The explanation originally put forward by Ludwig Borchardt, and later expanded upon by other early 20th-century Egyptologists including Junker and Reisner, was that the reserve head served as a ritualistic substitute for the real head of the deceased, in case it was damaged. Another suggestion put forward by Egyptologist Nicholas Millet was that they served as sculptors' prototypes for making further statues and reliefs of the deceased. Moulds were then taken from the reserve heads in plaster, and the gouges that appear on many of the heads, the seeming mutilation to the ears and the excess plaster that appears on at least one of the heads can be explained as the type of damage that would be expected by trying to remove tight-fitting plaster casts from a reserve head.