BULLETIN OF THE EGYPTOLOGICAL SEMINAR

The Art and Culture of Ancient Egypt: Studies in Honor of Dorothea Arnold

VOLUME 19
2015

BES 19

BULLETIN OF THE EGYPTOLOGICAL SEMINAR

The Art and Culture of Ancient Egypt:
Studies in Honor of Dorothea Arnold

VOLUME 19

2015

BES 19 (2015)

Hill, Bibliography of Dorothea Arnold

Vase in the Shape of a Monkey with its Young.

In Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1992
1993. Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York 51, no. 2 (Fall 1993), 6-7.
Egyptian Art. Annual Report, The Metropolitan
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1994
Block Statue of Ankh-Wennefer. In Recent
Acquisitions, A Selection: 19931994. Bulletin
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52, no. 2 (Fall 1994), 10-11.
Egyptian Art. Annual Report, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 124 (1994), 29-30.
1995
An Egyptian Bestiary. Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 52, no. 4 (Spring 1995).
Reprinted from Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York on the occasion of the exhibition
at the Museum, Apr. 12Oct. 15, 1995. New York, 1995.
Canaanite Imports at Lisht, the Middle Kingdom Capital of Egypt (with Felix Arnold and Susan
Allen). gypten und Levante V. Vienna, 1995, 13-32.
Fragment of a Head of King Apries. In Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 19941995. Bulletin of The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 53, no. 2 (Fall 1995), 6-7.
1996
The Royal Women of Amarna: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt (with contributions by James P.
Allen and L. Green). Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Oct. 8, 1996Feb. 2, 1997. New York, 1996.
Re-installation of the Metropolitan Museums Amarna Art & Queen Nefertiti and the Royal Women:
Images of Beauty From Ancient Egypt. KMT 7/4 (1996), 18-31.
The Metropolitan Museum of Arts Work at the Middle Kingdom Sites of Thebes and Lisht. In The
American Discovery of Ancient Egypt: Essays. Edited by Nancy Thomas. Los Angeles, 1996, 57-78.
Egypt, Ancient: Ceramics. In The Dictionary of Art 10, XIII. New York, 1996, 21-28.
Statuette of Wepay. In Ancient Art from the Shumei Family Collection. Catalogue of an exhibition held
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 20Sept. 1, 1996, and the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, Nov. 17, 1996Feb. 9, 1997. New York, 1996, 1-3.

BULLETIN
1997
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Preface to gypten: Die Welt der Pharaonen. Edited
Regine Schulz and Matthias Seidel. Cologne, 1997, 6.
EGYPTOLOGICAL
Torso of a Striding Statue of a General. Apollo
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SEMINAR
Statuette of Wepay. In Miho Museum, South Wing. Shigaraki, Japan, 1997, 15-16.
1998
Head of a Hippopotamus. In Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 19971998. Bulletin of The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 56, no. 2 (Fall 1998), 6.

The Art and Culture of Ancient Egypt:

Studies in Honor of Dorothea Arnold

1999
Editor (with Christiane Ziegler) and author. Royal Reliefs. Stone Vessels: Luxury Items with Manifold
Implications (with Elena Pischikova). Catalogue entries. Scenes from a Kings Thirty-Year Jubilee.
Paste-Filled Reliefs from the Tomb of Itet. Fragments of Painting from the Tomb of Itet. King
Khufus Cattle. Man with a Sunshade. Woodcutter among Trees. Head of a Female Personification
of an Estate. Billy Goat. Relief of Hemiunus Face. Small Head of a King, Probably Khafre, Wearing
the White Crown. Group of Archers. Bowl with Turned-in Sections of Rim. Booty Animals and a
Vase from the Near East. The Hunt in the Desert from the Pyramid Temple of King Sahure. Relief
Block with Deities and Fecundity Figures. Lion-Headed Goddess Suckling King Niuserre. Early
Summer in the Nile Valley. Late Summer in the Nile Valley. Scenes from the Thirty-Year Jubilee of
King Niuserre. The Hunt in the Desert from the Tomb of Pehen-wi-ka. Two Young Dogs. Bowl.
Jar. Relief Fragment from Coptos. Three Jars in the Shape of Mother Monkeys and their Young.
Brewers Vat of Queen Mother Ankh-nes-Pepi (II). Fishermen and Herdsmen with their Animals.
Still Life: Offerings for the Deceased. Thirty-two Miniature Vessels and a Table. In Egyptian Art
in the Age of the Pyramids. French edition entitled Lart gyptien au temps des pyramides. Catalogue of
an exhibition held at the Galeries
nationales du Grand Palais,
Paris, Apr. 6July 12, 1999, The
Edited by:
Adela Oppenheim and Ogden Goelet Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York, Sept. 16, 1999Jan.
With the assistance of:
9, 2000, and the Royal Ontario
Dieter Arnold
Museum, Toronto, Feb. 13May
Sara Chen
22, 2000. New York, 2000, 83Marsha Hill
Anna-Marie Kellen
101, 121-131, 196-204, 222-228,
Scott Murphy
232-233, 261-262, 265-267, 310,
Pamlyn Smith
333-341, 352-359, 398-400, 402,
420-421, 444-445, 446-447, 454455, 468-473, 492-493. French
edition, 72-82, 112-118, 168-172,
186-193, 198, 259, 268, 272-275,
280-287, 307-308, 310-312, 324325, 349-350, 356, 360, 379-380.
VOLUME 19
2015

BES 19 (2015)

Hill, Bibliography of Dorothea Arnold

The
President

1978
Warum gyptische Keramik? In Meisterwerke
altgyptischer Keramik: 5000 Jahre Kunst und
und Fayence. Catalogue
EgyptologicalKunsthandwerk
Seminar of aus
NewTonYork
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1978, Rastal-Haus (Keramik-Museum Westerwald)
Hachenburg, 1978, 15-28 and
AdelaHhr-Grenzhausen.
Oppenheim,
passim.
The Metropolitan
Museum of Art

1979
Phyllis
Saretta
Dieter and Dorothea Arnold, with Andreas Brodbeck.
DerDriller
Tempel Qasr el-Sagha. Archologische
treasurer
Stewart
Verffentlichungen 27. Mainz am Rhein, 1979.
editors of bes
Ogden Goelet, Jr.,
1980 University
New York
Keramik. L III, cols. 392-409.
Adela Oppenheim,
1981
The Metropolitan
Museum of Art
Editor and author. Introduction. Eine Tonschssel
als Osirisbett in der 11. Dynastie (with Maria
MeMbers of the board:
Hopf). gyptische Mergeltone (Wstentone) und
die Arts,
Herkunft
Mergeltonware des Mittleren
Matthew Adams, Institute of Fine
New einer
York University
Reiches aus der Gegend von Memphis. In Studien
zur Altgyptischen
Mainz am Rhein, 1981,
Peter Feinman, Institute of History,
Archaeology, Keramik.
and Education
7-10, 85-87, 167-191.
Sameh Iskander, Ramesses Temple in Abydos Project
viCe-President

1982
Keramikbearbeitung
in Dahschur
19761981.Manhattan
MDAIK 38College
(1982), 25-65.
David
Moyer, Marymount

1989
Egyptian Art. Annual Report, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York 119 (1989), 24-25.

Contents

1990
Vessel in the Shape of a Cat. In Recent
Acquisitions,
A Selection:
Compiled by Marsha
Hill 19891990. Bulletin of
The Bibliography
Metropolitan of
Museum
of Art,
New....................................................................................................
York 48, no.
Dorothea
Arnold
1
2 (Fall 1990), 8-9.
James P. Allen
Egyptian
Art. of
Annual
Report,
The Literature
Metropolitan
The Advent
Ancient
Egyptian
................................................................................. 15
Museum of Art, New York 120 (1990), 21-22.
Susan J. Allen
1991An Offering to Mentuhotep, Son of Mentuhotep-ankhu,
Amenemhat
I and the Early 26.3.316
Twelfth ................................................................................................
Dynasty at
Found at ThebesMMA
25
Thebes. Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal 26
(1991), 5-48.
Hartwig
Altenmller
Tausret als Knigin und Pharao in den Abbildungen ihres Knigsgrabes ............................... 41
Fragment of a Sculptured Statue Base. In Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 19901991. Bulletin of
The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York 49, no. 2 (Fall 1991), 6.
Dieter
Arnold
Some Thoughts on the Building History of the
Egyptian
Annual Report,
The Metropolitan
Museum...................................................................
of Art, New York 121 (1991), 25-26.
TempleArt.
of Mentuhotep
Nebhepetre
at Deir el-Bahri
59
1992
Felix Arnold
TheThe
Model
Pottery.
In Dieter
The Pyramid
of Senwosret I. Publications of The
Temple
of Ramses
II in Arnold.
the Precinct
of HathorComplex
at Memphis
Metropolitan
Museum of Artand
Egyptian
Expedition
25. New York, 1992, 83-91.
Part I: Reconstruction
Meaning
.............................................................................................
69

1988
The Pottery. In Dieter Arnold. The Pyramid of Senwosret I. Publications of The Metropolitan Museum
of Art Egyptian Expedition 22. New York, 1988, 106-146.

OldestGhaly
Pharaonic Site (with Daniel J. Stanley and Andrew G. Warne). National Geographic Research
Holeil
and The
Exploration
(1992), 264-275.
Temple 8.3
of Ramses
II in the Precinct of Hathor at Memphis
Part II: Hathor-Headed Columns .................................................................................................. 79
Relief Slabs from Amarna Temples. Head of an Antelope. Crocodile. In Recent Acquisitions, A
Selection:
Joan
Aruz 19911992. Bulletin of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 50, no. 2 (Fall 1992), 7-9.
The Nude Female and the Iconography of Birth .......................................................................... 85
Egyptian Art. Annual Report, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 122 (1992), 30-31.
David A. Aston
1993The Faces of the Hyksos: Ceramic Sculpture in the Fifteenth Dynasty .................................. 103
Editor (with Janine Bourriau). An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian Pottery. Author (with contributions
by Paul Nicholson,
Colin Hope, and Pamela Rose). Fascicle 1: Techniques and Traditions of Manufacture
Bettina
Bader
in the
Pottery of Ancient
Egypt.
Deutsches
Archologisches
Abteilung Kairo. Sonderschriften
Disc-Shaped
Ornaments
of the
Early Middle
KingdomInstitut.
...........................................................
117
17. Mainz am Rhein, 1993.
Miroslav Brta
Face
a Pharaoh. Statuette
Khnumhotep.
The Havemeyer Collection. Edited
A of
Reassembled
False Dooroffrom
the Time In
of Splendid
NyuserraLegacy:
............................................................
131
by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, Gary Tinterow, Susan Alyson Stein, et al. Published in conjunction with
the exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mar. 27June 20, 1993. New York, 1993, 114-115.

2
iv

v
3

Keramikfunde aus David

Qila el-Dabba.
Denkmler
Oase
Dachla
aus dem Nachlass von Ahmed
OConnor, In
Institute
of Fineder
Arts,
New
York University
Fakhry. Adapted by J. Osing, M. Moursi, Do. Arnold, et al. Archologische Verffentlichungen 28.
Mainz am Rhein, 1982, 42-56.
Copyright The Egyptological Seminar of New York, 2015
1983
Deutsches Archologisches Institut Cairo (with W. Kaiser). An Introduction to Ancient Egyptian
Pottery (with J. Bourriau).
In Papers
the Pottery
International
This volume
wasofproduced
inWorkshop
part with Third
the assistance
of: Congress of Egyptology,
Toronto, September 1982. Edited by A. L. Kelley. SSEA Studies 4. Toronto, 1983, 16-17, 19-20.
1986
Tpferei, Tpferwerkstatt, Tpferfen, Tpferscheibe. L VI, cols. 616-621.

