The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Egyptian (New Kingdom) · the funerary mask of Tutankhamun, of beaten and burnished gold, inlaid with lapis lazuli, quartz, obsidian, carnelian, turquoise, amazonite and coloured glass · about 54 cm high, 39 cm wide and 49 cm deep, about 10 kg of gold · Egypt, New Kingdom, late Eighteenth Dynasty, made in the royal workshops for the king’s burial, about 1323 BC · found on the king’s mummy within the innermost coffin in tomb KV62, Valley of the Kings, Thebes, exposed in late October 1925 in Howard Carter’s excavation, and taken to the Egyptian Museum, Cairo · scored as the mask alone, as it stands, its beard refixed in 2015; the mummy, the coffins, the sarcophagus, the rest of the burial and the tomb are context
Mode
Funerary object of a royal burial: a face of divine material made to replace the face of the dead, image and written text joined on one head
Mythos
The king become god: the sun’s flesh and the sky’s hair, Osiris in the beard, the two lands and their goddesses at the brow, the head reassembled as a divine body
Phase
Made for the burial of Tutankhamun about 1323 BC and buried within weeks; tomb found in November 1922, the mask exposed on the mummy in late October 1925, in view since
Presentation
Beaten and burnished gold at the scale of a head, inlaid with lapis, quartz, obsidian, carnelian, turquoise, amazonite and coloured glass, an incised text on the back and shoulders; shown upright on a stand, in the round, under glass
Register
Radiance held still: calm, grandeur and a gaze that looks past the viewer, at one pitch
Scale
One head, one king, the gods of each part
Governing Proposition
A head of beaten gold, made to lie on the head of a dead king inside his innermost coffin, wears the striped nemes headdress in gold and blue, a vulture and a rearing cobra at the brow, a plaited divine beard and a broad collar of inlaid stone and glass; the eyes are quartz and obsidian rimmed with lapis, and the back and shoulders carry an incised text. The wager of the object is that a dead man can be given a face that does not decay: that gold, the flesh of the gods, and lapis, their hair, laid on his head and bound part by part to the gods in writing, make him one of them, and that this face is for eternity and for no one who would see it.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Tutankhamun died about 1323 BC, late in the Eighteenth Dynasty, after a reign of about nine or ten years; the precise year depends on the chronology used. For his burial the royal workshops made a mask of beaten gold to lie on the head of his mummy. It was laid inside the innermost of three nested coffins, the one of solid gold, within a sarcophagus, in tomb KV62 in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes, and it was buried within weeks of its making. Its makers are not named. It was made to be seen by no one.
Howard Carter’s excavation found the tomb in November 1922. The mask was exposed on the king’s mummy in late October 1925, when the innermost coffin was opened, and on its removal from the tomb it was taken to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. From there its presence became as wide as any object’s. A face made for the dark of the coffin became the image by which a civilisation is known, and the distance between that purpose and that fame runs through every axis of this page.
The work scored is the mask alone, as it stands: the face and the nemes headdress in beaten gold; the inlays of the brow, the eyes, the stripes of the headdress and the collar; the vulture and the cobra on the brow; the plaited beard; the broad collar; and the inscription on the back and shoulders. It stands about 54 cm high, 39 cm wide and 49 cm deep, and holds about 10 kg of gold. The mummy it covered, the coffins and the sarcophagus, the rest of the burial and the tomb itself are context. They bear on how its form and presence are read, not on its scores.
Movement II
The materials are the argument. The face is beaten and burnished gold, because gold was the flesh of the gods and the king has become one. The brows and the cosmetic lines round the eyes are lapis lazuli, the hair of the gods. The eyes are white quartz and black obsidian. In the collar carnelian, turquoise and amazonite are set among other inlays, and coloured glass gives the blue of the stripes of the nemes and colour elsewhere. Every colour is stone or glass, and none of it can fade.
The parts are the programme of the burial, and each does work. At the brow the vulture, Nekhbet, and the rearing cobra, Wadjet, make the king the union of the two lands and set two goddesses on guard. The plaited, curled beard at the chin makes him Osiris, the dead god who rules the dead. The broad collar ends at the shoulders in falcon heads. Take any of them away and the king loses a part of what he has become. Almost nothing on the object is idle. But the parts are required because the rite required them: the work earns them and does not find them.
The making carries the meaning. The gold is beaten to a full sculptural volume at the scale of a head, the lids, lips and cheeks modelled soft and exact, the surface burnished so that under raking light it seems to give off light rather than take it. The inlay is cut and set into cells with a precision that keeps the many colours of the collar and the stripes of the nemes in regular rhythm across curved surfaces; the vulture and the cobra are small sculptures in their own right. There are costs: glass stands in for stone in much of the colour, the face and the headdress meet at a seam the eye can find, and the craft is a workshop’s perfect execution of a type rather than an invention.
