King Tut Beard - The popular burial mask of ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun has been damaged after epoxy poured on it during an attempt to reattach the beard, which somehow broke off as it was being cleaned late last year.
Anonymous insiders from the Cairo museum told London-based Al Araby Al Jadeed that the incident happened in October last year during the refurbishment of the Tutankhamun gallery at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
There are conflicting reports about how the beard got disentangled from the chin of the gold-plated bust of the 'boy-king.' While some unidentified museum sources have revealed that King Tut's beard fell off accidentally when it was being cleaned, others say it was removed because it had become loose.
According to Al Araby Al Jadeed, when the incident occurred, the head of the renovation team Elham Abdelrahman seems to have panicked and decided to handle the issue herself by contacting her husband, who also works with the museum, to fix the beard. Reports indicate that damages to the artifacts are supposed to be reported to the Ministry of Antiquites before they are assigned to specialists to repair. But this was never done.
To make matters worse, the epoxy glue used to reattach King Tut's broken beard somehow poured on the left side of his chin, forcing Abdelrahman and her husband to attempt to scrape it off with a scapula and ultimately scratch the 3,000+ years old bust.
Officials at the Egyptian Bureau of Antiquities have not commented on this story. But an unidentified insider told AP that it was inappropriate to have used the irreversible epoxy glue to reattach the King's beard. According to the insider, the signs of the glue are obvious when one scrutinizes King Tut's mask. Reports indicate that the light at the museum had been dimmed to hide the flaws in the famous mask. Nonetheless, it is reportedly still apparent.
The discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922 by Howard Carter is still regarded as one of the greatest finds by modern Egyptologists and archaeologists. Unlike other tombs, the burial chamber of the young king was surprisingly still quite intact. The damaged burial mask of King Tut is one of the most popular artifacts from ancient Egypt today.
Egypt's tourism industry has struggled to bounce back since the Arab Spring. The renovation of the museum, which was sponsored by the European Union and other international partners, is one of the measures the government has sought to use to revive the struggling sector.
King Tut's mask damaged in hasty use of glue to fix broken beard!! https://t.co/yiS4VGlzQa pic.twitter.com/g2jE94xFUW
— Following Hadrian (@carolemadge) January 22, 2015
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