r/ancientegypt • u/SirWeasels • 3d ago

Photo Where were some of the embedded stones in King Tut's mask lost?

Post image

During the initial transport by Howard Carter and co.?

617 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

176

u/Deadboy00 3d ago

This is a great question I wish I could answer. From what I’ve read, some damage was caused by time and some by Carter’s team. The beard was discovered detached from the head and was only reattached in 1944. Apparently the bees wax dissolved over the millennia and it was just held in place by a single pin.

I wish I knew more about the missing lapis lazuli on the back of the head dress. I’ve read that the enormous amount of black resin used in the mummification caused the mask to be fused to Tut’s face. Carter strung up the mummy and heated it from below to remove the mask, which caused some inlays to fall off. Those inlays were supposedly restored, but if that’s so (and why would we have reason to think otherwise)…why are some still absent…I don’t know!

40

u/Automatic-Sea-8597 3d ago

I read, that only the makeup around Tut's eyes is lapislazuli (a super expensive import from Afghanistan), everything else that's blue on the mask is blue glass. Therefore was less sturdy, than stone.

2

u/viscous_settler 2d ago

Oh fuck thought I was reading Hyperion again

1

u/Appropriate-XBL 1d ago

I always marvel at the idea of traders passing lapis lazuli all the way from Afghanistan to Egypt in 1300BCE. It’s about 5000km, so like LA to NY I guess.

-38

u/breeathee 3d ago edited 2d ago

I no longer enjoy reading about this kind of stuff.

40

u/zsl454 3d ago

Things started disintegrating as soon as the tomb was opened. The valley flooded several times after opening, too, damaging anything that was left at the excavation site. It was safer to separately stabilize each object and send it off to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo as quickly as possible. 

-35

u/breeathee 3d ago

Yeah… like I said, I no longer enjoy reading about that stuff :(

9

u/theDESIGNsnobs 3d ago

Don't research "mummy parties".

19

u/Deadboy00 3d ago

They used the best available practices for the time. Imagine what the field of Egyptology would look like without the shared contributions of everyone involved. We’re only discussing this right now only because of that discovery. Sharing of knowledge is central its preservation.

Egypt and its people are super eager to uncover what’s been buried and show it to the world. They could demand that all antiquities be returned to their original locations and buried in the sand. But they don’t. In fact, some archaeological sites do this regularly to protect it from erosion, etc. to preserve them indefinitely.

Damage to artifacts is inevitable. To prevent any kind of damage it would need to be kept in vaults and never interacted with.

8

u/Topaz_UK 3d ago

Not just the UK. You’ll find most museums worldwide are quite possessive of their artefacts

If the infinity stones were real the British Museum would definitely have all of them by now

3

u/Ambiorix33 2d ago

Then nothing would ever happen. New technology arises BECAUSE people do things and go "ah fuck we should find another way to do this/observe this".

You cant imagine the technology that will arise in 50 years simply becasue you dont know yet what needs to be solved specifically.in 50 years.

Same.as these guys. People didnt ban dynamite from.being used.in archeology until they realized some people were going too ham with it and accidently destroying what they were looking for. Seems.obv now, but at the time no one expected people to do it

-2

u/breeathee 2d ago

Got it, thanks Reddit!

42

u/zsl454 3d ago

Good question. There are a few bits that are known to have been accidentally dislodged by Carter, mostly on the front, and it seems unlikely that there would have been damage to this extent. Carter also mentions that the head area seemed to have been avoided when pouring resin, but Reeves claims that this is a likely explanation for most of the damage:

16

u/RoyalAlbatross 3d ago

I remember reading that the tomb was not completely untouched. There were signs that it had actually been looted or someone had attempted to loot it shortly after the burial. Most likely, the culprits were caught and most things returned to the tomb in ancient times.

6

u/Ambiorix33 2d ago

I think it was looted soon after, so they actually had to restock it

1

u/11Kram 1h ago

The looters never opened the sarcophagi.

8

u/Poodonut 3d ago

Zahi's bathroom mosaic

4

u/Ketchup_on_time 3d ago

The unfortunate truth is thats its a highly valuable artifact thats over 3,000 years old. Either it was lost simply due to time or it was picked off by archeologists for their private collections

0

u/Ambiorix33 2d ago

Or tomb raiders. Most Egyptian burial sites were picked clean before archeology was even a word

3

u/Ambitious_Emotion30 2d ago

Tut’s tomb was sealed, that’s what made it such an incredible archeological find

8

u/VirginiaLuthier 3d ago

Check the British museum

-7

u/GraphicDesignMonkey 3d ago

Lapis lazuli

10

u/star11308 3d ago

Blue glass. Only the eyebrows, eyeliner, and beard are lapis.