THE facial appendage on Tutankhamun’s burial mask is a hastily-attached chair leg, it has emerged.
A spokesman for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo said: “To be honest the original beard got snapped off where some of the curators were enjoying a game of indoor football. As you can imagine we were all like, ‘Noooooo’.
“The beard rolled under a sarcophagus and would have been a lot of hassle to recover.
“After an exhaustive ten-minute search we found a nearby chair whose legs had a vaguely beard-esque look. Few blobs of Bostick, job done.
“We think it looks pretty good. Sometimes people can be too precious about these priceless art treasures.”
