Employees at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo had to put back the 3,000-year-old burial mask of pharaoh Tutankhamun together after its blue and gold beard was snapped off, according to media reports, Al Arabiya said yesterday.
It is not clear how the damage occurred, whether it happened during cleaning or if it was removed because it was loose and it now seems that a hastily performed repair job might have actually caused even more damage due to the use of the wrong kind of adhesive.
Worse still it is thought that some of the glue dried on the mask, which was then scraped off using a spatula leaving scratch marks.
According to museum sources speaking on condition of anonymity, orders for a “quick fix” led to the ill-judged decision.
“Unfortunately he used an 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,” one curator told the media.
“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,” they added.
The curator explained that there was now a visible gap between the face and the beard, which previously did not exist, effectively giving King Tut an impromptu shave.
The Antiquities Ministry has launched an inquiry into the incident.
The burial mask, arguably one of Egypt’s greatest Tourist attractions was discovered in 1922, along with the pharaoh’s nearly intact tomb by Egyptologist Howard Carter.
