck,” Wesson said. “We’re adding additional labels to cases, on two or three sides, to help with that.”

Officials also bought more MP3 players and earphones to provide audio explanations of the artifacts.

Thus far, 500,000 tickets have been sold for the show – a number that includes advance sales.

A final profit figure for the Los Angeles run won’t be known until the exhibit ends Nov. 15, when it moves on to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chicago and Philadelphia.

The previous exhibit ran from 1976 to ’79 and attracted 8 million visitors in seven cities.

On Thursday, a number of people took advantage of the newly added 8 a.m. tour. Many emerged wide-eyed and excited.

“The exhibit was just kind of mind-boggling,” said Maria Myers, 60, a retired financial analyst who saw the show with her 20-year-old daughter, Alexandra. “My eyes hurt. It was breathtaking.”

Myers said she particularly liked the pharaoh’s baby chair and a collection of Egyptian glassware.

Some not impressed

Cristina Maldonado, 40, who was born in Colombia and now lives in Simi Valley, was with her husband and two teenage children. They were unimpressed.

“It was very superficial,” she said. “Americans are very good with advertising, so that was better than the presentation itself.”

Maldonado said she preferred an exhibit of mummies and Egyptian artifacts she had seen at the British Museum in London.

That show is now on display about 40 miles down Interstate 5 at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.

“Mummies: Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt” is a collection of 126 objects and 14 mummies being shown for the first time in this country.

“That’s what puts our exhibit on par with LACMA’s: the mummies,” Bowers spokesman Rick Weinberg said.

Even without the publicity of the King Tut show, the exhibit has sold more than 40,000 tickets since opening in April.

“LACMA is like the New York Yankees, and we’re still like the Minnesota Twins,” Weinberg said. “The Twins are always in the run for a World Series championship, but they don’t have the payroll of the Yankees.”