Mask of Tutankhamun flower terminals and uraeus clasps. Mask of Tutankhamun The Mask of Tutankhamun is a death mask of the 18th-dynasty ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun (reigned 1332–1323 BC). It was discovered by Howard Carter in 1925 in tomb KV62 and is now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The mask is one of the most well known works of art in the world. According to the Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, the mask is "not only the quintessential image from Tutankhamun's tomb, it is perhaps the best-known object from ancient Egypt itself." Since 2001, research has suggested that it may originally have been
Tutankhamun after the event. If Tutankhamun is the world's best known pharaoh, it is largely because his tomb is among the best preserved, and his image and associated artifacts the most exhibited. As Jon Manchip White writes, in his foreword to the 1977 edition of Carter's "The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun", "The pharaoh who in life was one of the least esteemed of Egypt's Pharoahs has become in death the most renowned." The discoveries in the tomb were prominent news in the 1920s. Tutankhamen came to be called by a modern neologism, "King Tut". Ancient Egyptian references became common