Daphna Ben-Tor
Scarabs from Hatshepsuts Foundation Deposits at Deir el-Bahri:
Insight into the Early 18th Dynasty and Hatshepsuts Reign ................................................... 139

Rita E. Freed
The Bersha Procession in Context
Part I: An Art Historical Examination ....................................................................................... 293

Robert Steven Bianchi

A Hippopotamus for Hera ........................................................................................................... 147

Pamela Hatchfield
Compiled by Marsha Hill
The Bersha Procession in Context
Part II: Conservation History and Technical Study .................................................................. 311

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Manfred Bietak and Bettina Bader

Canon and Freedom of Fringe Art:
propos the Fish Bowls in the Second Intermediate Period ..................................................... 157

Jos M. Galn
11th Dynasty Burials below Djehutys Courtyard (TT 11) in Dra Abu el-Naga ..................... 331

Janine Bourriau and Will Schenck

The Last Marl C Potter: Sedment 276A ...................................................................................... 179

Ogden Goelet, Jr.

Verse Points, Division Markers, and Copying ............................................................................ 347

Betsy M. Bryan
Just Say NoIconography, Context, and Meaning of a Gesture ....................................... 187

Zahi Hawass
Newly Discovered Scenes of Tutankhamun from Memphis and
Rediscovered Fragments from Hermopolis ................................................................................ 359

Emilia Cortes
From Weft Fringes to Supplementary Weft Fringes:
Thoughts and Discussion on Weaving Evolution in Egyptian Textiles .................................... 199
Denise Doxey
The Family of Sehetepibra: A Pair of Unpublished Stelae in New York.................................. 219
Marianne Eaton-Krauss
The Original Owner of Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 46600 .................................................... 225
Biri Fay
Ancient Egyptian Art History is Dead: Long Live Ancient Egyptian Art History!............... 237
Richard Fazzini and Mary McKercher
An Interesting Pottery Vessel from the Temple of Mut at South Karnak ............................... 241
Peter Feinman
The Tempest in the Tempest: The Natural Historian ................................................................ 253
Marjorie Fisher
A Recently Discovered Fragment of Senenmuts Sarcophagus................................................. 263
Laurel Flentye
Royal Statuary of the Fourth Dynasty from the Giza Necropolis
in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo ................................................................................................... 277

vi
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Marsha Hill
A Statuette of Two Men and a Boy from the Amarna Period
Part I: Face Facts for Understanding the Sculpture .................................................................. 367
1968
Keramikbeispiele
aus Grbern der frhen 11. Dynastie von el-Tarif. MDAIK 23 (1968), 38-67.
Ann Heywood
A Statuette of Two Men and a Boy from the Amarna Period
1969Part II: Materials Analysis and Imaging .................................................................................... 379
Die Polykletnachfolge: Untersuchungen zur Kunst von Argos und Sikyon zwischen Polyklet und Lysipp.
Jahrbuch
des Deutschen Archologischen Instituts. Ergnzungshefte 25. Berlin, 1969.
Salima
Ikram
A Torso from the Gayer-Anderson Museum, Cairo................................................................... 389
1972
Weiteres
zur Keramik von el-Tarif: Saff el-Dawba 1970/71. MDAIK 28 (1972), 33-46.
Sameh Iskander
Building Phases of the Temple of Ramesses II at Abydos ......................................................... 393
1973
Meeting
of Archaeologists Concerned with Egyptian Pottery. NARCE no. 86 (July 1973), 11-20.
Peter Jnosi
Bringing the Choicest of Haunches and Fowl
1976Some Thoughts on the Tomb of Rehuerdjersen at Lisht-North ................................................ 403
Wandbild und Scherbenbefund: Zur Tpfertechnik der alten gypter vom Beginn der pharaonischen
ZeitRaymond
bis zu denJohnson
Hyksos. MDAIK 32 (1976), 1-34.
W.
Sexual Duality and Goddess Iconography on the
1977Amenhotep IV Sandstone Colossi at Karnak ............................................................................. 415
Gefsse, Gefssformen, Gefssdekor. L II, cols. 483-501.
Jack A. Josephson
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vii
1

Janice Kamrin
The Egyptian Museum Database, Digitizing, and
Registrar Training Projects: Update 2012 .................................................................................. 431
Nanette B. Kelekian
The Resurrection of Reniseneb .................................................................................................... 441
Peter Lacovara
The Menkaure Valley Temple Settlement Revisited .................................................................. 447
David T. Mininberg
One Snake or Two: Determining the True Symbol for Medicine ............................................. 455
Paul T. Nicholson, Phillip Parkes, and Caroline Jackson
A Tale of Two Tiles: Preliminary Investigation of Two Faience Bricks ................................ 463
David OConnor
Who was Merika? A Continuing Debate .................................................................................... 477
Diana Craig Patch
An Exceptional Early Statuette from Abydos ............................................................................ 491
Elena Pischikova
The Second Tomb of the Vizier Nespakashuty ........................................................................... 501

Deborah Schorsch
Bastet Goes Boating ...................................................................................................................... 571
Gerry Scott
An Old Kingdom Monkey Vase in the Collection of the
San Antonio Museum of Art ........................................................................................................585
Friederike Seyfried
Ein weiterer Beleg fr ein Gebude- bzw. Tempelteil, namens RwD-anx(.w)-Jtn
in Amarna zur revidierten Lesung eines Blockes in Privatbesitz ......................................... 591
Hourig Sourouzian
Lion and Sphinx Varia in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo........................................................... 597
Rainer Stadelmann
Ptah who Listens to Prayers
in the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III at Thebes ............................................................... 613
Paul Edmund Stanwick
Caracalla and the History of Imperial Sculpture in Egypt ...................................................... 619
Isabel Stnkel
Notes on Khenemet-nefer-hedjet Weret II .................................................................................. 631

Nicholas Reeves
Tutankhamuns Mask Reconsidered ........................................................................................... 511

Miroslav Verner
Two Vigilant (Pyramids): The Small One and the Large One
On the First Cult Pyramid in a Queens Pyramid Complex ..................................................... 641

Catharine Roehrig
Two Tattooed Women from Thebes ............................................................................................. 527

Malcolm H. Wiener
Oh, NoNot Another Chronology! ............................................................................................. 649

Ann Macy Roth

Upper Egyptian Heliopolis: Thebes, Archaism, and the
Political Ideology of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III ................................................................... 537

Kei Yamamoto
Iconography of the Sledge in Ancient Egyptian Funerary Art................................................. 665

Wafaa el Saddik
A Head for Amenemhat IIIs Heb-sed Triad? ............................................................................ 553
Phyllis Saretta
Of Lyres, Lions, Light, and Everything New Under the Sun:
An Amarna Relief in The Metropolitan Museum of Art .......................................................... 557

viii

Christiane Ziegler
Note sur la peinture aux vases (Louvre D 60 bis) ................................................................. 675
Irit Ziffer
Pyramid Myths: Israel in Egypt .................................................................................................. 683

ix

Nicholas Reeves

Tutankhamuns Mask Reconsidered1

For Dorothea Arnold, with gratitude and respect.
The possibility that the intended owner of the celebrated gold mask from Valley of the Kings tomb
KV 62 might have been someone other than Tutankhamun was first raised by the writer in a paper given
at University College London in 2001.2 The present article, based on a second lecture delivered at the
Valley of the Kings Since Howard Carter symposium held in Luxor, Egypt on November 11, 2009,
revisits and develops that idea.3 The conclusions reached are that Tutankhamuns employment of the mask
was indeed secondary and that the original owner had been a woman: Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten,
Akhenatens co-ruling queen. The ramifications of this identification are both intriguing and significant.
General Description
The limited interest that Tutankhamuns gold mask4 (fig. 1) has over the years generated among
Egyptologists is difficult to fathom; perhaps, because of its obvious glamour, there has been a feeling
that little real information could be expected of it. For whatever reason, commentaries are few, brief,
1

This paper was completed with restricted library access in Tokyo in the spring of 2010. An earlier version had been slated
for publication in the Valley of the Kings Since Howard Carter symposium volume, the fate of which is now somewhat
uncertain. For help in checking a number of supplementary references, both while I was in Japan and subsequently, I
am indebted to Nozomu Kawai, Stephen Quirke, and John Taylor. For the Luxor lecture on which the article is based,
Zahi Hawass, Tarek El Awady, Emily Teeter, John Taylor, and Robert B. Partridge very kindly provided important data
and images; Aidan Dodson generously permitted advance access to sections of the typescript of his (and Earl Ertmans)
forthcoming catalogue of Tutankhamuns mask and coffins (The Coffins, Canopic Equipment and Related Material
from the Tomb of Tutankhamun, references below cited from this early manuscript draft); while Nozomu Kawai kindly
drew my attention to the important XRDF examination recently undertaken by Sakuji Yoshimura and his Japanese coworkers (see here note 10 below). For assistance with Griffith Institute, Oxford images I am grateful to Jaromr Mlek
and Cat Warsi, and for final manipulation of the montage of Lee Boltin/gyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung,
Berlin photographs (courtesy of the Bridgeman Art Library and Friederike Kampp-Seyfried respectively) I am indebted
to Scott Murphy. For useful and inspiring discussions I wish to thank John R. Harris, Stephen Quirke, John Taylor, and
Yumiko Ueno. Responsibility for the conclusions here drawn, and for all errors and omissions, is of course my own.

Nicholas Reeves, The Amarna Dead in the Valley of the Kings (1), for the full text see http://www.nicholasreeves.
com/item.aspx?category=Events&id=256. My comments at that time were variously reported, for example by Peter A.
Clayton, The Amarna Royal Tombs Project in the Valley of the Kings, 19982001, Minerva 13, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 2002),
31-33, and Miriam Bibby, in Ancient Egypt (Jan./Feb. 2002), 9.

A subsequent version of that paper, entitled Behind the Mask of Tutankhamun and delivered in the Recent Research
in Egyptian Art lecture series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, on March 6, 2011, is available online at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxN1hm1TmJ0.

PM I.2 (2nd ed.), 573; Helen Murray and Mary Nuttall, comps., A Handlist to Howard Carters Catalogue of Objects in
Tutaankhamns Tomb, Tutaankhamns Tomb Series I (Oxford, 1963), 9, Carter object no. 256a; Carters record cards,
s.n. 256a (in two distinct hands, those of Alfred Lucas and Howard Carter), Griffith Institute, Oxford, Carter MSS,
Tutankhamun archivehttp://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a.html; and diaryhttp://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/
gri/4sea4not.html. For the independent notes of the expedition chemist, Lucas, see here note 10.

511

BES 19 (2015)

Reeves, Tutankhamuns Mask Reconsidered

and relatively bland, and for the most part focus on the artistic and iconographical aspects of the piece.5
The closest we come to a forensic archaeological assessment 6 is to be found in Howard Carters original
notes,7 though these notes are not at all extensive nor are they particularly well served by Harry Burtons
stand-alone photography,8 which conveys disappointingly little in the way of detail.9 Few technological
examinations of the object seem ever to have been carried out, either by Carters team or by subsequent
researchers, and of these fewer still seem to have found their way into print.10 No technical drawings exist.
Reliable detail is thus hard to come by, but the basic facts, such as we have them, may be briefly
summarized.11 The mask carries the Carter excavation number (object number) 256a; its Egyptian
Museum, Cairo Journal dentre number is 60672, and its Egyptian Museum Tutankhamun exhibition
number is 220. Physically the piece stands around 54 cm in height and measures some 39.3 cm wide
and 49 cm deep;12 the thickness of the sheet from which it is worked has been estimated at around 0.15
cm, expanding at the edges to some 0.30 cm.13 At the more specific of a range of weights to have been
published for it, the headpiece tips the scales at 10.23 kg.14
The masks primary material is gold, and of a very high carat. Two distinct shades are said to be
5

For example, Petit Palais, Toutankhamon et son temps (exh. cat., Paris, 1967), 190, no. 43; The British Museum, Treasures
of Tutankhamun (exh. cat., London, 1972), no. 50; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Treasures of Tutankhamun (exh.
cat., New York, 1976), 134, no. 25.

