The Golden Mask of Tutankhamun

When Howard Carter peered into the antechamber of KV62 in November 1922 and whispered "wonderful things," the mask was still seventeen days away from being seen. It was found inside the innermost coffin, fitted directly over the king's mummified face: 11 kilograms of solid gold inlaid with lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, obsidian, and quartz. The eyes are made of glass paste. The eyebrows and eyelids are inlaid lapis. The vulture goddess Nekhbet and the cobra goddess Wadjet sit on the brow. For more than half a century the mask traveled, came home to the old Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square, sat behind glass barely thicker than a window, and was photographed millions of times. At GEM it has been reset into its full ritual context for the first time since 1922 - placed alongside its outer coffins, the canopic shrine, and the chests that once held the king's organs. The room is lit to read the gold the way an Egyptologist reads a hieroglyph: as a sentence about kingship, divinity, and the journey through the duat. Stand close enough and you'll notice the faint dent on the cheek, where the workers in 1925 used a hot knife to separate the mask from the resin that fused it to the king. It is the only blemish on the most photographed object in human history.