Movement III
The object has two faces. At the front is the face for eternity, young and calm, held by a gaze of quartz and obsidian that looks past whoever stands before it. On the back and the shoulders is a dense incised text that no one was meant to read, which gives the parts of the head each to a god, so that the head itself is reassembled as a divine body. The image makes the king a god by its material; the writing makes him one by naming.
One law holds the two. Everything on the object is the king’s head remade as a divine body and protected: the face by gold and calm, the text by the names of the gods of each part, and between them the regalia, the two lands at the brow, Osiris at the chin, the collar of protection at the shoulders. Nothing on it contradicts the law or stands outside it. The range is wider than the size suggests, from a human face to kingship and the gods, from image to word, but it is the range of one programme in one register.
The form is the instrument of the meaning. In paint on wood or cartonnage the claim of incorruptible flesh would go, because the material is the claim; as a statue in a temple the work would lose its office, to replace a face on the body itself, at the scale of the head, inside the coffin. A form seen only from the front would lose the protection on the back, and a form without the gaze would lose the presence. Since 1925 it has been seen otherwise, upright on a stand, in the round, under glass, a form its makers did not intend, and the back that was made for no reader is now read.
Movement IV
The face is not a portrait in the modern sense, but it keeps a particular softness: full lips, heavy lids, the ear lobes pierced, a boy’s face carried in the late Amarna manner. It was made for a burial of the restoration, when the old gods had been brought back, and the softness of the art of the previous reign was not quite erased from it. That trace is the one thing in the object that is its own, and it is slight.
Everything else is inherited, and exactly. The face covering of the dead runs from Old Kingdom plaster masks through Middle Kingdom cartonnage. The royal image in the nemes, with uraeus and beard, was some fifteen centuries old when the mask was made. The goldwork and inlay of the royal workshops are already in the jewellery of the Middle Kingdom princesses. The extravagance of a full head in solid gold is the mask’s, as far as anyone can tell, but whether other kings had masks as fine cannot be known, because their burials were robbed. The stake was low: a commission within a programme, for a rite that set its form.
What the face discloses is death received as transformation, without fear: the king shown in the moment of becoming a god, young, calm and complete, and with it the knowledge that the face kept of the dead is the face they were wished to have. That holds well outside Thebes. But it is the theology of the burial stated in its most perfect form rather than something uncovered that the tradition had not already said, and its power is very largely a state, serenity and radiance, which ranks below a meaning. It has been argued, and it is disputed, that the mask or part of it was first made for another ruler; the object is weighed here as it stands, on neither view.
Movement V
The form is whole after about thirty-three centuries. Gold does not corrode, and the face, the headdress, the brow, the collar and the inscription stand as made, when nearly every other royal burial of the New Kingdom was robbed and its gold melted. For some thirty-two centuries it had no presence at all, lying in the dark as it was meant to; since 1925 its presence has been continuous. The beard came away in 2014 and was reattached with epoxy; in 2015 a German and Egyptian team undid that repair and refixed it. The charge is small, and it has been made good.
It redirected nothing in its own art: it was buried within weeks of its making. Its reach came thirty-two centuries late and is very wide as an image. With the tomb it fed the Egyptian manner of 1920s design, in jewellery, architecture and the decorative arts of Art Deco, and it became the emblem by which ancient Egypt is known. Most of that reach is the tomb’s, and most of it is emblem and presence rather than an art the mask redirected. The questions that remain open about it are mostly of its making and its history; its meaning was settled by the faith that made it.
The desk sets it a tenth under the Bust of Nefertiti at 8.3, of the same dynasty and tradition some twenty years earlier: the mask leads the bust on The Sublime, The Archetypal Deep, The Living Form, The Imperishable and The Inner Law, and falls behind almost wholly through The Swerve, since the bust carries the Amarna departure and the mask the return to the canon. It stands two tenths under the Narmer Palette at 8.4, which founded the canon the mask perfects, and a tenth under the Fayum Mummy Portraits at 8.3, which turned the funerary face toward likeness, leading both on The Made and The Imperishable; and a tenth above the Seated Scribe at 8.1. It lies on its stand as it once lay on the king, a face of gold for eternity, its one departure a softness at the mouth.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test, part by part. Take away the gold and the claim goes: gold was the flesh of the gods, and the face is gold because the king has become one. Take away the lapis of the brows and eyes and the face loses its second divine material. Take away the vulture and the cobra and the king no longer holds the two lands, nor their guard at his brow. Take away the beard and he is no longer Osiris. Take away the collar and the text on the back and the head loses its armour. Almost nothing is idle, and the scale is that of a head laid on a head. What yields is the source: the parts are required because the funerary programme required them. The work earns its parts; it did not find them.
