Figure of the month: 10.23 kilograms

54 cm high, 39.3 cm wide and 49 cm deep: these are the dimensions of the gold death mask of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, who reigned from 1332 to 1323 BC. The mask is mostly just 1.5 to 3 mm thick, yet it weighs more than 10 kilograms. No wonder: gold has an extremely high density, is more than ten times heavier than concrete and a good 70 per cent heavier than lead. The death mask is now on display in the recently opened Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which also boasts various other superlatives.

Buried for over 3,000 years, discovered 100 years ago

In 1925, English archaeologist Howard Carter succeeded in opening the pharaoh’s sarcophagus, which had been discovered two years earlier. Carter described the death mask as ‘an image of the god of the dead, Osiris, but with the features of Tutankhamun’. Made largely of 23-carat gold, the mask’s material value alone is more than €1 million, not counting the adorning precious stones. The death mask is, however, priceless, and widely considered the most famous artefact of ancient Egypt.

The new and unique Grand Egyptian Museum 

It took 23 years to build the world’s largest archaeological museum before it finally opened on 1 November 2025. Former Egyptian President Mubarak started planning a new museum near the pyramids of Giza in the 1990s, as the old Egyptian Museum on Tahir Square in Cairo had long been too small to display the approximately 150,000 exhibits. The new museum offers 81,000 square meters of space, enough to adequately display the artefacts, with the death mask of Tutankhamun clearly standing out. Its display case is 4.5 meters high and 4 centimeters thick, and designed to withstand bullets from a Kalashnikov.