Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass has long been keen that efforts be made to preserve Tutankhamun's mummy, which is in poor condition. It suffered extensive damage at the hands of Carter and his team as they attempted to remove the many ornaments from the mummy, including the boy king's golden funerary mask. The pelvis was separated from the trunk and the arms and legs detached. Hot knives and iron bars were variously used to remove amulets and other jewellery. Carter's team then attempted to reconstruct the body they had dismembered, reassembling the parts in a sand tray and even reattaching the hands and feet with resin. In 1968, when the mummy was re-examined, it took days to return the fingers to their original position.
Hawass told Al-Ahram Weekly that the humidity and heat generated by the breath of the thousands of visitors that daily visit Tutankhamun's tomb constitutes an ongoing threat to the condition of the mummy, which currently rests inside his gleaming anthropoid sarcophagus.
"Removing it to a climate-controlled plexi- glass showcase, like those used to display the royal mummies in the Egyptian museum in Cairo, will not only help preserve the mummy but will allow visitors to see the real face of the Pharaoh," he says. Only the face will be left uncovered. The rest of the body will remain covered with linen.
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