Score: 8.6 / 10
What can be stated, and holds? That a dead person can be given a face that does not decay, and that the face kept of the dead is an image of what they were wished to be, not of what they were. And that the king is shown in the moment of becoming a god, young, calm and complete. The face is not a portrait in the modern sense, but it keeps a particular softness, full lips and heavy lids, a boy’s face in the late Amarna manner. The calm is the disclosure: death received as transformation, without fear. Held below the gate because this is the theology of the burial stated perfectly rather than something uncovered, and because its power is largely a state, serenity and radiance, which ranks below a meaning.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Elevation of one kind, constant over the whole object: radiance and grandeur held still. The gold face under raking light seems to give off light rather than take it. The blue and gold bands of the nemes fall to the shoulders in a rhythm that makes a head of some fifty centimetres monumental. The eyes, white quartz and black obsidian set in lapis, hold the viewer with a gaze that looks past him. The height recurs as the eye moves, to the two creatures at the brow, the rows of colour in the collar, the curl of the beard. There is awe in it as well as beauty: the face was meant for the dark of the coffin, not for its viewers. Held below the top because the register is single, sustained rather than built through contrast, and a small object can rise only so many times.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Built, not evoked. The mask is a structure of archetypes, each doing work. The face is the sun’s flesh in gold under the night sky’s hair in lapis. The beard makes the king Osiris, the dead god who rules the dead. Nekhbet and Wadjet at the brow, the vulture and the cobra, make him the union of the two lands and set two goddesses on guard. The text on the back gives the parts of the head each to a god, so that the head is reassembled as a divine body. The archetype is how the object was made to work, not something its readers bring to it. The particular holds in part: a young face, pierced ears, a soft mouth. Held below the top because the person is idealised toward the type and very nearly absorbed into the god.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The inheritance is long and exact. The face covering of the dead runs from Old Kingdom plaster masks through Middle Kingdom cartonnage; the royal image in the nemes, with uraeus and beard, was some fifteen centuries old; the gold and inlay of the royal workshops is already in the jewellery of the Middle Kingdom princesses. What the mask has of its own is the trace of Amarna in the face, a softness the restoration did not quite erase, and the extravagance of a full head in solid gold. Whether other kings had masks as fine cannot be known, because their burials were robbed. The stake was low: a commission within a programme, made to be buried, for a rite that set its form. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is that it is a supreme instance of a canon, not a turn from one.
Score: 6.4 / 10
Substitute another form and the work stops knowing what it knows. In paint on wood or cartonnage the claim of incorruptible divine flesh goes, because the material is the claim. As a statue in a temple it would lose its office, to replace a face on the body itself, at the scale of the head, laid over the mummy in the coffin. The front gives a face for eternity; the back carries the text that protects it. Without the back the protection goes, without the gaze the presence. Even the materials are argued: gold for flesh, lapis for hair, glass and stone for colour that cannot fade. Held below the top because the form was set by the tradition more than found here, and because its display since 1925, upright and seen in the round under glass, is a form its makers did not intend.
Score: 8.9 / 10
Evidence over promise: a century of close attention since 1925, among the most studied objects of its civilisation, and real questions remain open. Whether the mask, or a part of it, was first made for another ruler, which has been argued and is disputed. How much of the face is likeness and how much ideal, and what the Amarna softness means in a burial of the restoration. How it was made, in how many pieces and alloys. The detail rewards return: the inlay, the holes in the ears, the falcon heads of the collar. But the yield is mainly archaeological and technical. Its meaning was settled by the theology that made it, and return deepens knowledge of its making more than it opens new senses of what it says. Fame has kept people looking without adding much to what they see.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The field is Egyptian royal funerary art of the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The intrinsic force is modest: the mask reorganises no possibility of its art; it is the fullest surviving statement of a programme, not a change to one. Its reach within that field is nil. It was buried within weeks of its making and unseen for some thirty-two centuries, so it redirected nothing in Egyptian art. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: delayed reach, credited and discounted, very wide as an image and narrow as redirection; with the tomb, the Egyptian manner of 1920s design, in jewellery, architecture and the decorative arts of Art Deco; and the emblem by which ancient Egypt is known. Most of that reach is the tomb’s, and most of it is emblem and presence rather than an art redirected.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at about thirty-three centuries. Form: whole. Gold does not corrode, and the face, the headdress, the brow, the collar and the inscription stand as made. That is rarer than it sounds: nearly every other royal burial of the New Kingdom was robbed and its gold melted. Presence: for some thirty-two centuries none, the mask lying in the dark as it was meant to; since 1925, continuous and as wide as any object’s, which earns its tenth and no more, since fame is presence and not proof. Fabric: the beard came away in 2014, was reattached with epoxy, and was refixed in 2015, a small charge made good. High in the row for millennia with form whole, held off its top by the long absence from view and the repair.
