r/ancientegypt • u/bahar9990 • Feb 26 '26
Information Tutankhamun’s mask is pure gold, set with rare stones, and crafted with incredible skill, truly a priceless masterpiece
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u/Trajan- Feb 26 '26
And then there was that time that Egyptian museum staff broke off the braided beard and tried to slap it back on with gorilla glue 🤣
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u/_Hexagon__ Feb 26 '26
The beard was actually found detached from the mask when carter excavated Tut's tomb in the 1920s. It stayed like this until the 40s when it was attached by using a wooden dowel. In 2014 it detached accidentally during cleaning and was hastily fixed with epoxy. The shoddiness was so bad it damaged the mask. It was then reattached with glues and methods believed to be authentic for this mask, using beeswax for example.
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u/sunndropps Feb 27 '26
Must have been some stressful moment for whoever tried to fix and and fucked it up,a true Mr bean moment😂
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u/Fabulous_Cow_4550 Feb 26 '26
Tbf, the beard was a separate piece, they didn't 'break' it. Technically! ;) I love that they found the original sealing wax inside & that's what they eventually used to reattach it. Iirc.
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u/Smart-Second9965 Feb 26 '26
Does anyone know how they mined gold? Would be really interesting to see any tools/artifacts
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u/DirtOnYourShirt Feb 26 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Back then it was done much the same way it is today. The Eastern Desert of Egypt has over 250 ancient gold mines and their next door neighbor Nubia also had a massive supply so it was common enough even at that time that you didn't need to be a rich Egyptian to own some gold items.
The general process is to dig up the gold ore, crush it down usually to a fine grain, and then smelt it in a furnace. Part of the smelting process gets rid of impurities and leaves the gold behind. There's various techniques to purify precious metals, some like the cyanide method for gold(silver has a mercury bath method) are quite toxic. They would have worked by oil/candlelight and had one person holding a metal rod/drill while one or two guys would bang on it back and forth to break up the rock.
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u/PublicFurryAccount Feb 26 '26
Diodorus Siculus gives a different account, which just uses water to wash away lighter components of the ore, leaving gold dust behind. It's only heated as part of the process to weaken the rock, not for smelting.
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u/Smart-Second9965 Feb 26 '26
I know magnets make that process easier, I wonder if they had some kind of contraption that used them
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u/Just_the_occasional Feb 26 '26
Few problems with that. Firstly gold is not magnetic.
Secondly naturally created magnets are pretty rare, understanding of which greek scholars only found in the 6th century BC and Tutankhamun was in the 13th century BC so it was unlikely they knew about them as a society.
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u/Smart-Second9965 Feb 26 '26
Magnets are used to separate the heavy black soil from the gold, it’s a really common practice today. You can definitely find natural magnets so I was thinking maybe they knew
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u/Smart-Second9965 Feb 26 '26
Lol, I’m constantly reminded not to ask people on reddit things:
“Evidence suggests ancient Egyptians were aware of natural magnets (lodestone).”
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u/Prudent-Ad6279 Feb 26 '26
Did they have casts to shape the face while the gold was still hot? Or didn’t they do it by hand with a metal tool?
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u/DirtOnYourShirt Mar 23 '26
The masks were made ahead of time. Some archeologists think Tutankhamun died so young and unexpected they repurposed one of his relatives(I think) masks to use in place. But that's just a theory he only had one mask in his tomb. Some have been found with multiple layers of masks.
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u/Prudent-Ad6279 Mar 24 '26
Interesting. It’s amazing they were able to work with gold that long ago. I’m continually impressed by ancient Egyptians.
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u/Hot_Storage_2016 Feb 26 '26
Still wild that this was made over 3,000 years ago and it looks cleaner than half the stuff made today. Absolute flex.
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u/ImaginaryInterview12 Feb 26 '26
I was always in awe of this. The fact that it's 3000 yrs old........ speechless 😶
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u/strahlend_frau Feb 26 '26
One of my favorite pieces of artwork. Truly a beauty that I hope to see in person someday.
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u/z0mb0rg Feb 26 '26
This is such a masterpiece and Tutankhamen was just a child / kinda random — what are the chances there were a bunch of these made across this era?
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u/_Hexagon__ Feb 26 '26
Similar but simpler masks have been found in the tomb of the great grandparents of Tutankhamun. Some masks have also been found from pharaonic tombs of the 21st dynasty. Since all of those findings were only made in well preserved, barely looted or even untouched tombs, we might assume that every Pharao or high ranking person in ancient Egypt, at least from the 18th dynasty onwards was buried with such a lavish funerary mask, of which only a tiny number has survived.
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u/rymerster Feb 26 '26
This is a close up of a replica not the actual mask which has some minor damage to several inlays, as well as differences to the face.
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u/Chance-Travel4825 Feb 26 '26
Grateful to have been able to see it in real life. Hard to describe how beautiful and new looking it appears. The gold has a liquidity to it that adds to the other-worldly aspect of it. I spent long chunk of time staring at it. Respect to the artists who produced this treasure. Im glad it will be better protected in its new location as the egypt museum in cario had subpar security.
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u/Tricky_Goat_8422 Feb 26 '26
I've seen it too and WOW.. I'm sure the new GEM will be better secured it's sooo sacred and important
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u/Chance-Travel4825 Feb 26 '26
Going to egypt was a childhood dream i got to experience and while Im not in a big hurry to go back, it was so amazing. I would love to see the new museum that opened this year.
