Close Shave for King Tut: Burial Mask Damaged

By Bethany Holtz on February 15, 2015

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Jacqueline Rodriguez
Seen above a man reattaches the blue-and-gold braided beard onto King Tut’s burial mask after it was accidentally detached. Epoxy glue was used, resulting in further damage.

You know that feeling when you break something really expensive or valuable and your gut reaction is to hide the damage? Well, it turns out that museum workers at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum know exactly how that feels. While adjusting the lighting in the case containing the famous King Tutankhamen burial mask, workers accidentally knocked off the long braided beard and then hastily repaired the damage with epoxy glue, causing even more damage.

After days of denial and months of cover-ups, officials at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo finally admitted that the reported damage was factually accurate. Sometime during the summer of 2014, the world’s most famous archaeological relic was unintentionally damaged after a moment of unfortunate mishandling.

The damage caused by the break was regrettably compounded by a thoughtless decision to repair the break with an epoxy adhesive, a move that has created more attention than the original accident. (As history has shown, the cover-up is usually far worse than the actual crime in terms of consequences). Experts posit that the use of epoxy was inappropriate for a 3,300-year-old funeral mask and might potentially result in permanent damage.

Curators at the museum report that the decision to reattach the blue and gold beard with epoxy was made in an attempt to keep the mask on display. The Egyptian Museum is a central fixture in Egypt’s tourism industry and King Tut’s mask is one of the museum’s most renowned pieces. Unfortunately, this incident has placed the museum at the center of a scandal now in the news in countries around the globe.

Dr. Gharib Sonbol, director of the Central Repair and Restoration Administration at the Egyptian Museum, has defended the repair job and insists that the museum handled the situation properly. Yet, the thin yellow epoxy glue line now visible between the beard and the rest of the mask suggest that his statements are skewed at best.

Photo Credit: Huffington Post
A thin line of epoxy glue from the faulty repair job is now visible.

This is not the first time the beard has been reported to have become disjointed from the rest of the mask. When Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered the mask in the Valley of King’s in 1922, the beard was separated from the boy-king’s chin. The beard and the mask remained detached until curators joined the pieces with adhesive in 1941. This adhesive has likely weakened over the decades, increasing the risk of this unfortunate incident.

A plan to repair the epoxy fix is now being developed by a team of conservators, archeologists and natural scientists. German restoration specialist Christian Eckmann shared with the Associated Press that the restoration effort will be a delicate process. He stated, “It has to be done very carefully, but it is reversible.”

News of this scandal comes as an especially hard blow after the Egyptian government banned the display of the collection outside the country following reports that a small statue of the ancient funerary goddess Serket was allegedly damaged during a tour of the collection in West Berlin in 1980. The gilded mask has remained on display since the incident but will likely be moved to a conservation lab for repair soon.

Egyptian museum officials have learned in an embarrassing way that the legendary “curse of the mummy” for moving King Tut from his ancient burial site apparently lives on.

Information gathered from: History.com (http://www.history.com/news/beard-on-king-tuts-mask-snapped-off-glued-back-on), the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/23/king-tuts-mask-worlds-most-famous-archaeological-relic-has-been-irreversably-damaged/), and CBS News (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/king-tut-flap-egypt-museum-assailed-for-botched-repair-job-on-king-tuts-beard/).

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