From the Middle Kingdom onwards the mummy’s face was usually covered with a funerary or death mask. Although these masks enabled the deceased to have a face and sensory organs in the afterlife.

Stucco was applied to fabric and then painted or inlaid with coloured substances.These masks are not portraits. The features were usually idealised according to the style of the time.

The delicately depicted face is smiling timidly. The earlobes are pierced and the eyes accentuated with eyeliner. The heavy wig is decorated with a blooming lotus flower descending towards the forehead. The lotus, which closes at sunset and reopens every morning, is a symbol of rebirth that is omnipresent in tomb decoration and on funerary furniture.

Around his neck, the deceased wears a large pectoral with multiple rows of coloured pearls. This type of necklace often required a counterweight in the back to relieve the wearer's neck. The necklace of small round pearls belongs to what the Egyptians called 'The gold of reward'. It is a set of precious objects the king offered to particularly deserving dignitaries.

The owner of our mask remains unfortunately unknown, but he must have been one of the highest figures in the Egyptian state at the end of the 18th dynasty.