But see the perceptive comments of Emily Teeter, The Treasures of Tutankhamun: A Supplementary Guide (n.p., 1979),
19-20, no. 25 based on observations made when the mask toured the United States in 1979 with a selection of the tombs
contents. See here note 40.

Griffith Institute, Oxford, Carter MSS, Tutankhamun archive, record cards for object no. 256a, see http://www.griffith.
ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a.html; and diary, http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/4sea4not.html. Carters published comments
add little of substance, see Howard Carter, The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen II (London, 1927), esp. 82-88.

Griffith Institute, Oxford, photos 0749-0750, 0751-0755, 0757-0760, 1545, 1617-1618, 1699-1700; see http://www.griffith.
ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a.html.

More recent photographic coverage of the mask and related objects, though far from exhaustive, has been of exceptional
quality; see, for example, A. De Luca in T. G. H. James, Tutankhamun (Vercelli, 2000); and Sandro Vannini in Zahi
Hawass, King Tutankhamun: The Treasures of the Tomb (London, 2008).

10

For example, Jean Thibault, La masque dor de Toutankhamon radiographi, Photo-cin-revue (May 1968), 216-217
(with two x-ray photographs, one of which is reproduced in Nicholas Reeves, The Complete Tutankhamun: The King,
the Tomb, the Royal Treasure [London, 1990], 114; a better-quality version of this image may be found online at http://
www.dinosoria.com/egypte/toutankhamon-31.jpg); M. Uda, S. Yoshimura, A. Ishizaki, et al., Tutankhamuns Gold
Mask Investigated with XRDF, International Journal of PIXE 17/1-2 (2007), 65-76. For Alfred Lucass scant notes and
comments at the time of the discovery, now in the Griffith Institute, see http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/4lucasn4.html,
passim. Though I have been unable to trace any written report, a close examination of the mask was evidently made
at the time of the 1972 British Museum exhibition; a series of internal and external detail shots (35mm slides) taken at
that time (now sadly degraded) is kept in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan. For Teeter and Yale Kneelands
examination of the mask during the 1979 US tour see here notes 6 and 40.

11

For the mask in context, see below.

12

Those who have had an opportunity to measure the piece provide a range of figures. See, for example, Asahi Shimbunsha,
Tutankhamen Exhibition in Japan (exh. cat., Tokyo, 1965), 59, no. 45 (52 cm high); Petit Palais, Toutankhamon, 190, no.
43 (51 cm high, 38 cm wide, 49 cm deep); British Museum, Tutankhamun, no. 50 (54 cm high, 39 cm wide, 49 cm deep); B. B.
Piotrovksi, Sokrovishcha grobnitsy Tutankhamona (exh. cat., Moscow, 1973), no. 17 (54 cm high); Metropolitan Museum
of Art, Treasures of Tutankhamun, 134, no. 25 (54 cm high, 39.3 cm wide); Mohamed Saleh and Hourig Sourouzian,
Official Catalogue: The Egyptian Museum Cairo (Mainz am Rhein, 1987), no. 174 (54 cm high, 39.3 cm wide).

13

Ertman, in Dodson, Coffins, 319. The estimates are credited to James E. Harris.

14

Compare, for example, Asahi Shimbunsha, Tutankhamen Exhibition in Japan, 59, no. 45 (9,200 grams); Saleh, Egyptian
Museum, no. 174 (11 kg).

512

visible to the naked eye:15 a bluish-silver for the face and neck and a richer hue for the remainder. This
colour variance is no mere trick of the light: analysis by XRDF (x-ray diffractometer equipped with x-ray
fluorescence spectrometer) has revealed the respective surfaces to be of differing alloys, corresponding
to a fineness of 18.4 carat (reading taken at the lip on the face) and of 22.5 carat (reading taken on
the queue of the nemes).16 Compositional differences have been detected in the gold matrix also, the
underlying alloy of the face (23.2 carat at the lip) being marginally lower than that of the headpiece
proper (23.5 carat at the queue of the nemes).17
The face itself is a version of the idealised reality that was circulated as Tutankhamuns official portrait.18
As the kings standard image, these same facial features are encountered elsewhere within and beyond19
the tombperhaps most significantly (for assessing their relative veracity) in the paired guardian statues,
believed to be modelled closely and deliberately on an idealised version of the young pharaohs physical form.20
The rear of the mask carries ten vertical and two horizontal lines of hieroglyphic text taken from
Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead, chased directly into the metal. The spell is inscribed specifically to
benefit Tutankhamun himself, and the cartouche displays no evidence of alteration.21
The gold of the headpiece is richly embellished with abundant inlays of both glassy material22
(employed principally for the stripes of the nemes-headcloth) and a range of semi-precious stones. These
last (according to Carters identifications) include obsidian and white quartz (for the eyes), lapis lazuli
(for the eye surrounds and eyebrows), and turquoise, amazonite, carnelian, and other stones (as inlays of
the broad collar).23
15
16

Uda, Tutankhamuns Gold Mask Investigated, 71.

Uda, Tutankhamuns Gold Mask Investigated, 65-76 and esp. 71-72.

17

Uda, Tutankhamuns Gold Mask Investigated, 72.

18

On the transmission of the new royal portraiture (and titulary) by the circulation of easily and cheaply produced plaster
mouldings taken from an original master (in the case of faces, modelled after life), see briefly Nicholas Reeves, Lefthanded Kings? Observations on a Fragmentary Egyptian Sculpture, in Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honour of H. S.
Smith, Anthony Leahy and John Tait, eds. (London, 1999), 253, n. 36. I have yet to be convinced of the value of recent
(and widely differing) facial reconstructions based on CT-scans of the royal skull (see Zahi Hawass, Tutankhamun and
the Golden Age of the Pharaohs [exh. cat., Washington, D.C., 2005], 262-271).

19

See variously (in early youth) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 50.6; William C. Hayes, The Scepter of
Egypt: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, pt. II, The Hyksos
Period and the New Kingdom (16751080 b.c.), rev. ed. (New York, 1990), 301, fig. 186; (in later youth) Egyptian
Museum, Cairo CG 42091; Georges Legrain, Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers I, CG 42001-42138 (Cairo,
1906), pls. LVII-LVIII. Further examples could be added.

20

Carter nos. 22 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/022.html) and 29 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/029.

html). See D. E. Derry, in Carter, Tut.ankh.Amen II, 157-158; British Museum, Tutankhamun, no. 1. The latest
examination of the royal mummy posits among other ailments a club foot, see Zahi Hawass, Yehia Z. Gad, Somaia
Ismail, et al., Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamuns Family, Journal of the American Medical Association
303, no. 7 (Feb. 17, 2010), 638-647. For an initial critique of that study, see M. Eaton-Krauss, Mummies (and Daddies),
GM 230 (2011), 29-35.

21

See Griffith Institute photograph 0760 (see here note 8) and, for the text, Horst Beinlich and Mohamed Saleh, Corpus
der Hieroglyphischen Inschriften aus dem Grab des Tutanchamun (Oxford, 1989), 82-83, no. 256a (Goldmaske).

22

Uda, Tutankhamuns Gold Mask Investigated, 65-76 and esp. 73-74. The Japanese team identify this as a new artificial
pigment composed mainly of an amorphous phase, which is closely related to the crystalline dark blue material, Co(M)
Al2O4, i.e. a kind ofAmarna blue, together with a crystalline phase, i.e. Egyptian blue. The name they propose for
it is Tutankhamun blue (pp. 75-76).

23

See Carters notes for this object (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a.html). Dodsons list of identifications
differs slightly in Coffins, 322.

513

BES 19 (2015)

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An integral component of the mask, which is sometimes shown removed (notably in Burtons wellknown series of photographs),24 is the gold beard.25 Inlaid in a plaited design with a glassy material that
has now discoloured to grey,26 this beard is located by a curved gold strip soldered beneath the chin27 and
held in place by means of a simple pressure fit.
When first encountered by the excavators, the mask carried a triple string of large disc beads with
lotus flower terminals and uraeus clasps, attached through two holes on either side of the throat. Two
of the strings (1 and 3) are composed of groupings of yellow gold, red gold, and blue faience, and these
flank a central string (2) composed of yellow gold disc beads alone.28 As the headpiece is normally
displayed and photographed today, this bead necklace is removed.
Condition of the Mask
One of the more surprising features of Tutankhamuns gold mask is the amount of damage the piece has
sustained.
Particularly noticeable are extensive losses of blue glass inlay from both the front and rear of the
nemes-headcloth, in particular from the striped pigtail.29 The considerable difficulty Carter experienced
in extricating the mask from solidified unguents, which had effectively glued the piece to the trough of
the innermost coffin, will clearly account for much (though not all) of this loss.30
A second group of very different injuries is visible to both the front and the outer edge of the masks
right lappet: two crudely punched holes made in antiquity to receive a wire to hold the royal flail firmly
in position.31 Quite why this fixing had been required, and why it had been realized in this crude manner,
are questions that obviously warrant consideration. A likely explanation is that the Opening of the Mouth
ceremony 32 required the kings mummy to be physically raised from the horizontal to the vertical,33
24

See Griffith Institute photos 0749-0750, 0750b-0758, 0769, 1545, 1616-1618, 1620, 1699, 1700 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.
uk/gri/carter/256a.html).

25

Griffith Institute photo 0762, bottom (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a-p0762.html).

A grayish blue materialmostly amorphous with similar chemical compositionsto those of the dark blue material
used for the nemes, though Fe and Cu contents were slightly higher than those of the dark blue material (Uda,
Tutankhamuns Gold Mask Investigated, 73).

26

in which position the unsupported flail will have been found to fall awkwardly forward or sideways.
Presumably, from its poor quality, the necessary remedial work took place on site and at a relatively
late and urgent stage in the proceedings.34 Since it is difficult to imagine the day of burial having been
disrupted by the hammering required, we might speculate that the modification had been carried out
during or following a practice run-through of the funeral ceremony. Referring back to the losses of inlay
noted above: it is apparent from Harry Burtons in situ photographs35 that several sections of blue glass
were already missing from the right lappet in particular, close to the punched holes, before Carter embarked
upon his removal of the mask from its solidified resin bed. The inference to be drawn is that a proportion
of these preburial losses had been inflicted during the course of attaching this flail retention wire.
A third area of damage is visible behind and on the protruding right-hand corner of the nemesheaddress.36 This gives every appearance of being the consequence of a violent concussion, and from
its position suggests an intriguing possibility: that the masked (and therefore the fully embellished)
mummy may have suffered a fall from the vertical within the tomb. Possible supporting evidence for a
catastrophic event of this sort may be found in Carters notes,37 which mention a number of loose gold
elements recovered from the floor of the entrance passageway and antechamber. These elements Carter
subsequently identified as parts of the mummys sectional side-straps (see below)straps that such a fall
would very likely have broken and scattered, along with further portions of the masks blue glass inlay.38
It may be noted that nothing has been observed in the condition of the mask to suggest that the piece
had in actuality been employed for a pre-Tutankhamun burial, despite evidence presented below that it
had been prepared for an earlier owner.
Construction of the Mask
Separate inspections of the interior of the mask in Cairo in 2001 and 2009, supplemented by recent
photographs kindly provided by Zahi Hawass and Tarek El Awady (see fig. 2), have shed considerable
light on the method of construction, revealing clear evidence of cold hammering, riveting, and soldered
joins. Most remarkable of all the features so far discerned is a series of rivets at the base of the throat,
together with visible lines of solder around the edges of the face and neck and (hinted at by a line of
thickening in the published x-ray)39 just above the brow band.40

27

For a general shot showing a glimpse of this tenon see Griffith Institute photo 1699 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/
carter/256a-p1699.html).

