The record-breaking exhibit of artifacts from King Tut’s tomb that first came to San Francisco 30 years ago has returned — and it’s only gotten better with age.

“Tutankhamun and The Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” at the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, is on view until March 28, 2010. Sponsored by National Geographic, the exhibit features 50 objects, all more than 3,000 years old, from the tomb of the “Boy King.”

And this time around, it includes 80 objects from tombs of his royal predecessors, family and court officials.

 “The significance of this exhibition is that it does put Tut into a context,” said Renée Dreyfus, curator of ancient art and interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums, which include the de Young. “In the previous exhibit, we only learned that he was a boy king, and he was surrounded with some of the most beautiful objects that Egypt has ever created.”

Tut died at 18 or 19 in the ninth year of his reign — 1323 B.C. British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered his treasure-filled tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings in 1922.

And now Northern California’s Egyptophiles can see that very expedition through the photographs of Harry Burton — who documented the Carter expedition — as the de Young exhibit boasts no less than 38 of Burton’s photographs.

But photos of the tomb’s original excavation are only the beginning of the exhibit’s offerings.

Among the exhibit’s spectacular objects are the gilded funerary mask and coffin of Tjuya, a non-royal in-law of Amenhotep III. The wooden coffin is elaborately decorated with spells and divine imagery.

An ornate piece of jewelry, described as a “coronation pectoral,” with a scarab at its center, is also part of the exhibit.

Meant to protect its wearer from evil, the jewelry is made of precious metals, semiprecious stone, and glass, and decorated with solar and lunar designs.

A cylindrical cosmetic jar, made of calcite, ivory and gold, with a reclining lion on its lid, was designed for more everyday use.

Other not-to-be-missed artifacts include the face from a statue of famously beautiful Queen Nefertiti, a painted wood torso of Tut, a gold and precious stone inlaid “coffinette” that contained Tut’s mummified internal organs, and an inlaid board game that accompanied the young king on his journey to the afterlife.

Sheila Riley is a freelance writer in San Francisco.