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. The world would wait. Today, in a glass vault sized to its own shadow, it waits for you.

The Materials That Made a King

It was found inside the innermost coffin, fitted directly over the king's mummified face. The eyes are made of glass paste. The eyebrows and eyelids are inlaid lapis lazuli. The vulture goddess Nekhbet and the cobra goddess Wadjet sit on the brow, protectors of Upper and Lower Egypt, fused into a single crown that says, in stone and metal, what every king of the eighteenth dynasty wanted said: I am two lands.

Day after day, year after year, men have looked at this gold and not been able to look away. It is not the value. It is the proportion. The face is human. The gold is not.

: Cairolive Editorial

The place

Place

The Egyptian Museum

Cairo's original antiquities museum, on Tahrir Square since 1902

On the conversation around the mask

Egypt's relationship with this object has always been mediated. Talk shows, late-night monologues, op-eds. One voice has shaped how a generation thinks about who owns this gold and where it should sit. We feature his commentary as part of this series.

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 had fused it to the king's body. It is the only blemish on the most photographed object in human history. Tomorrow we visit the canopic shrine that protected his organs.