28

Griffith Institute photo 0744 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a-p0744.html). For the necklace alone see
Griffith Institute photo 0762, top (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a-p0762.html).

35

Griffith Institute photos 0744, 0750a, 0750b, 1616, 1620; http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a.html.

29

See Griffith Institute photos (see here note 8) and more recent images, for example, James, Tutankhamun, 9, 96.

36

Griffith Institute photos 0757-0759; http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a.html.

30

Howard Carter, diary, 19251926, from October 28 on (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/4sea4not.html), describes the

problems encountered. Note in particular the entry for November 27December 14, The mask was also a difficult
undertakingthe inlay had become unstuck from the heat applied to free it from the coffin. It took many days for
final cleaning and I am still replacing the numerous pieces of glass and stone inlay that came away; F. Filce Leek,
The Human Remains from the Tomb of Tutaankhamn, Tutaankhamns Tomb Series V (Oxford, 1972), 8.

37

Howard Carter, notes for object number 256(b)4; http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256b(4)-c256b-06.html.

38

See here note 37 and Dodson, Coffins, n. 28. It may be observed that the once-inlaid eyes of the vulture on the brow of
the mask are also missing; http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a-c256a-2.html.

39

See here note 10.

40

Emily Teeter (then at the Seattle Art Museum) and Yale Kneeland (then at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York) seem to have been the first to consider construction technique, albeit briefly, when the mask was in the United
States in 19781979. A summary of their findings (only recently seen) is in Teeter, The Treasures of Tutankhamun: A
Supplementary Guide, 19-20, no. 25: The mask is constructed from several pieces. The face is separately worked and
riveted to the surrounding nemes headdress with small gold rivets. The quality of the seams which weld the headdress
together is so good that only with difficulty can the burnished joints be seen from the inside. The mask weighs between
23 and 24 pounds. See also Emily Teeter, Review of The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, the Tomb, the Royal
Treasure, by Nicholas Reeves, JNES 53, no. 4 (1994), 297, Reevess assertion that the gold mask is made of two sheets
of gold joined by hammering (111) requires some clarification, for examination of the interior of the mask at the Seattle
Art Museum in 1978 revealed the presence of rivets around the edges of the face.

31

See Nicholas Reeves, The Tombs of Tutankhamun and his Predecessor (lecture, University College London, May 17,
1997; the full text is available at http://www.nicholasreeves.com/item.aspx?category=Collections&id=261).

32

As depicted on the painted north wall of the burial chamber; see conveniently Reeves, Complete Tutankhamun, 73;
James, Tutankhamun, 38-41. Representations of this subject matter are frequently encountered in private tomb scenes
(see PM I.1 [2nd ed.], 471, [d]), and of course in funerary papyri (for example Hunefer, British Museum, London EA
9901/5, see E. A. W. Budge, The Book of the Dead: Facsimiles of the Papyri of Hunefer, Anhai, Kerasher and Netchemet
with Supplementary Text from the Papyrus of Nu [London, 1899], Hunefer pl. 7) and elsewhere.

33

Curiously enough, what may be an example of the type of contraption employed to accomplish this feat (though it has not been
recognized as such by the excavators) was recently discovered, dismantled, within the large whitened storage jars of KV 63;
see Earl L. Ertman, A Unique Bed with Lion-Headed Terminals: A KV63 Report, KMT 20, no. 2 (summer 2009), 44-47.
514

34

The action is directly comparable to the crude adzing-off of the outer coffins toes in order to allow the sarcophagus lid
to sit properly and the subsequent camouflaging of this damage with black resin, see Carter, Tut.ankh.Amen II, 89-90.

515

BES 19 (2015)

Reeves, Tutankhamuns Mask Reconsidered

These features indicate that the face had been fashioned not as one with the front of the headpiece,41
but as a wholly separate unit. In fact, close inspection from both inside and out reveals the headpiece
to have been a rather complex creation, with the exclusion of its triple necklace composed of at least
eight distinct parts: 1) front panel; 2) back panel; 3) uraeus and vulture;42 4) face; 5-6) ears; 7) beard;
8) collar paneleach element variously hammered to shape from sheet metal or else separately cast,
and jointed, soldered, riveted, or simply pressure-fitted into place (fig. 3). In its fully assembled state,
the masks metal surfaces had been smoothed, inlaid, chased, treated, and provided with the finishing
burnish which, externally at least, conceals so convincingly today details of the construction process.
Separately Modelled Face: Evidence of Reuse?
In my initial lecture in 2001, the proposal that Tutankhamuns funerary mask had perhaps been
intended for an earlier ruler was prompted by my realization that: 1) the face was a separately modelled
component.43 But is this on its own sufficient to indicate reuse? With clear evidence now brought to bear
from Tanis44 that the insertion of a separately modelled face might simply be a feature of the construction
process, without corroboration the answer would have to be no. In the event, two supplementary pieces
of evidence heighten the possibility of the masks appropriation and adaptation: 2) the employment on
the Tutankhamun portrait of a set of eye and eyebrow inlays cut not from glass (to match the principal
blue inlays of the headdress),45 but from lapis lazuli; and 3) the variant alloy (though not necessarily
the somewhat paler finish) 46 of the face insert revealed by recent XRDF analysis.47 A fourth piece of
evidence, outlined below, now confirms that reuse.
41

Reeves, Complete Tutankhamun, 111; Petit Palais, Toutankhamon, 190, no. 43, had suggested the mask was beaten from
a single sheet.

42

The rarity in royal imagery of the combined uraeus and vulture has been noted by Edna R. Russmann, Vulture
and Cobra at the Kings Brow, in Chief of Seers: Egyptian Studies in Memory of Cyril Aldred, Elizabeth Goring,
Nicholas Reeves, and John Ruffle, eds. (London, 1997), 266-284; Dodson, Coffins, n. 1. The fact that the parallels cited
by Russmann occur on objects intended for male use seems to deny the possibility that vulture + cobra might have
represented a deliberate combination of female (vulture) and male (uraeus).

43

See here note 2.

44

Ertman, in Dodsons as yet unpublished catalogue of the Tutankhamun coffins and mask (Coffins, n. 18), proposes that
the silver coffin and gold mask of Psusennes I display similar inserted faces, while of course both Shoshenq II and
Wendjebauendjedet were equipped with gold face masks identical in construction and form to the Tutankhamun face
elementthe portrait hammered from a single sheet of gold, to which separate ears cast in gold were then attached by
means of solder. For the relevant Tanis materials, see Pierre Montet, Les constructions et le tombeau de Psousenns
Tanis, La ncropole royale de Tanis 2 (Paris, 1951), pls. XXII, XLVII-XLVIII, CII, CIV-CV; and, conveniently
assembled, Grand Palais, Tanis: lor de pharaons (exh. cat., Paris, 1987), 270-271, no. 104.

45

46

47

One possibility I had previously considered on the basis of this inconsistency in materials was that Tutankhamuns
headpiece might originally have been prepared for Akhenaten himself, with the gold masks original portrait
subsequently removed and reemployed to furnish a suitable new face for the adapted KV 55 coffin (which had originally
been intended for Kiya). The eye and eyebrow inlays of this (now damaged) KV 55 face are of course in a shade of blue
glass that matches the glass stripes of the Tutankhamun nemes. For a convenient image of the KV 55 coffin, see Nicholas
Reeves, Akhenaten: Egypts False Prophet (London, 2001), 81.
In funerary objects, the face of the deceased is frequently shown highlighted relative to its surrounding headdress,
perhaps in allusion to Book of the Dead Chapter 151 (on which see Barbara Lscher, Untersuchungen zu Totenbuch
Spruch 151 [Wiesbaden, 1998]), and the 11th Division of the Book of Gates (Erik Hornung, Das Buch von den Pforten des
Jenseits nach den Versionen des Neuen Reiches, Aegyptiaca Helvetica 7-8 [Geneva, 19791980], I, 361-362; II, 251-252).
See Uda Tutankhamuns Gold Mask Investigated, 65-76. Note that in the context of jewellery it is common to
find separate elements of a single item utilizing alloys of differing compositionsfor the reason that the refining of
precious metals in ancient Egypt was normally undertaken piecemeal and on a limited scale, see Nicholas Reeves, The
Ashburnham Ring and the Burial of General Djehuty, JEA 79 (1993), 259-261.
516

Pierced Ears and Pharaonic Representation

Figure 4 reproduces Harry Burtons famous photograph of the mask as it was first revealed on October
28, 1925, in situ on the head of the royal mummy.48 A careful examination of this image reveals two small
and at first glance indeterminate pieces of gold foil, one on each of the nemes-lappets. These small discs
prove to be the coverings mentioned by Carter 49 as having been applied in antiquity to conceal large
piercings in the lobes of the masks ears50 holes that are attested not only on the headpiece itself, but on
the ears of the innermost gold coffin also.51
Before examining in detail this Burton photograph, my original understanding from a reading of
Carters description had been as follows: 1) that, for whatever reason, those burying Tutankhamun had
had as their principal aim a total camouflaging of the kings ear-piercings; and 2) that this camouflaging
had been achieved by the application of flat gold patches. Since, however, the foil elements visible in
the Burton image prove to be dished inserts (see below), it is now obvious that total concealment had
never been the issue. Indeed, nowhere within Tutankhamuns tomb or beyond can there be discerned the
slightest desire, in either two or three dimensions, to deny that the king had pierced ears.52
This had not always been the case in Egyptian art: although we know from his mummy 53 that
Thutmose IV had pierced lobes (his is the earliest royal attestation), this fact is not reflected in any
extant representation of the king nor does it seem to be attested in artworks of the reign of his son and
successor Amenhotep III.54 By the reign of Akhenaten, however, the situation changes dramatically, and
this pharaoh, as all subsequent rulers, is shown routinely in all media with pierced ears.
What is significant for us is the manner in which the presence of piercings in life was regularly expressed
in art: not by a hole drilled completely through a three-dimensional sculptures lobe, but by a discreet,
oval depressionwhich is plainly the effect those modifying the fully drilled lobes of Tutankhamuns
mask and innermost gold coffin were seeking to achieve by the insertion of dished foil plugs.
Besides Tutankhamuns mask and innermost coffin, there is one other large-scale image from the
tomb that displays, and most instructively, the anomaly of fully perforated earlobes: this is the wellknown, gessoed-wood representation of the child Tutankhamuns head rising from a lotus.55 Here,
48

Griffith Institute photo 0750a (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a-p0750a.html). A good quality reproduction

may be found in Susan J. Allen, with an Introduction by James P. Allen and photographs by Harry Burton, Tutankhamuns
Tomb: The Thrill of Discovery (exh. cat., New York, 2006), 57, fig. 45.

49

Griffith Institute, Oxford, Carter MSS, Tutankhamun archive, record card no. 256a(1); see http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/
gri/carter/256a-c256a-1.html.

50

Good images can be found in James, Tutankhamun, 17, 82-83, 96, 98-99.

