King Tutankhamun’s astonishing throne glows today as it did in the 1920s when light first fell on it within the blackness of the king’s burial chamber. Carved from wood and almost completely plated with gold, it still retains inlays of glass and colored stones. Beaten into the gold, animal heads on the front of the armrests and claw feet on the chair legs anticipate by thousands of years a furniture fashion in 18th-century England and America.