Tutankhamun’s beard ‘knocked off and stuck back on with resin’

The blue and gold braided beard on the 3,300-year-old mask of pharaoh Tutankhamun was hastily glued back on with resin, causing massive to the relic after it became detached during cleaning, conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo have revealed. The museum, which many archaeologists and restorers say is not run to professional standards, is one of the city’s main tourist sites. Three of the museum’s curators anonymously gave varied accounts of what happened to the beard but all say orders came from above to fix it as soon as possible and that an inappropriate adhesive was used.

Unfortunately he used a very 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

An anonymous curator speaks out

Egypt’s tourist industry has yet to recover from three years of tumult following a 2011 uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Museums and the opening of new tombs are part of plans to revive the industry. But authorities have made no significant improvements to the Egyptian Museum since its construction in 1902, and plans to move the Tutankhamun exhibit to its new home in the Grand Egyptian Museum in 2018 have yet to be finalised. Neither the Antiquities Ministry nor the museum administration could be reached for comment.

Arts Tutankhamun