Mystery of the year: was King Tutankhamun’s beard glued back on?
When talking about King Tutenkhamun, the famed boy king of ancient Egypt, many people will speculate about the cause of his death: was it natural, or was he murdered? Today, however, people are trying desperately to get to the bottom of a fresh mystery surrounding King Tut’s iconic death mask: has it been glued back on with epoxy?
Claims have been made by a group of conservators from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo that the blue and gold braided beard from the mask somehow became loose, and was hastily reattached with an inappropriate epoxy. The group allege that museum directors were concerned with keeping its most famous attraction on display, so when the beard was damaged, they rushed a job that should have taken days.
Experts speculate that the damage caused to the mask by the epoxy could be irreversible, while the conservators (who remained anonymous for fear of reprisal) say that you can clearly see scratches on the mask where excess epoxy has been scraped off with some kind of spatula or tool.
Claims of a now visible gap between the mask and beard have been refuted by Museum Director Mahmoud Halwagy, who maintains that no harm has come to the mask since he assumed his post in October of 2014.
Is this an open-and-shut case, or another mystery for the ages? Only time will tell…