Eight to face trial over botched beard repair on King Tutankhamun mask

Eight museum staff who bungled attempts to reattach the beard to the gold burial mask of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun are to be put on trial. They will face charges of negligence and violation of the professional rules of the workplace over their clumsy attempts to stick the beard back on with glue, prosecutors said on Sunday. The two restorers, four restoration specialists and two former heads of the restoration section at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum were said to have scratched the icon as they attempted to scrape away excess glue. “The officials dealt recklessly with a piece of an artefact that is 3,300 years old, produced by one of the oldest civilisations in the world,” prosecutors added.

Ignoring all scientific methods of restoration, the suspects tried to conceal their crime by using sharp metal tools to remove parts of the glue that became visible, thus damaging the 3,000-year-old piece without a moment of conscience

Egyptian prosecutor

The millennia-old artefact is one of Cairo’s biggest tourist attractions. But the beard was accidentally knocked off by a worker during work to improve lighting around the display in August 2014. Prosecutors allege museum staff only damaged it further as they made four efforts to glue it back. They scratched it with knives as they tried to remove the glue which oozed out around the join. The mask was put back on display last month after a German-Egyptian team of specialists removed the epoxy and reattached the beard using beeswax.

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