Sunday, January 25, 2015

Egyptians snap off King Tut's beard while cleaning it, then use Elmer's to glue it back on

Exactly the way I would do it.  Elmers will fix anything.  That beard is good for another thousand years!

A comedy of errors.

The priceless funeral mask of Tutankhamen has been damaged at the Cairo museum, causing curators to glue it back together with white-ish, splodgy glue.

In summer last year it was damaged and needed repairing. Some staff at the museum said it was broken by cleaners, while others maintained that the beard on the mask was intentionally removed, because it had become loose.

“Unfortunately he used a very irreversible material,” one curator told the AP news agency. “Epoxy has a very high property for attaching, and is used on metal or stone – but I think it wasn’t suitable for an outstanding object like Tutankhamen’s golden mask. 

“The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material.”

Another museum conservator, who was present at the time of the repair, said that epoxy had dried on the face of the boy king’s mask and that a colleague used a spatula to remove it, leaving scratches.

I wonder what "Oh shit!" is in Arabic?

3 comments:

  1. I imagine today's egyptians are not as competent as Egyptians who made the mask...

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Oh Shit!" in Arabic is "Allah Ahkabar"

    ReplyDelete