Score: 9.4 / 10
Command of the goldsmith’s and the lapidary’s medium, judged to the anchors every medium answers to. The making bears the meaning. The gold is beaten to a full sculptural volume at the scale of a head and burnished to a continuous surface, the lids, lips and cheeks modelled soft and exact. The inlay is cut and set into cells with a precision that keeps the many colours of the collar and the stripes of the nemes in regular rhythm across curved surfaces. The eyes are built of three materials, the cosmetic line drawn in lapis; the vulture and the cobra are small sculptures in their own right. The charges: glass stands in for stone in much of the colour; face and headdress meet at a seam the eye can find; and the craft is a workshop’s execution of a type, perfection rather than invention.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the young face at the front, soft and particular, and the dense incised text on the back, which no one was meant to read. One law holds them: everything on the object is the king’s head remade as a divine body and protected. The face does it by material and calm; the text does it by naming the gods of each part. Between them the regalia carry the same law: the two lands at the brow, Osiris at the chin, the collar of protection at the shoulders. Nothing contradicts it or stands outside it. The range is wider than the size suggests, from a human face to kingship and the gods, from image to word. Held below the top because it is one programme in one register, and narrowness is not coherence.
Score: 8.8 / 10
The orders held: the person, in a young face; the state, in the nemes, the uraeus and the vulture of the two lands; the sacred, in the gods of the brow, the beard of Osiris and the text that gives each part to a god; the cosmos, in the sun’s gold and the sky’s lapis; and death and the afterlife, which are the object’s whole purpose. One structure integrates them: the head as the place where a man becomes a king and a king becomes a god. What holds the axis is what is absent: no family, no labour, no history but the dynasty’s claim, and no consciousness but a calm that is prescribed rather than shown. It is a single head, and the figure describes the form. Under the Narmer Palette’s 7.4, level with the Fayum portraits at 7.3.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.4, then The Made at 9.2, then The Living Form at 8.9 and The Sublime and The Inner Law at 8.8. A form whole in gold after about thirty-three centuries, when nearly every other royal burial of its age was robbed and melted; gold beaten to a full volume and burnished, and cell work in regular rhythm across curved surfaces; a form whose materials are its claim, the front a face for eternity and the back the text that protects it; and one law, the head remade as a divine body, from the young face to the words no one was meant to read.
Limiting Dimension
The Swerve at 6.4: the fullest surviving statement of a canon some fifteen centuries old, made within a programme for a rite that set its form, its one departure the trace of Amarna in the face. Then Pressure on Tradition at 7.2: buried within weeks and unseen for thirty-two centuries, it redirected nothing in its art, and its later reach is mostly the tomb’s and the emblem’s. Then The Encompassed at 7.3, a single head without family, labour or history, and The Unconcealment and The Bottomless Well at 7.8: a received theology stated perfectly, its meaning settled by the faith that made it. The five are one fact: a perfect execution of a type, made to be buried.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.9, The Made at 9.2, The Inner Law at 8.8, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on three of five: The Imperishable at 9.4 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.7 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 7.8, Pressure on Tradition at 7.2 and The Swerve at 6.4 fall short of it, the disclosure a received theology stated perfectly, the reach delayed by thirty-two centuries and mostly the tomb’s, and the departure no more than a trace in the face. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Swerve, 6.4, and Pressure on Tradition, 7.2, both below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 98.9, an average of 8.24 that displays 8.2, in Tier IV, two tenths above the 8.0 at which it begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the object, its parts, its materials and its modern history, which are known well, and of its technique, its alloys and its inscription, which are known only in outline; the object has not been handled or seen unglazed, and no written source was consulted. The work scored is the funerary mask of Tutankhamun alone, as it stands: the face and nemes headdress in beaten gold, the inlays of the brow, eyes, headdress stripes and collar, the vulture and the cobra on the brow, the plaited beard, the broad collar and the inscription on the back and shoulders, made for the king’s burial about 1323 BC, found in tomb KV62 in the Valley of the Kings, exposed on the mummy in late October 1925, and taken to the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Its makers are the royal workshops, unnamed. Nothing of it is lost or replaced; the beard came away in 2014, was reattached with epoxy, and in 2015 was refixed by a German and Egyptian team after that repair was undone, and this is weighed on The Imperishable only. The mummy, the three nested coffins and the sarcophagus, the rest of the burial, the tomb and the history of the excavation are context and are not scored. The case that the mask, or its headdress, was first made for a predecessor and adapted for Tutankhamun is disputed, and the object is scored on neither view. No words are quoted: the inscription is described, not quoted, because its wording could not be verified. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the mask’s museum and excavation numbers, whether it has moved from the Egyptian Museum to another museum in Cairo, its weight to a closer figure, how many sheets of gold it was made from and of what alloys, which text of the funerary literature the inscription gives, the material of the fixing of 2015, the full condition of the inlays, and the part its travelling exhibitions played in the history of museum exhibitions.