CAIRO — The restoration of King Tutankhamun’s world-famous golden mask will begin Saturday, more than a year after the beard accidentally was broken off and hastily glued back with epoxy, Egypt’s state-run news agency said Friday.
A German-Egyptian team will remove the mask from its display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and repair it in another area of the museum, MENA reported.
The 3,300-year-old burial pharaonic mask was discovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb along with other artifacts by British archeologists in 1922.
The beard became detached during work on the relic’s lighting in August 2014.
In a January news conference by Egypt’s antiquities ministry, days after the botched reattachment came to light, restoration specialist Christian Eckmann said the epoxy could be removed and the mask properly restored. Eckmann said the beard likely had loosened over the years and has been detached previously.
