'Blockbuster' Exhibit On Ancient Greece Coming To Field Museum In Fall 2015

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Coming up in the fall of next year, Chicago will host the finest display of ancient Greek artifacts ever seen in the Western Hemisphere.

The usually reserved Field Museum President Richard Lariviere calls it a "blockbuster," noting the 500 objects coming are so precious they're insured by the U.S. government through the National Endowment for the Arts.

Lariviere says security are munching aspirin while preparing transport of the artifacts that were already ancient long before Athens started.

Curator William Parkinson says it'll tell a story.

"As humans, we evolved to live in small hunting-gathering groups to have more or less egalitarian forms of economic and political organization. That gets turned on its head during the Bronze Age in Europe with these early bureaucratic states, first on the island of Crete with the Minoan culture and then on the Greek mainland.

The exhibit "The Greeks: From Agamemnon to Alexander the Great" will open in November of 2015 and will include the hammered gold mask of Agamemnon, and a sculpture of Alexander the Great.