It is one of the most timeless and iconic visages of all time, but that didn’t keep museum handlers from making short work of it. The legendary blue and gold braided beard on the burial mask of pharaoh Tutankhamun has been glued back together with a cheap epoxy, after having been unceremoniously knocked off during a cleaning.

According to The Associated Press, three of the museum's conservators reached via telephone offered differing accounts of when the incident occurred last year, and whether the beard was dislodged by accident while the mask's case was being cleaned, or was removed simply because it was loose.

All agree, however, that orders came from a superior as to how to fix it and that a cheap glue was employed.

"Unfortunately he used a very irreversible material -- epoxy has a very high property for attaching and is used on metal or stone, but I think it wasn't suitable for an outstanding object like Tutankhamun's golden mask," said an anonymous conservator. "The mask should have been taken to the conservation lab, but they were in a rush to get it displayed quickly again and used this quick drying, irreversible material."

The burial mask now shows a gap between the face and the beard, whereas before it was directly attached.

"Now you can see a layer of transparent yellow," said a conservator.

Another museum conservator, who was present at the time of the repair, claimed that epoxy had dried on the face Tutankhamun’s mask, and a colleague had to use a spatula to remove it, leaving scratches.

The burial mask of Tutankhamun was discovered by British archaeologists Howard Carter and George Herbert in 1922. It sparked worldwide interest in archaeology and ancient Egypt when it was unearthed along with Tutankhamun's nearly intact tomb.

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