Howard Carter, an Egyptologist from England, searched for the ancient tomb of King Tutankhamen for seven long years. He knew it was located somewhere in an area known as the Valley of the Kings, along Egypt's Nile River, close to the modern city of Luxor.

The tombs of other Egyptian pharaohs had been accounted for, most of them pillaged of their artifacts centuries ago. Carter feared the tomb of King Tut, who died over 3,000 years ago at the age of 19, would eventually be found in the same condition. He labored in the desert through seven winters of 90-degree heat, followed by summers with temperatures averaging 120 degrees, searching for the tomb of the boy king.

Finally, in 1923, Carter uncovered the sealed tomb, composed of a number of different chambers, filled to the brim with the original and priceless treasures placed inside when King Tut died in 1346 B.C. Carter was said to exclaim, at the time, that the antiquities within the tomb were simply beyond imagination &#8220and everywhere the glint of gold."

I was able to see some of those beautiful treasures recently on a trip to the Field Museum of History in Chicago. On loan from Egypt, the King Tut artifacts, displayed in a special exposition currently at the museum, comprise only a small fraction of what was inside the tomb. What is in Chicago now, though, is still very impressive. There may not be a greater collection of gold in the United States at this moment, outside of Ft. Knox!

Individual audiotapes with personal earphones were available as people toured the exhibit, and I walked around for several hours listening to Egyptian actor Omar Sharif explain a lot of back-story on the King Tut items I was viewing.

There were many vessels and bowls and utensils King Tut's subjects thought he would need in the afterlife. There were small, painted boats to carry him &#8220to the beyond." There were chairs and small cabinets. There were so many gold statues, there was gold jewelry and there was a stunning, simple, hand-made gold crown. There was just gold, as Carter said, &#8220everywhere."

I was doubtful the items on display in Chicago would include the famous gold death mask - so much identified with King Tut - and, indeed, it did not. I am told that, for security reasons, it very rarely leaves Egypt. Still, it was just a wonderful exhibit, which I enjoyed immensely.

Also enjoyable to me during a two-day stay in the windy city were:

-- A shopping trip to Water Tower Place and the 'Magnificent Mile' stores along Michigan Avenue (I only bought lunch, homemade caramel corn and some white tea - hard to come by, as it is only picked two days of the year in China!)

--A visit to Lou Malnatti's, my personal favorite pizza in the entire world!

--A trip to Second City, Chicago's own training ground for young comedians who hope to make it to Saturday Night Live in New York City.

Some of my 'not so favorite things' about the trip were:

--The total inability to access our hotel when we arrived, because Allstate Insurance was crashing a car on the street in front of it! On purpose!! Allstate was filming new television commercials, we were told, and had already driven an auto off the Marina Towers (across the street from our hotel) into the Chicago River before we showed up!

--The unbelievable difficulty getting in and out of the city because literally all east-west expressways are under extensive construction. We thought we would breeze into downtown Chicago on a Sunday afternoon. Wrong! Even when someone who lives in Chicago personally directed us around much of the roadwork, it still took twice as long as usual to exit the metro area because of the widespread and massive construction areas.

The time wasted on the road was nothing like Howard Carter's seven year long search for King Tut's Tomb, but all the delays, detours and traffic jams getting in and out of Chicago made me continue to love living in the 'country' and just visiting the city!