51

See Griffith Institute, Carter record cards for object no. 255; http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/255-c255-02.html.
The left plug looks as if it had fallen out, but the camouflaging of the right ear remains and is scarcely noticeable, even
in the best-published images, for example James, Tutankhamun, 88-91. Although not a specific focus of the present
study, the conclusions reached regarding the mask will also surely be applicable to the innermost gold coffin, which
itself shows evidence of significant and as yet not fully explained alterations in its design; see Robert B. Partridge,
Tutankhamuns Gold Coffin: An Ancient Change in Design? GM 150 (1996), 93-98, and here note 79.

52

A fact established, of course, from the royal mummy itself, which displayed a single perforation in each lobe consisting
of a circular hole measuring 7.5 mm. in diameter, see Derry, in Carter, Tut.ankh.Amen II, 153.

53

Egyptian Museum, Cairo CG 61073, see G. Elliot Smith, The Royal Mummies, CG 61051-61100 (Cairo, 1912), 42-46, pls.
XXIX-XXX.

54

It is possible that Amenhotep III never had pierced earsthe condition of the mummy is too poor to decide; see Egyptian
Museum, Cairo CG 61074, Smith, Royal Mummies, 46-51, pls. XXXVI-XXXVII.

55

Carter object no. 8 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/008.html).

517

BES 19 (2015)

Reeves, Tutankhamuns Mask Reconsidered

crucially, the piercings actually functioned; that is to say, holes had been made not simply to reflect the
fact that the king had pierced ears, but to receive the posts of separately modelled ear-ornamentsas
confirmed by a broken part of one earring still in place in the sculptures left lobe.56
From this evidence we may reasonably draw a key conclusion: that if, contrary to representational
custom, true holes are present in the ears of an image, then they are there for a purpose. In the case of
Tutankhamuns mask and innermost coffin, the original intention, clearly, had been for the ears to carry
earrings or ear-studs; just as apparent, from the subsequent disguising of these holes, is that this need for
functionality had passed before the king was buried.
Boy-kingor Queen?
The complicating factor in all of this is that depictions of kings wearing earrings are so rare as to be
virtually non-existent. Apart from the Tutankhamun lotus head described above, an extensive search
within the literature has produced no more than two such images:57 1) a limestone relief fragment of
Amenhotep I from the Theban temple Meniset, in which the king is shown wearing a large hoop earring;58
and 2) a limestone relief of Ramesses II in the Louvre, in which pharaoh sports a similar large hoop earring
elaborated with pendant drops59a type familiar from examples found in Tutankhamuns tomb.60
Why so few instances? Self-evidently in the case of the Tutankhamun lotus head, and from the
presence of a sidelock in the two cited reliefs, all three of these representations depict pharaoh as a
child. They are, therefore, the exceptions that establish the ancient rule: that, while ear adornment was
acceptable in images of a prepubescent king, it was deemed inappropriate for a king who had advanced
beyond puberty into manhood.61
Although this explains why the holes in the ears of Tutankhamuns gold mask and innermost coffin
were subsequently covered over, it sheds but little light on why actual perforations had been present
in the first place. Are we to assume that when these items of burial equipment were initially prepared
Tutankhamun had yet to reach adolescence? That on both mask and inner coffin the child-king had

originally been equipped with earrings? And that these earrings had been removed and the piercings plugged
for the simple reason that Tutankhamun survived beyond adolescence, and was buried as an adult? 62
It is a view, clearly. But, given the fully adult scale of the mask and innermost coffin, and the fact
that preparations for Tutankhamuns burial scarcely seem to have begun by the time of his unexpected
death, it is almost certainly not the true answer.
My suggestion is that we consider a rather different possibility: that, in company with other items
closely associated with the royal mummy, the mask (and related inner coffin) had been prepared originally
not for a male at all, but for a femalethe opposite sex being regularly shown in Egyptian artworks at all
(upper) social levels and stages of life wearing ear-ornamentation in a range of types.63
The Mask in Context
The photographs taken by Harry Burton at the time of the discovery 64 (fig. 4) remind us that
Tutankhamuns gold mask did not stand alone: it was but a single element in the outer adornment of
the kings mummified body. The masks companion pieces in this external decoration were several and
comprised the following: 1) a gold-mounted resin scarab inscribed with Chapter 29B of the Book of the
Dead, suspended on ornamental straps made up from odd sections of reused gold trappings; 65 2) a pair
of separately modelled sheet-gold hands66 sewn onto the mummy wrappings and clasping the crook and
flail;67 3) a winged ba-bird pectoral;68 4) inlaid inscriptional bands positioned over and along the lines
of the shrouds linen retaining strips;69 and 5) ornamental side straps made up from the same series of
components employed as suspension for the scarab (no. 1).70
The outwardly visible names on these mummy trappings (and the name on the base of the scarab)
are throughout those of Tutankhamun. Both the suspension bands of the resin scarab (no. 1) and the
ornamental side straps (no. 5),71 however, reveal by the intact cartouches on their concealed undersurfaces that these particular pieces had originally been prepared for a quite different regal personage:
Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten.72

See Griffith Institute photo 1745 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/008-p1745.html).

It should be noted that certain claimed instances of mature Ramessid kings wearing earrings (Alix Wilkinson, Ancient
Egyptian Jewellery [London, 1971], 157, 225, nn. 13, 15) are illusory, with the adornments in question proving on
close inspection to be merely component strokes in the delineation of the ear.

62

As suggested by Teeter, The Treasures of Tutankhamun: A Supplementary Guide, 20.

63

See Wilkinson, Jewellery, 121-123.

64

Griffith Institute photos 0743, 0763b (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256.html), 2003 (http://www.griffith.

ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a.html).

58

The Marquis of Northampton, Wilhelm Spiegelberg, and Percy E. Newberry, Report on Some Excavations in the Theban
Necropolis During the Winter of 1898-9 (London, 1908), 7, fig. 5.

65

59

Louvre, Paris N522, see Charles Boreux, Muse national du Louvre, Dpartement des antiquits gyptiennes: Guidecatalogue sommaire II (Paris, 1932), 479-480, pl. LXVI left; Christiane Ziegler, Le Louvre: Les antiquits gyptiennes
(Paris, 1990), 42.

Carter no. 256a (object cards 4-6: http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a-c256a-4.html, et seq). See Griffith
Institute photo 0761 (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256q-p0761.html, lower); Carter, Tut.ankh.Amen II, pl.
XXVI, A; in position Griffith Institute photo 0763b (top of photo) (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256-p0763b.
html); Beinlich, Corpus, 83, no. 256a, Skarabaeus.

66

60

Conveniently, see Howard Carter, Tut.ankh.Amen III (London, 1933), pl. XVIII, left lower (Carter no. 269a[3]),
right upper (Carter no. 269a[2]) and right lower (Carter no. 269a[1]). See further http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/
carter/250-299.html.

Carter no. 256b(1) (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256b(1).html); see Griffith Institute photos 0744, 0750a
(http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256a.html).

67

The crook and flail seemingly do not have separate numbers, but are grouped with the hands (Carter object no. 256b(1) above).

68

Carter no. 256b(2) (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256b(2).html); Griffith Institute photo 0763b (http://www.

griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256-p0763b.html).

69

Carter no. 256b(3) (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256b(3).html); Griffith Institute photos, see generally http://www.
griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256b.html; Beinlich, Corpus, 83-88, no. 256b, Mumienstreifen; Dodson, Coffins, 324-332, cat. 5.

70

Carter no. 256b(4) (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256b(4).html); Griffith Institute photo 0763a (http://www.griffith.

ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/256b-p0763a.html); Beinlich, Corpus, 83-88, no. 256b, Mumienstreifen; Dodson, Coffins, 324-332, cat. 5.

71

Dodson, Coffins, no. 5.3.2 (Carter 256b[4]), and not the principal bands in Dodson, Coffins, 5.3.1 (Carter 256b[3]), as I
had previously and mistakenly inferred in Reeves, Complete Tutankhamun, 114.

72

See Beinlich, Corpus, 83-88 (Carter nos. 256a-b); Dodson, Coffins, 324 ff. (cat. 5.3.2).

56
57

61

Teeter, The Treasures of Tutankhamun: A Supplementary Guide, 20, makes a similar deduction. A likely general echo
of ancient custom is recorded by Winifred S. Blackman, in The Fellahin of Upper Egypt (London, 1927), 50; Among
the fellahin, she writes, it is usually the custom to pierce one ear of a young boy if he is an only son, and in this ear he
wears a decorative ring. When he gets older he discards the ring, but the perforation is always visible. Interestingly, the
earring illustrated by Brunton is a degraded version of the pharaonic hoop-and-pendants type seen on the Ramesses II
relief and found buried with Tutankhamun (see here notes 59-60). As Blackman continues, No reason was given for this
custom but I suspect it is most likely a method of protection against the evil eye, and is possibly regarded as a means of
Fig. 2. Drawing depicting the tattooing on the mummy found in pit 26 as she might have appeared in life.
disguising his sexthis last remark particularly ironic in the present context.
Drawing by Charles K. Wilkinson. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, AM 1631

518
534

519

BES 19 (2015)

Reeves, Tutankhamuns
Roehrig, Two
Mask
Tattooed
Reconsidered
Women

dancing
Whogirls,
was Ankhkheprure
but through their
Nefernefruaten?
association with
Fortunately,
the cult of
it isHathor,
now possible
whoseconvincingly
connection with
to demonstrate
the site of
Deir
what el-Bahri
until recently
is wellcould
attested
onlyinbethe
surmised.
time of 73Mentuhotep
II and inby
later
periods.
With the discovery
Marc
Gabolde74 of the phrase akheten-hi-es (Ax.t-n-h(i)=s)one who is beneficial for her husbandemployed as an epithet associated
Department
of Egyptian
Art, The Metropolitan
Museum
Art
with this individuals nomen (and balancing
a prenomen
epithet beloved
of Neferkheprure),
weofhave
confirmation that Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten was both a woman and a wife of Akhenaten who, on
Abstract
the
basis of iconography and paired cartouches, was acting in the capacity of co-regent. But which wife?
Duringthe
thecartouched
winter of 19221923,
theaService
des Antiquits
de lgyptename
undertook
preservation
Since
nomen shares
key element
with the developed
of the some
principal
consort,
work around theNefertiti,
temple ofthe
Nebhepetre
Mentuhotep
II at Deir el-Bahri.
cooperation
with royal
this work,
Nefernefruaten
clear inference
is that Akhenatens
female In
co-regent
and great
wife
75
the Metropolitan
Egyptian
Expedition agreed to clear away stones and do some grading and
were
one and the Museums
same person.
filling in different parts of the temple. Herbert Winlock was particularly interested in a small triangular
courtEvidence
just northofofthe
theCanopic
temple platform
that had been filled with stone fragments during excavations by
The
Coffinettes
the Egypt
FundTutankhamuns
some twenty years
earlier.
Several in
burials
had been but
found
in items
this area
anda
The
reusedExploration
pieces among
mummy
trappings
fact represent
two
from
Winlock suspected
therehand
were more.
During
clearance
of the court,
ten pit
tombs
substantial
body of that
second
materials
thatthe
hadMuseums
been drawn
upon, seemingly
from
more
thanwere
one
discovered,
including
two that
the unwrapped
mummies
of women
whose
bodies
source,
for the
provisioning
of contained
Tutankhamuns
burial.76 These
recycled
elements
within
the were
tombcovered
may be
with
tattoos.today
In collaboration
Dr. Douglas E.ofDerry,
Charles K.
Wilkinson
drawings
that
recognized
by any one, with
or a combination,
the following:
1) the
presenceproduced
of an original
owners
attempted
to superimposition
depict how the tattoos
would have appeared
the women
werename;
alive.3)These
name; 2) the
of Tutankhamuns
name overwhen
an original
owners
facialdrawings
features
are
along
the initial
the women as 4)
dancing
girls.
Evidence from
the tombs
thatdiscussed
differ from
thewith
official
facialdescription
image of of
Tutankhamun;
physical
characteristics
inappropriate
of
women and from
the surrounding
cemetery
suggestsfor
that
they probably
positionsforms
of some
forthe
Tutankhamun;
5) iconographic
features
inappropriate
a male
king; 6) held
grammatical
in
status
and were
with thefor
cult
of Hathor. 7) the over-provision of certain classes of funerary
inscriptions
thatconnected
are inappropriate
Tutankhamun;
item. Though there is obviously not space here to list every known piece, this recycled component of
Tutankhamuns burial equipment so far includes, or may be detected among, the large gilded shrines,
the sarcophagus, the royal coffins, the mummy trappings (as we have seen), the canopic equipment, the
gilded ritual figures, the shabti-figures, the boxes and chests, the bows, and the royal jewellery.
Of this material, a significant proportion may be recognized as definitively female, and, where
inscriptions survive, to have been prepared originally for Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten.77
Four of the more illuminating objects of this ruling queen within Tutankhamuns tomb are the richly
decorated gold canopic coffinettes,78 found within the enshrined alabaster canopic chest and ultimately
employed to store and safeguard Tutankhamuns embalmed viscera. The iconography of these coffinettes
is revealing. While from the waist up the imagery is that of a pharaoh, from the waist down the containers
73

Reeves, Akhenaten, 162-173.

