Mask of Tutankhamun
Some ten kilograms of gold were laid over the young pharaoh’s mummy. The mask does not show an individual but an idealised, eternal face – gold was believed to be the skin of the gods.
The vulture and the cobra on the brow stand for Upper and Lower Egypt, the two kingdoms the pharaoh ruled.
Tutankhamun became pharaoh as a child and died around 1323 BC, at about nineteen years of age. He reigned shortly after Akhenaten and restored the worship of the old gods. In his lifetime he was a fairly insignificant king. It is his almost untouched tomb that has made him famous. He was first called Tutankhaten, “living image of Aten”, but changed his name to honour the god Amun.
The tomb, KV62 in the Valley of the Kings, was discovered in November 1922 by the British archaeologist Howard Carter. The excavation was paid for by Lord Carnarvon. It took several years to empty the tomb. The mask was not found until 1925, when the innermost coffin was opened and the mummy lay there with the mask over its head and shoulders. The tomb was small for a king but full of objects: furniture, chariots, jewellery, clothing and statues. It had been lightly robbed in antiquity but was then forgotten beneath debris from a later tomb.
The mask is just over fifty centimetres tall and weighs about ten kilograms. It is made of gold inlaid with lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, quartz, obsidian and coloured glass. The pharaoh wears the nemes, the striped headcloth in gold and blue. On the brow are a vulture and a cobra, the goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet. A braided beard hangs beneath the chin, and around the neck lies a broad collar with several rows of beads. The mask is assembled from several sheets of gold that were hammered and soldered together.
The eyes are made of quartz and obsidian and give the face a lifelike expression. The eye lines are inlaid with lapis lazuli. On the back of the mask is a text from the Book of the Dead, a spell meant to protect the deceased. The gold had religious significance: the Egyptians saw it as the indestructible skin of the gods, and lapis lazuli as their hair.
The mask was not meant to show what Tutankhamun actually looked like. It gave him an eternal, divine face for the afterlife. Some scholars have suggested that the mask was originally made for another royal person and adapted for him. That theory is disputed.
In 2014 the beard came loose during work on the display case. It was glued back with epoxy, and glue residue was clearly visible. The incident drew criticism, and the following year a German-Egyptian team carried out a careful restoration. The beard was then reattached with beeswax, which the ancient craftsmen are believed to have used as well.
The mask has become perhaps the best-known object from ancient Egypt. The discovery in 1922 set off a wave of Egyptomania in fashion, architecture and film, and stories of a “pharaoh’s curse” spread in the press. The mask is among Egypt’s most closely guarded treasures and today may not leave the country. It is regarded as one of the high points of ancient goldsmithing.