On October 28, 1925, Howard Carter and his team lifted the lid of the innermost coffin inside Tutankhamun's sarcophagus. A golden face stared up at them, untouched for 3,250 years. Carter wrote in his diary that night about the mask's sad but tranquil expression, its features placid and youthful, gazing straight up to the heavens. The death mask of Tutankhamun weighs 22.5 pounds of nearly pure gold. It stands 21 inches tall. It is now the single most recognizable object from ancient Egypt.
Material and Craftsmanship
The mask consists of two sheets of high karat gold hammered together, varying in thickness from 1.5 to 3 millimeters. X-ray crystallography performed in 2007 revealed that the base metal is 23 karat gold alloyed with copper to make it workable. The face itself is covered with layers of different gold alloys, an 18.4 karat shade for the face and neck, 22.5 karat gold for everything else. These layers measure approximately 30 nanometers thick. The surface was polished to a mirror finish using tools made from harder stone, files and abrasives like powdered quartz, then buffed with soft cloths.
The blue stripes on the nemes headdress are glass, molded and inlaid to look like lapis lazuli. The eyebrows and the lines extending from the corners of the eyes are actual lapis lazuli, imported from Afghanistan. The eyes themselves are quartz and obsidian. The pupils are obsidian. Red patches appear at the inner and outer corners of the eyes.
The broad collar across the chest is inlaid with carnelian, amazonite, turquoise, lapis lazuli, quartz, and colored glass arranged in intricate patterns ending in falcon heads. The vulture and cobra on the forehead are made of gold inlaid with the same stones. The cobra's body is solid gold. Its head is dark blue faience. Its eyes are gold cloisonnΓ© inlaid with translucent quartz backed with red pigment. The vulture is also solid gold with a beak made of horn colored glass.
The narrow plaited beard hanging from the chin weighs 5.5 pounds by itself. It is made of gold inlaid with blue glass to give it that braided appearance. In 2014, museum workers accidentally knocked the beard off while changing a light bulb in the display case. Instead of calling conservators, they glued it back on with epoxy, a quick drying industrial adhesive. They left it crooked. The damage was discovered in January 2015. A German-Egyptian team spent months removing the epoxy without damaging the gold, then reattached the beard properly using beeswax. Eight museum employees were charged with negligence and violation of professional workplace rules for the incident.
Form and Features
The mask covers the head and shoulders. It was designed to sit directly on top of the mummy's wrapped body, fitting over the linen bandages. The back is inscribed with hieroglyphic text. The face is youthful. The features match other images of Tutankhamun found elsewhere in the tomb, particularly the guardian statues that stood watch outside the burial chamber. The narrow eyes, the shape of the nose, the full lips, the slightly weak chin, all correspond to what is visible on the mummy itself.
The ears are pierced. Professor Joann Fletcher from the University of York and Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves argue that pierced ears were typically reserved for women and children in ancient Egyptian art, not adult male kings. They claim this means the mask was originally made for someone else, probably Nefertiti, Tutankhamun's stepmother, and hastily modified when the young king died unexpectedly. They point to evidence that the gold used for the face is slightly different in composition from the rest of the mask, 23.2 karats versus 23.5 karats, suggesting the face was made separately and soldered on later. They say the cartouches bearing Tutankhamun's name show signs of having been altered from an earlier inscription.
Metal conservator Christian Eckmann analyzed the mask in 2015 and found that making death masks in two pieces, face and headdress, was completely normal for this period. He found no evidence that the face had been replaced. The mummies of other kings also have pierced ears. Tutankhamun became king at age nine. He was nineteen when he died. The mask depicts him wearing the nemes headdress, royal regalia worn by pharaohs in life and in death. The vulture and cobra together, known as the Two Ladies, represented the king's sovereignty over all Egypt. The vulture was Nekhbet, protector of Upper Egypt. The cobra was Wadjet, protector of Lower Egypt.
Function and Use
This mask protected the head of the king's mummy and ensured his spirit could recognize his own body in the afterlife. Egyptians believed the soul needed to be reunited with the physical body for the deceased to live eternally. If the body decayed beyond recognition or if the soul could not find it, the person ceased to exist. The mask guaranteed that would not happen. It presented the king's face as it should appear for eternity.