74

Marc Gabolde, DAkhenaton Toutnkhamon, Collection de lInstitut darchologie et dhistoire de lantiquit 3 (Lyon,
1998), 153-157.

75

This carry-over of name-elements is one of the bases for the view that Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten and Ankhkheprure
Smenkhkare-djeserkhepru might be one and the same individual, see Reeves, Akhenaten, 172.

76

As first recognized by R. Engelbach, Material for a Revision of the History of the Heresy Period of the XVIIIth
Dynasty, ASAE 40 (1940), 133-183.

77

On the inscribed material (though the article predates the correct reading of the Ax.t-n-h(i)=s epithet), see J. R. Harris,
Akhenaten and Nefernefruaten in the Tomb of Tutaankhamun, in After Tutaankhamn: Research and Excavation
in the Royal Necropolis at Thebes, C. N. Reeves, ed. (London, 1992), 55-72. For provisional discussions of the range
of these appropriations (obviously now subject to revision), see Nicholas Reeves, The Tombs of Tutankhamun
and his Predecessor, lecture, University College London, May 17, 1997 (http://www.nicholasreeves.com/item.
aspx?category=Events&id=261); Nicholas Reeves, The Amarna Dead in the Valley of the Kings (2), lecture, Imola,
Italy, April 12, 2003 (http://www.nicholasreeves.com/item.aspx?category=Events&id=248). The writer is currently
preparing a detailed study of Tutankhamuns appropriated burial equipment.

78

Carter object nos. 266g(1-4) (http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/266g.html). Beinlich, Corpus, 106-117.

520
532

lack the embracing wings appropriate for a full king.79 In fact, the unelaborated rishi-decoration of their
lower halves is not pharaonic at all: it is that of a queen,80 as confirmed by the identical lower-body
scheme of the coffin prepared for Akhenatens secondary wife, Kiya.81 No attempt had been made to
update this overall semi-pharaonic style to reflect the full pharaonic status of the coffinettes new and
final owner: the technical difficulty of modifying elaborately inlaid surfaces, particularly when time was
short, will have been too great for Tutankhamuns undertakers to contemplate.82
Although this design anomaly had been allowed to stand, as completed the overall adaptation of the
coffinettes for their new owner was externally convincing enough. As viewed today, the containers are
clearly and competently inscribed for the benefit of Tutankhamun and, other than slight variations in
the colour of the gold backgrounds of these inlaid texts, no obvious changes may be discerned. As ever
within this tomb, though, it is the less-visible that tells the full story: close inspection of the inscriptions
chased on the interior gold linings of the coffinette shells reveals the kings cartouches here to be
palimpsestthat is, to have had the names of Tutankhamun inscribed over incompletely erased and still
legible cartouches of Nefernefruaten-Ax.t-n-h(i)=s.83
On both representational and inscriptional grounds, therefore, Tutankhamuns coffinetteslike the
scarab suspension, the decorative side-straps of the mummy, and a veritable host of other mortuary
itemshad demonstrably been intended for first use in the burial of Akhenatens female co-regent; that
is, by Nefertiti herself.
These feminine containers display one further and significant distinguishing feature, and one that
serves to associate them directly with, and clarify the original ownership of, the gold mask: fully pierced
ears. What was discerned above concerning the presence of such sculptural piercings allows us to
conclude now, for Nefertitis coffinettes, that these particular artworks had, in their original manifestation,
79

See here note 80, and cf. Carter object nos. 253 and 255the outermost and innermost coffins (http://www.griffith.
ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/253.html and http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/255.html). The wings as now present on
Tutankhamuns innermost coffin I would tentatively recognize as secondary additions made during the coffins
refurbishment for Tutankhamun (for which see briefly here note 51). As I conclude below, this is an object made
originally for Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten.

80

A similar queenly lower half may be observed on Tutankhamuns second coffin, with which the canopic coffinettes
were evidently prepared en suite. The second coffin must also be a reused piece (a possibility already hinted at by the fact
that its cartouches sit somewhat lower than the surrounding texts) and again originally the property of Ankhkheprure
Nefernefruaten, whose portrait it (and the coffinettes) would appear still to bear. While perhaps not independently
diagnostic, the faces bring to mind the less elegant version of Nefertitis portrait seen, for example, in the granodiorite
head gyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin 21358for an image of which see Dorothea Arnold, The
Royal Women of Amarna: Images of Beauty from Ancient Egypt (exh. cat., New York, 1996), 80, fig. 72; 82, fig. 74.

81

For a photograph, see conveniently Reeves, Akhenaten, 81.

82

A similar pragmatism was exercised in the adaptation of the second coffin also (for which see here note 80). The situation
stands in marked contrast to that of Tutankhamuns innermost gold coffin, on which the chased decoration could be
readily changed. Similarly, with immense effort, on the kings usurped quartzite sarcophagus wings had been added to
originally wingless armsan evident attempt to adapt it for full pharaonic use. On this latter monument see M. EatonKrauss, The Sarcophagus in the Tomb of Tutankhamun (Oxford, 1993); M. Eaton-Krauss, The Sarcophagus in the
Tomb of Tutankhamun: A Clarification, JEA 84 (1998), 210-212; Marianne Eaton-Krauss, The Burial of Tutankhamen,
Part One, KMT 20, no. 4 (Winter 20092010), 34-47, esp. 41-42.

83

Beinlich, Corpus, 106-117 (with caution); Marc Gabolde, Under a Deep Blue Starry Sky, in Causing His Name to
Live: Studies in Egyptian Epigraphy and History in Memory of William J. Murnane, Peter J. Brand and Louise Cooper,
eds., Fig.
Culture
and History
of thethe
Ancient
Near
37 (Leiden,
2009),
notesappeared
that traces
of the epithet
1. Drawing
depicting
tattooing
onEast
the mummy
found
in pit109-120.
23 as sheGabolde
might have
in life.
Ax.t-n-h(i)=s, oneDrawing
who is beneficial
husband,The
areMetropolitan
visible on theMuseum
interior of
by Charlesfor
K.her
Wilkinson.
of the
Art,coffinette
AM 1628of Selket (Carter 266g,
Selket = Egyptian Museum, Cairo JE 60691, line 7).

533
521

BES 19 (2015)

Reeves, Tutankhamuns
Mask
Reconsidered
Roehrig, Two
Tattooed
Women

84
a broadear-ornaments
collar of tubular
beads,
wafer
and pendants,
at least some
which
werestuds
silver.
In the
carried
and
these,
webeads,
may assume,
were a variation
on theoflarge,
domed
worn
by
drawing, inforher
purposes
of clarity, the85 broad collar is depicted underneath the other necklaces, but in
Nefertiti
later representations.
reality
was reversed:
the three necklaces
had Ibeen
placed
directly
thethe
body,
As this
withorder
Tutankhamuns
appropriated
coffinettes,
would
suggest,
so on
with
goldleaving
mask their
(and
impression
on the skin,
while theessentially
broad collar
lay on top
of these
and touched pierced
the skin ears
only definitively
at its upper
innermost coffin):
the shared,
feminine
feature
of functionally
and
lower the
edges.
identifies
original owner of this entire group of core mortuary objects as a woman and co-regent
JustAnkhkheprure
below the rib cage
were impressionslate,
of a powerful
band, 3.5manifestation
cm wide, consisting
of five rows
of beads.
queen:
Nefernefruatenthe
of Akhenatens
former
great
The
center(fig.
rows5).were composed of small wafer beads 2 mm in diameter. Two of these beads,
royalouter
wife,and
Nefertiti
made of brilliant blue faience, were found adhering to the body. Between the rows of wafer beads were
two
rows of tubular
beads. This band was interpreted as a girdle that had been misplaced in the wrapping
Conclusions
and Implications
process,
but a girdle
this ranks
width today
would as
have
around
the hips.
Theworld.
impression
of a
Tutankhamuns
gold of
mask
onedraped
of theawkwardly
most famous
artworks
in the
For more
similar
band of beads
the sametoposition
on the body
of of
Aashyt,
a royal
woman,viewed
who was
than eighty-five
years was
it hasfound
beeninsubjected
the unremitting
gaze
countless
millions
at
12
also
the templeinprecinct.
first buried
hand oninexhibition
the Egyptian
Museum,
and elsewhere,
and featured
in endless
With
two suchCairo
examples,
it seems likely
that these
beadedbooks,
bands
magazines,
andplaced
television
documentaries.
It is not just
onlyunder
the quintessential
image
were
correctly
on the
bodies. The position,
the ribs, suggests
thefrom
highTutankhamuns
waist bands of
13
tomb, it worn
is perhaps
the best-known
object from
ancient
Egypt
itself. these are beaded decorations for the
dresses
by women
in relief decoration
of this
period.
Perhaps
bysuch
the garments,
pieces sheer
beauty
and enormous
bullionwas
worth,
however,
the world
has looked
waistBlinded
bands of
though
no evidence
of a garment
found
on the body
of Aashyt,
whose
and yet has
completely
tointact,
seethat
the the
gold
mask had
never from
been the
intended
mummy
wrappings
werefailed
largely
despite
removal
of jewelry
body. for Tutankhamun
at all. Though now bearing that kings name and facial features, from the evidence of its fully pierced
earswhich the of
royal
had
gone to some
pains to concealit is clear that the headpiece had
Interpretations
theundertakers
Status of the
Tattooed
Women
originally
prepared
fortattooed
a woman.
This woman,
as Tutankhamuns
canopic
coffinettes
allow
In
his firstbeen
reference
to the
mummies,
Winlock
identified themadapted
as dancing
girls,
a description
14
us towas
establish,
hadinbeen
the young
pharaohs immediate
predecessor,
Ankhkheprure
that
repeated
subsequent
publications.
This identification
was
based entirelyNefernefruaten
on the womens
the beautiful
consort,oninaher
guisefigurine
as co-regent
queen (table
1). season.15
tattoos,
whichNefertiti,
WinlockAkhenatens
compared tofamous
the patterns
faience
discovered
the same
Although there are similarities between the diamond patterns on the legs of the figurine and those on the
bodies, it is interesting to note that on the figurine strings of diamonds run symmetrically down the legs,
Table 1. The transformation of the KV 62 gold mask.
almost like an apron of beads, whereas those on the arms and legs of the two women are randomly placed.
The
figurine
in questioninitial
was found
in the tomb
a manfor
named
Neferhotep;
Winlock
described it as
Primary
ownership:
preparation
of theof mask
Nefertiti
in her role
as Akhenatens
a little
faience Ankhkheprure
dancing girl, clad
in a cowrie shell
girdle and
tattooing,
to amuse
him and
afterprobably
the hunt.16
co-regent,
Nefernefruaten;
produced
with
her facial
features
By describing
thecharacteristic
tattooed women
as dancing
girls (see
and fig.
comparing
them to the figurine, Winlock was
wearing her
domed
ear-ornaments
5).
implying that they were attached to the court merely for the amusement (and sexual pleasure) of the king,
Secondary
ownership:
thecomplex.
face of Nefertiti cut out, the ears detached from the face; a new
but the
reality is probably
more
portrait
of Tutankhamun,
worked and finished
a slightly found
different
alloy,
andtheir
riveted
in
As
mentioned
above, the fragmentary
funeraryinequipment
in pits
23soldered
and 26, and
location
place;cemetery
the original
(Nefertiti)
ears reattached
to this
face, now
minus their
and with
in a small
adjacent
to Mentuhoteps
temple,
suggests
an elevated
statusdomed
for thestuds
occupants.
More
the piercings plugged by circles of dished gold foil; inscriptions added to confirm the new owner
as Nebkheprure
Tutankhamun
(see
fig. 1). archives (AM 1618).
12
As
noted on a drawing
in the Egyptian
Department
13