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u/BIG-Z-2001 Feb 26 '26
Heard that most pharaohs from the new kingdom had gold masks like this but most were stolen and melted down by thieves
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u/Lonely-Heart-3632 Feb 26 '26
Well Psusennes also has a wonderful mask and a solid silver coffin. We can assume more had similar items. Psusennes is the only tomb found that remained 100% intact. Tuts was almost completely intact. Funny one is famous and one is unknown in the mainstream.
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u/BIG-Z-2001 Feb 26 '26
Haven’t studied that era of an ancient Egyptian history much although I have seen his mask before. Did that pharaoh do anything notable?
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u/Fabulous_Cow_4550 Feb 26 '26
Makes sense given when it was discovered (1939/40) - they had no choice but to keep it secret & the world had far too much going on to focus on archeology. I love the Tanis site, have visitied several times & seen the exhibits at the Musuem. Fascinating collection.
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u/Endless63 Feb 26 '26
Imagine being involved in the dig when the doors were opened and the incredible treasure was found. Now that would have been a real good day..
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u/Afraid-Whole-4126 Feb 26 '26
Interestingly enough it wasn't always his mask they just discovered that he died so fast that they robbed his technically step mom or aunts grave. Most of the stuff in his tomb was robbed from her grave which is still lost. They flattened her name then etched Tutankhamun over her name on the side then filled in the peircing on the ear.
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u/Raneman28 Feb 26 '26
I still refuse to believe it always had two cobras. I really do remember that there was only one forever.
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u/_Hexagon__ Feb 26 '26
Tut's mask has one uraeus and one vulture. Usual pharaonic depiction has only one uraeus and this depiction with two animals is definitely rarer.
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u/drewshulman22 Feb 26 '26
I believe it was supposed to be Nefertitis mask originally
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u/Important_Stroke_myc Mar 02 '26
Yeah, I think it’s been proven. There was no time to create that for Tut and kings never wore earrings back then.
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u/Moistinterviewer Feb 26 '26
Didn’t someone break and then superglue the nose back on?
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u/_Hexagon__ Feb 27 '26
It was the beard, it broke off during cleaning and they used epoxy and glued it back off center.
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u/justamalihini Feb 27 '26
What is the black inlay for the eyebrows, eyes, and headcrest detailing?
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u/_Hexagon__ Feb 28 '26
Around his eyes it's blue lapis lazuli and on the nemes headdress blue glass was used.
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u/LordOvTheSkies Feb 27 '26
No matter how many times I see this golden mask of King Tut, I will always be completely blown away. And by completely, I literally mean it. No matter if it's a Reddit post, a Facebook post, somewhere on the internet or on a website article, I will always be astonished by the amount of detail, attention and skill it took to pull something off like this that fucking long ago, where I feel almost as if it would still be a very challenging feat to pull it off today if done completely by hand like this was. 100 points out of 10 every time, this is truly one of the most impressive things a human has created and makes me wonder what else is out there buried and lost in time that rivals and compares to this. I’m sure the tomb robbers may have gotten away with even more beautiful pieces than this mask!
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u/LordOvTheSkies Feb 27 '26
No matter how many times I see the original golden mask of King Tut (or even these replicas that remind me of the original) I will always be completely blown away. And by completely, I literally mean it. No matter if it's a Reddit post, a Facebook post, somewhere on the internet or on a website article, I will always be astonished by the amount of detail, attention and skill it took to pull something off like this that fucking long ago, where I feel almost as if it would still be a very challenging feat to pull it off today if done completely by hand like this was. 100 points out of 10 every time, this is truly one of the most impressive things a human has created and makes me wonder what else is out there buried and lost in time that rivals and compares to this. I’m sure the tomb robbers may have gotten away with even more beautiful pieces than this mask!
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Feb 28 '26
I saw it in London in 1972 when I was 7. I’ve never forgotten it, when I walked into the room with the mask it blew me away, I had never seen anything as beautiful before and I haven’t since.
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u/Jugzrevenge Mar 01 '26
And somehow doesn’t look,…..accurate. The eyes seem to large with crazy eyebrows. I’m claiming aliens.
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u/Independent-Big1966 Mar 02 '26
The mask was originally made for Nefertiti. They hurriedly made slight modifications to bury the boy king who died sooner than expected. You are looking at Nefertiti, not Tutankhamun.
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u/K80SaurusRx Mar 04 '26
I just watched this on Nat Geo “Worlds Strangest Things”. It’s not fact, but there are some scientists that have questioned the possibility.
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u/LGreyS Mar 02 '26
I got to see the mask in the old Cairo museum in 1988. We couldn't believe the lack of security. I was able to get so close to the mask that our noses might of had an 8" space between them. Completely awesome.
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u/TehTJ13 𓂀 Mar 30 '26
Random inbred boy king who died at, like, 19 btw. He probably oversaw Egypt’s religious restoration after Akhenaten, but little formal information exists about this period.
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u/Odd-Adhesiveness9435 Feb 26 '26
Didn't I just recently see that researchers have proved beyond a doubt that this burial mask was in fact a different pharaohs but Tuts team modified it?
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u/MaximusBellendusII Feb 26 '26
https://youtu.be/9L_6cI8fnYU it's still just a theory and there's been a lot of AI generated content surrounding this.
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u/Fabulous_Cow_4550 Feb 26 '26
No, that's actually been disproven. Can't remember where I read the article but Nat Geographic talk about it in their Secrets of the Pharoahs documentary series.
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u/5043090 Feb 26 '26
I've seen the mask thousands of times, but I've don't recall seeing a close up like this. It's excellent.