The mask depicts Tutankhamun in the form of Osiris, god of the afterlife and resurrection. Osiris was shown with a false beard, exactly like the one on the mask. The false beard was a symbol in ancient Egypt. Egyptian kings identified themselves with Osiris by wearing these beards. Unlike in real life at the time, where facial hair was considered a sign of low social status, wearing a false beard with an upturned end was a sign of divinity.
Inscribed on the back and shoulders of the mask is a protective spell from Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead. The spell first appeared on masks during the Middle Kingdom, about 500 years before Tutankhamun. It identifies each part of the deceased's body with a different god to ensure divine protection. It reads, in part, "Thy right eye is the night bark of the sun god, thy left eye is the day bark, thy eyebrows are those of the Ennead of the Gods, thy forehead is that of Anubis, the nape of thy neck is that of Horus, thy locks of hair are those of Ptah-Sokar. Thou art in front of the Osiris Tutankhamun. He sees thanks to thee, thou guidest him to the goodly ways, thou smitest for him the confederates of Seth so that he may overthrow thine enemies before the Ennead of the Gods in the great Castle of the Prince, which is in Heliopolis."
The mask was never meant to be worn by a living person. It was placed directly on the mummy's shoulders over the linen wrappings after the body had been embalmed and wrapped. It was then sealed inside three nested coffins, the innermost made of solid gold weighing 240 pounds, the outer two made of wood covered in gold leaf. Those coffins were placed inside a stone sarcophagus. That sarcophagus was surrounded by four gilded wooden shrines that fit one inside the other, the largest filling almost the entire burial chamber. Opening all of this took Howard Carter's team years. The mask was the last thing they uncovered, sitting on top of the mummy inside the innermost coffin, still in place after more than three millennia.
Cultural Context
Tutankhamun became king around 1332 BCE at age nine. He ruled for about ten years and died around 1323 BCE at roughly eighteen or nineteen years old. His reign came at the end of a turbulent period in Egyptian history. His father, Akhenaten, had tried to overthrow traditional Egyptian religion and replace it with worship of a single god, the sun disk Aten. Akhenaten shut down temples, stripped the priesthood of power, moved the capital to a new city, and declared himself the sole intermediary between humanity and the divine. The army lost territory abroad. The economy suffered. The priesthood opposed these changes.
When Akhenaten died, his immediate successors tried to hold on to his religious reforms. They failed. Tutankhamun, originally named Tutankhaten after his father's god, changed his name to Tutankhamun to signal a return to the old ways. He restored the temples. He gave power back to the priests. He moved the capital back to Thebes. His reign was a restoration, an attempt to undo the damage Akhenaten had caused.
Tutankhamun died young. The exact cause is still debated. He had a club foot, a cleft palate, and probably suffered from genetic disorders because his parents were brother and sister. DNA analysis of royal mummies from his family shows inbreeding. He had malaria. He broke his leg badly, possibly in a chariot accident, shortly before he died. The fracture might have gotten infected. There is no evidence he was murdered.
His death left Egypt in chaos again. He had no surviving children. His wife Ankhesenamun tried to marry a Hittite prince to maintain her position, but the prince was murdered on the way to Egypt. A general named Horemheb eventually seized power and spent his reign systematically erasing Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and the entire Amarna period from official records. Tutankhamun's name was chiseled off monuments. His images were defaced. Within a generation, he was forgotten.
Gold in ancient Egypt was sacred. The Egyptians believed the flesh of the gods was made of gold, their bones of silver, their hair of lapis lazuli. Gold did not tarnish or decay. It was eternal. A pharaoh covered in gold was a pharaoh transformed into his divine form, ready to join the gods in the afterlife. The amount of gold used in Tutankhamun's burial, including the mask, the innermost coffin, the throne, the shrines, and the jewelry, was a statement of wealth and power and a declaration of divinity.
Discovery and Preservation
Howard Carter had been searching for Tutankhamun's tomb for seven years. His patron, Lord Carnarvon, was running out of patience and money. In the summer of 1922, Carnarvon told Carter this would be his last season. On November 4, 1922, a water boy working for Carter tripped over a stone. It turned out to be the top of a stairway cut into the bedrock. Carter had his men clear the steps. At the bottom was a sealed doorway stamped with the cartouche of Tutankhamun.
Carter stopped work immediately. He sent a telegram to Carnarvon in England. "At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley. A magnificent tomb with seals intact. Re-covered same for your arrival. Congratulations." Carnarvon sailed to Egypt and arrived three weeks later. On November 26, 1922, Carter made a small hole in the sealed doorway and held up a candle. Carnarvon asked if he could see anything. Carter replied, "Yes, wonderful things."