84
14

85

15

16

For example, the procession of women depicted on reliefs from the tomb of Queen Neferu that are now on display in the
Metropolitan Museum (MMA 26.3.353; Rogers Fund, 1926). These women have waist bands and shoulder straps carved
In
thepatterns
case ofthat
the could
ears ofrepresent
the en suite
and woven
inlaid wood
second
coffin,
the precise state of affairs is unclear. If
with
eithergilded
specially
or beaded
garment
elements.
originally
perforated
andExpedition
subsequently
plugged and
(as I Excavations
would expect)
the work
hasagain
beenincarried
out very
Winlock, The
Egyptian
19221923:
Thefoiled
Museums
at then
Thebes,
26 and
H. E. Winlock,
thoroughly
and the
adaptation
never noted.
The Egyptian
Expedition
19241925:
The Museums Excavations at Thebes, BMMA XXI, pt. II (Mar. 1926), 7-8.
See Arnold,
Royaldescribed
Women, 78,
fig.as71
(gyptisches
Papyrussammlung,
Berlin girl
21263);
RitaScepter
E. Freed,
William
C. Hayes
them
tattooed
NubianMuseum
dancingund
girls
and a Theban dancing
in The
of
YvonneAJ.Background
Markowitz, for
andthe
SueStudy
H. DAuria,
eds., Pharaohs
of theinSun:
Nefertiti,
Egypt:
of the Egyptian
Antiquities
The Akhenaten,
Metropolitan
MuseumTutankhamen
of Art, pt. I, (exh.
Fromcat.,
the
Boston, 1999),
92,the
fig.End
63 of
(mislabelled
the editors
an(New
imageYork,
of Kiya).
It may
or may
be significant that at least
Earliest
Times to
the Middleby
Kingdom,
rev.ased.
1990),
162 and
230 not
respectively.
one
pair of ear-studs
of theand
typefront
wornofbythis
Nefertiti
on her
Berlin
statue
attested
in Tutankhamuns
tomb,
Carter no.
Photographs
of the back
figurine,
which
is now
inisthe
Egyptian
Museum, Cairo,
aresee
published
in
269a(6),
Tut.ankh.Amen,
III, pl.
XVIII, leftThe
middle
(with pl.
XVIII, leftatupperCarter
Winlock,Carter,
The Egyptian
Expedition
19221923:
Museums
Excavations
Thebes, 22. no. 269a(5)being of this
same
circular
type
with
the
addition
of
pendent
uraei).
See
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/250-299.html.
Winlock, The Egyptian Expedition 19221923: The Museums Excavations at Thebes, 20.

530
522

That
an already
extensive
of this ruling
queens
reusedthat
funerary
equipment
withindating
KV 62
recent
studies,
in particular
thatlist
of Geraldine
Pinch,
have shown
many female
figurines
to
mayMiddle
now beKingdom
supplemented
by the gold
(and
gold coffin)
completely
the
are associated
withmask
the cult
of the
the innermost
goddess Hathor,
as are dancing
andtransforms
the use of
17
our understanding
of the
Not
merely
a proportion
itemsshrines,
tattoos.
Pinch points
out tomb.
that the
royal
women
buried on of
theTutankhamuns
temple platformcore
wereburial
priestesses
of Hathor
sarcophagus,
coffins,
mask, women
mummywere
trappingshad
originally is
been
prepared
for Ankhkheprure
and
suggests that
the tattooed
as well. This possibility
certainly
supported
by the burial
86
Nefernefruaten:
it now
seems
probable
that most temple
of it had.
of
another tattooed
woman
within
Mentuhoteps
complex.
The conclusion comes as a surprise and carries much in its wake. First, it obliges us to reconsider
The
Tomb of the Priestess
of Hathor,
Amunetwas able to draw upon so much (all?) of Nefertitis cothe circumstances
under which
Tutankhamun
Among
the best-preserved
tombsthat,
associated
the Mentuhotep
Temple
precinct
was a
regent status
equipment. Aresubsidiary
we to imagine
followingwith
Tutankhamuns
untimely
death,
his officials
18
two-chambered
pit tomb
deliberately reopened,
anddiscovered
then solelybytoGrbaut
plunder,in
the1891.
tomb
a predecessor
the young king
had himself
Itofbelonged
to a middle-aged
woman
named
19
buried,
at Thebes,
less than
decade
before?inOra did
the co-regents
equipment
simply lie
Amunet.presumably
Unfortunately,
the burial
was aonly
published
cursory
fashion, with
no description
of
abandoned
in store,oravailable
to be pressed
into service
as Early
and when
required?
If tomb
the latter,
then
the
the
tomb contents
the unwrapping
of the intact
mummy.
references
to the
do not
locate
20
ramifications
Nefertitis
non-employment
of that
equipment aretomb
significant:
for intriangular
whatevercourt.
manner
it
precisely, butofWinlock
believed
it to be pit 25,
a two-chambered
in the north
she was
eventually
laid to rest,
it will not have
as Ankhkheprure
Nefernefruaten.
this
We know
that Amunet
hadclearly
two rectangular
woodbeen
coffins
(Egyptian Museum,
Cairo CGHad
28025,
extraordinary
woman
the endand
been
and buried
as an
ordinary
consequence
28026),
a mirror
(CGin
44035),
atdemoted
least two stone
vessels
(CG
18502, queenperhaps
18505). She alsoinhad
a number
87
damningwhich
parleywere
with placed
the Hittites?
of her
necklaces,
directly
and were
place after
the mummy
was
Oronareher
webody
to discern
quiteleft
the in
opposite,
a conclusion
Nefertitis
unwrapped.
They areaffair
visible
in a actually
photograph
in Keimers
Keimeraftermath
also provided
drawings
role
in the Zannanza
might
argue:
that, sincepublication.
in the immediate
of Akhenatens
of the Nefertiti
tattoos on
which
of dotted parallel
without herself
the diamond-shaped
death
wasthein body,
a position
to consist
conductlargely
such negotiations,
she hadlines
established
as pharaoh de
88
patterns
found
on the
womenand
from
pitsend
23 and
26.21 a superior burial of full pharaonic status? 89
facto
and
as such
merited,
in the
received,
Secondly,
and linking on
with
if Tutankhamuns
for the
preparation
the young
From the inscriptions
thethis:
coffins,
we know thatundertakers
Amunet washad,
a sole
ornament
of theofking
(Xkrt
kingswatt)
burial,
drawn
but sparingly
on the
funerary
equipment
Akhenaten,
what
became
of
nswt
andindeed
a priestess
of Hathor,
titles she
shares
with several
of theofroyal
women then
buried
on the
temple
Akhenatens
pharaonic tomb
Tutankhamuns
nominal
responsibility
forfunerary
the interment
of the
platform.
Unfortunately,
therefurnishings?
were no inscriptions
preserved
on either
the broken
equipment
heretic
king
within
KV 55
an23
adapted
of Kiya
demonstrated
by the presence
of sealings
in that
or
bits of
jewelry
found
in in
pits
and 26.coffin
However,
theisquality
of the fragmentary
remains,
in particular
90
tombsa-amulet
bearing the
young
pharaohs
name.
the
in pit
23 and
the wood
coffin
fragment
in pit 26to
say nothing
location
of the
Contrary
to previous
understanding,
areof
wethe
now
to see KV
55
burials,
just north
of and
the temple
platformsuggests
that these
women,
tattooed contemporary,
as Akhenatens
first
only burial?
Had he never actually
been
laid toand
resttheir
at El-Amarna,
as originally
Amunet,
a privileged
vis--vis equipment
the king. They
were
undoubtedly
members
of his
intended, enjoyed
accompanied
by thestatus
rich funerary
he had
prepared
for himself?
Might
wecourt,
now
and
theya may
well have
been dancers.
it seems
likely
they served
the king
notKV
simply
as harem
discern
plausible
explanation
for the But
curiously
sparse
andthat
ramshackle
nature
of that
55 interment:
86
17

