metal alloy with added gold and paint with a marble base
height 37.3cm (40.5 cm including base)

Property from a Private Collection, North London

Provenance
Commissioned by the husband of the present owner in 1972

Although the widow of one of the two partners that commissioned the work believes that less than a handful were actually produced, please note that the present work is numbered 21/500 and stamped Robert BRIAN LTD

Cast in 1972 for the landmark exhibition that year of The Treasures of Tutankhamun at the British Museum, only four casts of the present reduced replica mask of Tutankhamun are known to exist.

The intention had been to issue the cast in an edition of 500 and market them during the London exhibition. However production was slow, and none were produced in time. Of the four that were cast, two were kept by the partners who initiated and financed the project (of which the present work is one); the other two were sold the following year when the exhibition travelled onto America. In the USA one was purchased by Barbara Streisand and the other by the Seattle Museum of Art.

In London The Treasures of Tutankhamun ran from March to December 1972, and it featured fifty pieces from Tutankhamun's grave to mark 50 years since the discovery of the young pharoah's grave by the British archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922. The original unearthing of the tomb had given rise to unprecedented Egyptomania, its popularity in the 1920s reflected in the Egyptian motifs found in the art deco style of the period. Half a century later King Tut's influence had not diminished. The exhibition was the most successful in the British Museum's history and marked the advent of the blockbuster show in the UK. It attracted some 1.7 million visitors over six months and the star attraction was the young pharaoh's mask.

As well as being a crowd puller, the exhibition was also a diplomatic coup. The project to hold the Tutanakhamun exhibition in London had grown out of the UK government's desire to develop a new relationship with Egypt and the Arab world following the Suez crisis in 1956 and the withdrawal of British forces from Aden a decade later. British Egyptologists were also keen to showcase their contributions to the UNESCO campaign for Nubia set up to survey the archaeological sites in Egypt and Sudan threatened by the construction of Egypt's Aswan High Dam.

The original gold funerary mask measuring 54cm high, now on view in the Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo was uncovered by Howard Carter on 28th October 1925, the first time it had been seen in some 3,250 years. The mask is the highlight of some 5,000 objects excavated from the grave in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes in Upper Egypt. Tutankhamun acceeded to the throne in 1332 BC aged just nine years old, and ruled over Egypt for nine years before his death aged 18 in 1323 BC. He is one of very few Egyptian kings considered as a god during his lifetime.