(AP) As the saying goes, King Tut wasn't born in Texas, but he got here as soon as he could. In this case, it took 33 centuries.

But Friday's arrival of "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" at the Dallas Museum of Art got a warm greeting from the locals.

Wearing a striped King Tut headdress, Lynn Jones of Mesquite got in line at 6:30 a.m. – an hour and a half before the doors opened.

A self-described history buff, Ms. Jones said she bought her Dallas tickets as soon as she heard they were available and had seen the exhibit two previous times in Los Angeles.

"When I saw it in L.A., it was great," she said. "I loved it."

Her favorite part of the exhibit was "a gold coffin," she said. "It's just amazing that this stuff is still around."

Aaron Scrimager, 33, a Navy diver, arrived a few hours behind Ms. Jones, but he had farther to travel, from Japan. He came to the show with Rie Yoshimaru, 33, who now lives in Australia.

Mr. Scrimager said he and his family tried to attend the "Ramses the Great" exhibition at Fair Park in 1989 but could never get in.

They had no intention of missing King Tut.

"This is basically the biggest piece of history in the world," Mr. Scrimager said. "And to be able to see part of it is just amazing."

Ms. Yoshimaru noted that styles in clothing and apparel have, in her opinion, remained remarkably similar.

"Human beings really haven't changed that much," she said.

The first-day arrivals were the vanguard of what exhibit organizers hope will be 1 million visitors to the exhibit, which runs through May 17.

The DMA attendance record was set in 1979 for "Pompeii A.D. 79," with 371,000 visitors, said Jill Bernstein, museum spokeswoman.

There had been grumblings leading up to Friday's opening that advertising had been surprisingly muted for an exhibit of this magnitude, and first-morning crowds appeared light. None of the anticipated traffic problems developed, and Dallas Area Rapid Transit officials say they saw no exhibit-related increase in ridership.

But exhibit organizers insisted that early attendance had been held down on purpose.

"Things are light because we need to do a run-through and get the staff up to speed," said DMA director Bonnie Pitman.

Mark Lach, senior vice president for Arts and Exhibitions International, which is staging the exhibition, said the flow of visitors was paced at about 125 an hour Friday morning, then expanded to 300 by the end of the day.

By the weekend, he said, the flow will be increased to the maximum 500- to 600-per-hour capacity. Organizers said 150,000 tickets had been sold in advance of opening day.

Referring to combined attendance at previous Tutankhamun shows, Mr. Lach said, "After 5 million visitors, we know how to stage this sucker."

At least 150 extra employees had been hired at the museum for the show, and by midday, Mr. Lach said the opening had gone smoothly.

The show begins with a six-minute video presentation and ends – as all good things do – with a trip through the gift shop.

There visitors could chose from an array of Tut-related merchandise, including (to name a very few) key chains, mouse pads, coffee cups, beer mugs, bobbleheads, caps, T-shirts, coloring books and finger puppets.

Among the most popular items in the first few hours were sets of plastic miniature mummies, said Dionsha Cooper, the shop's retail supervisor.

"I sold eight of them to one person," she said. "But anything that's cute, you're going to sell."

Wes Solomon, 30, of Addison, who had just visited the exhibit with some co-workers, carried a small bag of loot.

"I bought some earrings for my girlfriend and a shot glass for myself," he said.

Beyond the artifacts, he said, he was most impressed with the presentation of the exhibit.

"The new technology was really awesome," he said, "particularly the way they projected the mummy onto a sarcophagus with light."

Though the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau said it had targeted a largely regional audience for the show, Friday's opening carried a surprisingly international flavor – many guests were in Dallas to visit family members.

Cleys Williams, 43, a homemaker who lives in northwest Dallas, is from Venezuela. Her sister-in-law, Patricia Kiss, 40, was visiting from Caracas. They were mesmerized by the gilded coffin of Tjuya, one of the larger and more impressive pieces.

"I'm intrigued by the culture and their belief in the afterlife," Ms. Williams said. "I'm taken by all the little symbols and what they mean. It's so amazing, so detailed and colorful. No machine could do this."

A few viewers expressed disappointment that only 130 of the objects were on view. They wanted to see more.

"I was disappointed they didn't have the death mask," perhaps the most famous of the Tutankhamun artifacts, said Courtney Carr, 17, who was on a trip with her art class from Plano Senior High School.

But she was delighted with what she did see.

"The jewelry," she said, "was really cool."