My Favorite Things: Some of My Favorite Pieces in the Egyptian Museum
The Golden Mask of Tutankhamun – JE 60672; gold, lapis lazuli, quartz, carnelian, turquoise, obsidian, colored glass; Height: 54cm; Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom
When someone asks me about the art of the pharaohs, the first thing I think of is the mask of Tutankhamun. This golden image has become an icon of Egyptian art. The artist must have spent countless hours fashioning the gold and inlaying the semi-precious stones, but the end result is a beautifully realistic masterpiece. When I stand in front of the mask, I imagine the great British archaeologist Howard Carter as he removed the three coffins that held the mummy of Tutankhamun.
The mummy of king Tutankhamun was first examined by Howard Carter. On November 10, 1925 he raised the lid of the inner coffin and the mummy of the young pharaoh appeared for the first time in thousands of years. Carter found that the golden mask, which covered the pharaoh’s head, was glued to the mummy because of the sticky resin that the priest’s poured over the body during the mummification process. Tutankhamun’s mummy was also stuck inside of his coffin. Carter eventually decided to move the entire coffin out into the hot Egyptian sun to see if that would melt the resin enough for him to remove the king’s mask. Despite Carter’s best efforts, the mask wouldn’t budge. Carter then moved the mummy to the tomb of Seti II, which he used as a laboratory for unwrapping the body of Tutankhamun.
From November 11-19, 1925, Carter and two doctors, Douglas Derry, an anthropologist and Saley Bey Hamdi, a professor of medicine in Alexandria, unwrapped the entire mummy of Tutankhamun. They made detailed drawings, photographs and journal entries about all the jewelry and amulets found among the pharaoh’s linen wrappings and did the first scientific condition report of the body of the king. Dr. Derry was able to remove the golden mask of Tutankhamun with a very hot knife but he cut the head off of the body in the process. The mummy’s fragile condition made unwrapping the king very difficult and the body was broken in many more pieces by the time they finished. At the end of their work, Carter and the two doctors pieced the mummy back together and placed it in a sand tray inside the sarcophagus.
The result of Carter’s examination of the mummy showed that Tutankhamun was 5’6” tall and that he died between the ages of 18 and 22. The second time that the body was examined was in 1968 by Dr. R.G. Harrison from Liverpool University. This was the first time that the mummy was studied with an x-ray machine. The x-ray showed that the mummy was completely broken through in several places and that there was a hole in the back of the king’s head. This x-ray also verified that the king had died between 18-22. Dr. Harrison also noted that the king’s sternum, or breastbone, and several of his frontal ribs were missing. The mummy was x-rayed again in 1978 by Dr. J. Harris from Michigan University. This time the researchers thought that Tutankhamun had died between the age of 23-27.
I examined the mummy of Tutankhamun on January 5, 2005. I will never forget the moment when we took the lid of the coffin off and I gazed on the face of Tutankhamun. I was trembling with joy to see the face of this boy king. We carefully moved the mummy out of his tomb and put him inside the CT scan machine. The machine took 1,700 pictures, which we were able to put together into a 3-D image of the pharaoh. We discovered that the king died at the age of 19 and that he had not been murdered, but that the hole on the back of his head had been opened to put in liquids for mummification. The radiologists also found a fracture on the left leg of the king, which was caused by an accident that happened only a few hours before Tutankhamun died but I do not think that this caused the pharaoh’s death. A French forensic team was also able to reconstruct the face of Tutankhamun based on the scans of his head. The nemes-headdress that is depicted on the mask is decorated with stripes of lapis lazuli, a very popular semi-precious stone that was also used on the eyebrows of the king and as a decorative inlay on many other parts of the mask. The vulture and cobra goddesses, protectors of the pharaoh and symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt, are inlaid with semi-precious stones and colored glass. The piercing eyes of the mask are made of obsidian and quartz with a touch of red near the tear ducts to make them seem more life-like. The mask also depicts Tutankhamen wearing a braided false beard, which is made of lapis lazuli framed in gold. Both ears were pierced to hang earrings, several pairs of which were found among countless items of Tutankhamen’s jewelry. The broad collar he is wearing was made from small inlaid pieces of lapis lazuli, carnelian, green feldspar and colored glass. The mask is a stunning representation of the idealized form of Tutankhamen in the afterlife. The gold used represents the idea that the flesh of the gods was made of gold. On the back of the mask is inscribed Book of the Dead spell 151, which would have protected the young king in his journey through the Underworld.
Further information:
Dr. Hawass Examines the Mummy of King Tutankhamun
Further information:
Press Release - The Discovery of the Family Secrets of King Tutankhamun Location
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