What the world might discover from the King Tut mask restoration

German expert Christian Eckmann is leading the restoration of King Tut's famous mask, which was damaged by a botched repair job. DW met him in Cairo to find out what's hiding behind that clumsy layer of glue.

Since the golden burial mask of King Tutankhamun was unearthed nearly a century ago, visitors from around the world have flocked to the Egyptian museum to view the famed relic. An icon of ancient Egypt, it has become one of the world's most famous works of art.

So in August 2014, when the beard attached to the 3,300-year-old mask was knocked off while being returned to its display case after workers replaced a burned out light, panic set. In a hasty attempt in the early morning hours, workers glued the beard back on with insoluble epoxy resin. That proved to be a major error.

"They did not attach it in its original position, the beard was slightly bent to the left side," Christian Eckmann, the archaeologist tasked with restoring the artifact, told DW in an interview in the garden of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

"They also put some glue onto the chin and beard, so it was visible. It was not adequately done, and then in January 2015 the press found out, and the whole case was a scandal somehow," Eckmann explains. He is a renowned restorer from the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Archaeological research institute in Mainz.

The mask of no return?

A legal challenge for the return of the 3,300-year-old mask of ancient Egyptian noblewoman Ka-Nefer-Nefer has failed after US attorneys missed a filing deadline, writes Nevine El-Aref

The controversial mask of a noblewoman, Ka-Nefer-Nefer, who once graced the court of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II was in the limelight again last week, when the case against the Saint Louis Art Museum in the US to have the mask returned to Egypt fell apart because the attorneys missed a filing deadline.

Presiding Judge James Loken remarked that the US government, which had brought the case, would now have to “beg for a do-over.”

According to the Daily RFT blog, the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant the government what it wanted. Loken, who wrote the judgement, chastised government lawyers who “knew many months prior to the order of dismissal of the possible need to amend the pleading.”

Accordingly, the court issued its decision that the mask would stay where it was and would not be returned to Egypt.

Judge Diana Murphy concurred with the ruling, but mentioned that the fight over the Ka-Nefer-Nefer mask has much greater significance than just a missed deadline. “I concur in the court’s opinion, but write separately to express my concern about what the record in this case reveals about the illicit trade in antiquities,” she said.

She added that “the substantive issues underlying this litigation are of great significance, and not only to museums which responsibly seek to build their collections. The theft of cultural patrimony and its trade on the black market present concerns of international import. These issues affect governments and the international art and antiquities markets, as well as those who seek to safeguard global cultural heritage.”