# Egyptian Museum staff glue the mask’s detached beard back with epoxy, later reported as a botch

Date: 2014

## The fact

In 2014 the gold mask’s beard, which had come loose, was reattached with visible epoxy; 2015 reporting, including the Guardian, documented the botched repair and later conservation. [Tutankhamun](/people/tutankhamun) did not choose epoxy.

## Context

A museum accident is a governance and conservation failure. It is not a 1320s BCE event. High confidence on the glue; the object remains in public care.

Tutankhamun is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official archive, museum, or agency page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Egypt Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities — monuments (https://egymonuments.gov.eg/; Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Egypt).

## Significance

A 2014 epoxy beard is a conservation-governance harm, not a new tomb.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [institutional-corruption](/drivers/institutional-corruption). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Tutankhamun: https://factrail.ai/people/tutankhamun

## Drivers

- Institutional Corruption: https://factrail.ai/drivers/institutional-corruption

## Sources

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/22/tutankhamuns-beard-glued-back-on-say-egyptian-museum-conservators
- https://egymonuments.gov.eg/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/tut-beard-glue-2014