You use a glass mirror to see your face, you use works of art to see your soul. (George Bernard Shaw)
Ancient Egypt’s most iconic treasure – the great golden face mask of Pharaoh Tutankhamun – was a second-hand family hand-me-down.
New research by the British Egyptologist, Nicholas Reeves, has revealed that it was originally made for a female pharaoh, probably the famously beautiful ancient Egyptian queen, normally known to the public today as Nefertiti.
The discovery sheds fascinating additional light on some of ancient Egypt’s most important but least well understood historical events – a religious revolution and counter-revolution which convulsed much of Egyptian society some 3350 years ago.
The evidence that Dr. Reeves has found, suggesting that Tutankhamun’s large, elaborate gold death mask was (apart from its personalized facial features) made for his mother (or possibly step-mother), Nefertiti, has come from a detailed re-examination of an inscription on the artefact assigning it to Tutankhamun.
Very careful examination of the hieroglyphic text shows that the king’s names were actually inscribed over an earlier individual’s name which appear to have given the full official nomenclature used by Nefertiti after she had become co-pharaoh of Egypt – namely Ankhkheperure-Meryt-Neferkheperure Neferneferuaten (literally meaning ‘Living Manifestation of the Sun God, Beloved of Akhenaten, Beauty of Beauties of the Disk of the Sun’).
Interestingly, the second-hand gold mask completes a wider picture in which many of the major other treasures in Tutankhamun’s tomb (including his ‘middle’ coffin, miniature gold coffins for his internal organs, a gold breast ornament, some of the gold bands which adorned Tut’s mummified body and a gilded statuette) had all been made initially for other ancient Egyptian royals.
What’s in a face indeed!
“Behind the Golden Mask,” William G. Collins Collinsauthor.com
