Portland State University Middle East Studies Center Lecture Series

The solid gold headpiece crowning the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamun is surely the best-known Egyptian artwork in the world. Or is it? While many have looked, all have failed to see. In this forensically detailed study, Nicholas Reeves reveals the mask's astonishing secret: that it had never been intended for Tutankhamun at all. When Howard Carter and George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, entered the long-sought tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, few could have imagined the magnificence of the treasure soon to be revealed. Within a stone sarcophagus and three dazzling anthropoid coffins of descending size, the young king lay undisturbed, his richly bedecked mummy crowned with a burial mask of solid gold, twenty-one inches high and weighing over twenty-two pounds. Tonight we will hear how this magnificent mask has a startling new story to tell.