His face is one of the most recognisable in the world and now the golden mask of Tutankhamun is receiving a much needed make-over.
German specialists are restoring the 3,300 year-old mask to remove a crust of dried glue on the beard of the legendary boy pharaoh’s funerary headdress.
The mask’s beard fell off after it was knocked during cleaning at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in August 2014 and it was hastily repaired by workers.
German restoration specialists are restoring the 3,300 year-old mask of Tutankhamun (shown) to remove a crust of dried glue on the beard of the legendary boy pharaoh’s funerary headdress
At the time, the blue and gold braided beard was glued back on with the wrong adhesive, damaging the priceless relic.
Christian Eckmann and Katja Broschat, who are specialists in glass and metal restoration, are now painstakingly removing this glue.
Tutankhamun’s face (shown) is one of the most famous in the world – the death mask is shown
The museum where the burial mask is kept, is one of the city’s main tourist sites, but has come under fire because some ancient wooden sarcophagi lie unprotected from the public, while pharaonic burial shrouds mounted on walls crumble behind open glass cases.
Three of the museum’s creators gave different differing accounts of when the incident occurred last year.
They also could not agree whether the beard was knocked off by accident while the mask’s case was being cleaned, or if was removed because it was loose.
They did agree, however, that orders came from above to fix it quickly and that an inappropriate adhesive was used.
One anonymous curator said: ‘Unfortunately he used a very irreversible material – epoxy has a very high property for attaching and is used on metal or stone but I think it wasn’t suitable for an outstanding object like Tutankhamun’s golden mask.’
‘The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material.’
Before the vital restoration by the German experts, there was an unsightly gap between Tutankhamun’s face and beard, which was not there before the accident.
Another museum curator, who was present at the time of the repair, said that epoxy had dried on the face of the boy king’s mask and that a colleague used a spatula to remove it, leaving scratches.
The mask’s beard fell off after it was knocked during cleaning at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in August 2014 and was hastily repaired by workers. The blue and gold braided beard was glued back on with the wrong adhesive, damaging the priceless relic. The restoration process to undo the damage is shown above
Katja Broschat and Christian Eckmann (pictured in the foreground left and right), are restoration specialists in glass and metal and are now painstakingly removing the glue from the mask (shown)
The first curator, who inspects the artefact regularly, confirmed the scratches and said it was clear that they had been made by a tool used to scrape off the epoxy.
Egypt’s tourist industry, once a pillar of the economy, has yet to recover from three years of tumult following the 2011 uprising that toppled long time autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Museums and the opening of new tombs are part of plans to revive the industry.
But authorities have made no significant improvements to the Egyptian Museum since its construction in 1902.
Plans to move the Tutankhamun exhibit to its new home in the Grand Egyptian Museum scheduled to open in 2018 have yet to be released.
The burial mask, discovered by British archaeologists Howard Carter and George Herbert in 1922, triggered worldwide interest in archaeology and ancient Egypt when it was unearthed along with Tutankhamun’s nearly intact tomb.
The museum where the where the burial mask is kept (stock image shown above) is one of the city’s main tourist sites, but some ancient wooden sarcophagi lie unprotected from the public, while pharaonic burial shrouds mounted on walls crumble behind open glass cases
‘The mask (shown in restoration) should have been taken to the conservation lab but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material,’ one curator admitted
THE BRIEF REIGN OF BOY KING TUTANKHAMUN
The mummified and embalmed face of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, is pictured above. It is on display in a climate controlled case in his tomb at the Valley of the Kings
Tutankhamun was an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled from 1332BC to 1323BC after taking the throne at the age of nine or ten.
The son of Akhenaten, when he became king, he married his half-sister, Ankhesenpaaten.
However, his reign was short-lived; he died at the age of 19 and is believed to have suffered from scoliosis, a condition which means the spine is curved.
He remains one of the best known pharaohs and there has been widespread research about his life and health following the discovery of his tomb.
In 1907, Lord Carnarvon George Herbert asked English archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter to supervise excavations in the Valley of the Kings.
On 4 November 1922, Carter’s group found steps that led to Tutankhamun’s tomb, which would eventually lead to what was the most complete ancient Egyptian tomb ever discovered.
He spent several months cataloguing the antechamber before opening the burial chamber and discovering the sarcophagus in February the following year.