The tomb had been robbed twice in antiquity, shortly after Tutankhamun's burial, but the thieves had been caught and the tomb resealed. Everything else was still there. The antechamber was packed floor to ceiling with furniture, chariots, statues, boxes, all jumbled together. The burial chamber contained the nested shrines and sarcophagus. The treasury held the canopic shrine containing Tutankhamun's internal organs. The annex was crammed with over 2,000 more objects. In total, Carter catalogued 5,398 items.
Opening the burial chamber took until February 1923. Dismantling the shrines and opening the sarcophagus took another two years. On October 28, 1925, Carter finally removed the lid of the innermost coffin and saw the mask. He wrote that it was "of sad but tranquil expression, symbolizing Osiris... placid and beautiful, with the same features as we find upon his statues and coffins."
Carter spent a decade excavating, documenting, and conserving everything in the tomb. He photographed every object in situ before moving it. He drew detailed plans. He kept extensive notes. His records are now housed at the Griffith Institute at Oxford University and are available online.
Lord Carnarvon died on April 5, 1923, just months after the tomb was opened, from blood poisoning caused by an infected mosquito bite. Carnarvon had accidentally cut open the bite while shaving. The wound became infected. He developed pneumonia. He died in Cairo.
The press immediately blamed a curse. Newspapers ran stories about supernatural revenge, ancient warnings, and mysterious deaths. They claimed that at the exact moment Carnarvon died, all the lights in Cairo went out and his dog back in England dropped dead. They said Carter's canary had been eaten by a cobra on the day the tomb was opened. They said a mummy's curse inscription had been found on the tomb walls warning that death would come on swift wings to anyone who disturbed the pharaoh's rest. None of this was true. There was no curse inscription. Carter made no mention of one in his notes.
A study done in 2002 by the British Medical Journal looked at the survival rates of 44 Westerners who were present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened. Only six had died within a dozen years. The others lived normal lifespans. Howard Carter lived until 1939. He died at age 64 of Hodgkin's disease, seventeen years after discovering the tomb. Lady Evelyn Herbert, Carnarvon's daughter, was one of the first people to enter the tomb in November 1922. She lived until 1980, dying at age 78.
Tutankhamun's mummy remained in the Valley of the Kings until 2007, when it was moved to a climate controlled glass case in the tomb. The mask and all the other treasures were transported to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In October 2024, the mask was moved to the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza. The museum officially opened on November 1, 2025, with a ceremony attended by world leaders from over 70 countries. The Tutankhamun galleries, spanning 7,500 square meters, display all 5,398 objects from his tomb together for the first time since Carter discovered them. The mask sits behind 40 millimeters of bulletproof glass.
Why It Matters
Tutankhamun was not an important pharaoh. He ruled for about a decade, accomplished little, died young, and was deliberately erased from history by his successors. If his tomb had been looted like all the others, his name would be forgotten. He would be a footnote, another minor king from a chaotic period.
His tomb survived nearly intact. It gave an unparalleled look at the wealth, artistry, and religious beliefs of ancient Egypt's golden age. The tomb contained everyday objects and sacred ones, practical furniture and ritual equipment, all preserved together. It showed how Egyptians prepared their dead for eternity. It demonstrated the skill of Egyptian craftsmen.
The discovery in 1922 came at the right moment. Newspapers and radio could spread the story globally within days. Photography could show the treasures to people who would never visit Egypt. The images of Carter examining the coffins, of the golden mask emerging from the darkness, of workers carefully extracting objects from the tomb, all became widely reproduced.
The mask is the symbol of ancient Egypt in modern consciousness. It appears on magazine covers, in museum advertisements, on tourist posters, in movies and documentaries and books. It is instantly recognizable.
The mask represents how the ancient Egyptians dealt with death and eternity. They spent enormous resources ensuring their dead would live forever. They built tombs that would last millennia. They mummified bodies to preserve them. They filled burial chambers with everything the deceased might need in the afterlife. They carved protective spells into gold. They believed death was not the end, that the spirit could continue if the body was protected and the proper rituals were performed.
Tutankhamun's mask transformed a mortal into an eternal god. It preserved his face for thousands of years. Tutankhamun's name is remembered. People travel across the world to see his mask.