87

18
88

19
89
20

90
21

This
differs
fromVotive
my earlier
impression
that
Tutankhamuns
tomb Pinch
had been
perhaps
equally
reused
Geraldine
Pinch,
Offerings
to Hathor
(Oxford,
1993), 211-214.
lists stocked
the sources
on this
subjectwith
in her
text.
Akhenaten
Ankhkheprure
core burial
items,insee
hereheld
notes
31, andTexas,
77. Ellen Morris presented
At the 2009and
annual
meeting of Nefernefruaten
the American Research
Center
Egypt
in2,Dallas,
a paper
entitled Paddle
Dolls
and Performance,
in which episode
she suggested
that the
women
from pitsAkhenaten,
23 and 26
On
the identification
of the
Dakhamunzu
of the Zannanza
as Nefertiti,
seetattooed
J. R. Harris
in Reeves,
were members
of aonxnr-troupe.
I thank
her for sharing
text Amarna
of her paper
me, as I was
to attend
the ARCE
176-177,
and now,
complementary
grounds,
Jared L.the
Miller,
Agewith
Chronology
and unable
the Identity
of Nibhururiya
meeting
at which
it wasReconstructed
presented. TheHittite
paper was
published
in JARCE
47 (2011), pp.
in
the Light
of a Newly
Text,
Altorientalische
Forschungen
34,71-103.
no. 2 (2007), 252293.
Georges
Daressy,
Notes et Remarques,
LVI,
RecTrav
XIV
(1893),
Georges
Les rois Een
Mentouhotep,
On
this point,
see especially
KUB XIX, 20
+ KBO
12, 23;
Theo
P. J.166-168;
van den Hout,
DeDaressy,
Zaak Zannanza:
EgyptischSphinx XVII
(1913), 99-100.
Hettitisch
Brievendossier,
Phoenix: Bulletin uitgegeven door het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap Ex Oriente Lux 39,
no.
1 (1993),
with theexamined
commentsinofCairo
Miller,byAmarna
Chronology
and the
Identity of is
Nibhururiya,
275, n.
Amunet
was159-167,
superficially
DouglasAge
Derry,
whose brief
description
in Embalming
in103.
the
Mentuhotep Cemeteries,
12-13.
Irrespective
of whether Ankhkheprure
Nefernefruaten and Ankhkheprure Smenkhkare-djeserkhepru are recognized
as
one and
the same
(for which see
Reeves,
Akhenaten,
172-173)
or being
as totally
independent
(most
recently
J. R. Harris,
Daressy,
Notes
et Remarques,
166,
describes
Amunets
tomb as
south
of the temple
(without
identifying
the
Apropos
(2):Mentouhotep,
Smenkhkara Resartus,
Tidsskrift 28/2
Aidan
Dodson,
temple). InNefertiti
Les rois
99-100, hePapyrus:
describesgyptologisk
it as a two-chambered
tomb[2008],
a little14-23;
in front
of the
royal
Amarna
Sunset:
The
Late-Amarna
Succession
Revisited,
in
Beyond
the
Horizon:
Studies
in
Egyptian
Art,
Archaeology
structures of the Eleventh Dynasty. Winlock believed it was pit 25, but, according to tomb card 108 in the Egyptian
and
History in
Honourthis
of Barry
J. Kemp I,some
Salima
Ikram and
Aidan
Dodson,
Department
archives,
tomb contained
intrusive
bodyAidan
parts Dodson,
from the eds.
Late[Cairo,
Period 2009],
and the29-43;
bones
of a powerful
Amarna
Sunset:
Nefertiti,
Tutankhamun,
Ay,toHoremheb,
and
the Egyptian
Counter-Reformation
[Cairo,
old woman,
which
Winlock
and Derry took
be Eleventh
Dynasty.
It is possible,
however, that one
of the2009]).
two chambers
once
contained
the intact
of publication
Amunet. of these sealings), see C. N. Reeves, Valley of the Kings: The Decline of a
For the
KV 55 burial
(and burial
the first
Royalphotograph
Necropolis (Keimer,
(London, Remarques
1990), 42-49,sur
55-60;
Nicholaspl.
Reeves,
TheAmunet
Archaeological
of aKV55,
19071990,
This
le tatouage,
I), shows
laid out Analysis
in front of
Middle
Kingdom
in Theodore
M.isDavis,
Tomb
Queen
Tyi,
ed. It(San
Francisco,
iv-xivboth
perhaps and
nowissubject
to
coffin,
but this
not oneThe
of the
two of
coffins
from
her2nd
tomb.
is inscribed
for 1990),
a man named
Djehuty-nakht
probably
revision inMuseum,
the matter
of KV
being a secondary burial of Akhenaten; while on the KV 55 body, see now Hawass,
Egyptian
Cairo
CG 55
28095.
Ancestry and Pathology in King Tutankhamuns Family, 638-647.

523
531

BES 19 (2015)

Reeves, Tutankhamuns Mask Reconsidered

that In
Akhenatens
the debris inside
own burial
the burial
equipment
chamber
hadwere
beenfragments
redirectedofforseveral
futurefunerary
employment
models,
by Nefertiti
includingherself
parts
in
newand
capacity
as full
ruling
king? also found fragments of a funerary mask with black hair and a
of her
a boat
a granary.
The
excavators
Many
stillcompared
remain, to
butthethe
recognition
of Nefertitis
ownership
ofyears
the KV
62
white
bib,questions
which were
mask
of Myt, whose
tomb hadoriginal
been discovered
two
earlier
5
gold
moves
forward
significantly,
I would
suggest,
understanding
Tutankhamuns
burial
on themask
temple
platform.
The
best-preserved
objects
in the our
tomb
were a wood of
box
(MMA 25.3.255a-c;
and 3a)
a number
related
complexities
of theseweret-bead
immediate post-Amarna
era. fig.
Indeed,
it does
more: it
fig.
and twoofpieces
of jewelry:
a carnelian
(MMA 25.3.252;
3a); and
a beautifully
stimulates
afresh the
suspicion
that figs.
there3a,
is indeed
to play
for in the
Valley
of the
Kings,
where
crafted
sa-amulet
(MMA
25.3.253;
b).6 Themuch
latteryet
is an
exceptional
piece
made
of five
wires:
the
7
it seems
increasingly
likely
that Nefertiti
was and
buried
and are
rests
stillin
tombare
thatbound
may not
only have
first,
third,
and fifth are
electrum;
the second
fourth
silver.
Theawires
together
with
been
intact,
bandspreserved
of electrum,
and91the
band has
attached
for suspension.
buttop
perhaps
witha ring
a full,
pharaonic
mortuary equipment to put Tutankhamuns
substantially queenly assemblage to shame.
Pit 26 (MMA tomb cards 109-111)
The Egyptian Department tomb cards describe the mummy, which was missing its feet, as that of a
Postscript
smallish,
about
Inside the the
tomb,
themask
excavators
the plaster
In latemiddle-aged
September woman
2015 I of
was
ableforty.
to reexamine
gold
underfound
different
lightingearinofitsa
funerary mask
a knob
of Museum.
good coniferous
(perhaps
cedar) that was
painted
yellow and
reoriented
caseand
in the
Cairo
Contrarywood
to previous
understanding,
it is
now evident
that had
the
been sawn containing
off a coffinTutankhamuns
lid.8 There were
cartouche
prenomen
had
altered
in antiquity.
theprobably
present
fragments
of been
funerary
models,
includingBeneath
some that
signs
maytobea discerned
clear
traces ofbracelet
an earlier
name, [Ankh]kheprure-beloved
of Nefer[kheprure],
belonged
granary, and
a funerary
or anklet
of tubular faience beads (MMA
25.3.251).9
originally contained within a significantly longer cartouche. My conclusions concerning the masks
initial
find definitive
confirmation.
A photograph of the reworked cartouche, together
Other ownership
Burials in thus
the North
Triangular
Court
with
a briefpitcommentary,
appear inofthe
Journal
of Ancient
Egyptian
(2015).
Six other
tombs with will
the remains
burials
were
uncovered
in the Interconnections
north triangular 7.4
court
by the
Metropolitan Museums Egyptian Expedition:
Department
of Egyptian
The Metropolitan
Museum
of Art
Pit 20 (MMA tomb cards 84-86): linen
with the date
of Year Art,
10 (MMA
25.3.265a, b);
fragments
of
an extremely fine mask with preserved gilding; two sheet-gold bracelets or anklets (MMA 25.3.254a, b);
Abstract
and
a funerary bracelet or anklet of tubular faience beads (MMA 25.3.248).
The Pit
possibility
thattomb
the intended
owner
of the celebrated
from gilding
Valley of
thea copper
Kings tomb
KV
22 (MMA
cards 87-88):
fragments
of a maskgold
withmask
preserved
and
eye from
62 might
been someone
than Tutankhamun
was yellow
first raised
by the
in aname
paperHapuit
given
the
same; have
fragments
of a coffinother
of coniferous
wood painted
and with
thewriter
feminine
at University
Collegeand
London
in 2001.
The present
on a second
lecture delivered at the
(reading
uncertain);
fragments
of model
boats, a article,
granary,based
and offering
bearers.
Valley
of the
Kings
Since
Howard
Carter
symposium
in Luxor man;
on November
11, of
2009,
revisitslinen
and
Pit 24
(MMA
tomb
cards
104-107):
a mummy
of a held
middle-aged
two pieces
inscribed
develops25.3.260a,
that idea. The
conclusions
are that Tutankhamuns
employment
of the anklet
mask was
indeed
(MMA
b); fragments
ofreached
a whitewashed
sycamore coffin;
and a funerary
of tubular
secondary,
andfound
that the
original
owneron
had
a woman:
Ankhkheprure
Nefernefruaten, Akhenatens
faience
beads
among
bandages
thebeen
mummys
ankles
(MMA 25.3.250).
ruling
The tomb
ramifications
of bones
this identification
areold
both
intriguing and significant.
Pitqueen.
25 (MMA
card 108):
of a powerful
woman.
Pit 27 (MMA tomb cards 112-113): bones of a fully grown adult man.
Pit
tomb cards
of aneraKV
adult woman;
fragments
of a mask
with
preserved
91
The 29
high(MMA
rate of survival
of the114-117):
burials of bones
the Amarna
55 (Akhenaten
[and Tiye?]);
KV 63
(a cache
of late
gilding;
three
silver
spacerKV
beads
(MMA
beads;embalming
and fragments
a
Amarna
burial
materials);
62 (the
tomb of25.3.247a-c);
Tutankhamun);cylindrical
and KV 54 faience
(Tutankhamun
materialsofand
items of
associated
with
the funerary
meal)probably
very little
to chance. Instead, I would see it as a testament
statuette
a female
offering
bearer
and the arm owes
of a male
figure.

Fig. 1. The gold mask from the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Photograph Lee Boltin,
copyright Bridgeman Photo Library, New York

Fig. 2. Interior view of the mask, showing the rivets and

soldered seams of the separately modelled face.
Photograph Egyptian Museum, Cairo,
courtesy of Zahi Hawass and Tarek El Awady

to the thoroughness with which the names of the hated kings of this period were subsequently excised from official
records. Those charged with the formal dismantling of the Valley of the Kings following the end of the 20th Dynasty
name and title are unclear. For references to discussions of the khener (xnr), see here note 17 below. All objects with the
(Reeves, Valley of the Kings, 276-278) were clearly unable to locate these depositspresumably because records of their
accession number 25.3 have the credit line Rogers Fund, 1925.
siting had been culled. If Nefertitis tomb survived the petty thieves who seem to have been dangerously active in the
For the mask, see H. E. Winlock, The Egyptian Expedition 19201921: III. Excavations at Thebes, BMMA XVI, pt. II
immediate days and weeks following any interment, then the chances are that her burial (of which not a single employed
(Nov. 1921), fig. 28 on p. 51. The name Myt has also been written Mat and Mayet.
item has so far come to light), as yet another Amarna Period sepulchre struck from the records, was similarly missed by
For
an explanation
of the seweret-bead,
seeteamsas
John H. Taylor,
in Sue
DAuria,
Peter Lacovara,
Catharine
H. Roehrig,
the early
Third Intermediate
Period salvage
it appears
to have
been missed
by all excavators
since.
Mummies and Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (exh. cat., Boston, 1988), 182.

Deborah Schorsch, Precious-Metal Polychromy in Egypt in the Time of Tutankhamun, JEA 87 (2001), 59.

A similar wood knob (MMA 20.3.202c, d) was found in the tomb of Wah, whose coffin (MMA 20.3.202a, b) was also
made of a high quality coniferous wood that had been painted yellow. The pieces have the credit line: Rogers Fund and
Edward S. Harkness Gift, 1920.

This is similar to the anklets and bracelets of tubular faience beads that were found on the mummy of Wah (MMA
40.3.3-10; Rogers Fund, 1940).
524
528

Fig. 3. Schematic, exploded view showing the component parts of the Tutankhamun mask

525

BES 19 (2015)

Fig. 4. The gold mask as first revealed in position over the head of Tutankhamuns mummy within the innermost gold coffin.
The two dished gold foil plugs for the pierced ears may be seen detached on the lappets of the headdress.
Burton photograph 0744, courtesy Griffith Institute, Oxford

Fig. 5. A reconstruction of the gold mask of Ankhkheprure Nefernefruaten as it might originally have appeared,
with the face of Nefertiti and wearing the queens large domed ear studs.
A composite of the Lee Boltin photograph of Tutankhamuns mask (Bridgeman Photo Library) and
the face of Berlin 21263 (courtesy gyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin)

526