This mask, which has become due to the controversial history of its appearance in art-space one of the most famous monuments of ancient Egyptian art, was found in 1951, Egyptian archaeologist Mohammed Zakaria Ghoneim at Saqqara in the study of incomplete pyramidal complex King III dynasty Sehemheta. The area of the archaeologists have discovered many more recent graves.
"The most interesting was the burial tomb of a noble woman named Kainefernefer, which means" Beautiful Double Ka "- wrote Ghoneim. - Her body was not embalmed, but simply wrapped in a mat of palm leaves. The head and shoulders covered realistic painted and gilded mask covered with plaster cloth and cardboard. She was also a necklace of glass beads, simulating semiprecious stones, amulets of green feldspar and glass in front of her were, and figurines - alabaster, wood and steatitovye ... "Mask dated to the time of the Board XIX dynasty and the specifics of the burial, the mat and talked about that the deceased may have been Libyan.
Mask remarkably good its realism, proportions and amounts. Face ladies are gilded with copper content in gold and metal oxide gives it a reddish hue. Extended inlaid glass eyes summed imitations of cosmetic lines. Lips mask covered with red-yellow pigment, which was once the foundation for more intensive gilding. Massive wig with a remarkably made from a thick layer of resin with double strands of hair framing the face, decorated with a bandage, which dangles encrusted glass flower water lily from which the visible fruit of the tree of Persia - the symbol of rebirth and the Sun God.
Shoulders ladies covered a broad necklace, from the visible chest, decorated with floral ornaments and hanging between flower water lily. Under the chest shows the volume pectoral in the form of boat of Osiris, where the front of the deity to be very Kainefernefer. In the hands of masks - traditional symbols of Osiris and Isis Jed - 'tet', together symbolizing the sacrament of the posthumous transformation of the deceased. At the top of the mask are damaged, which, however, do not distort the overall look of the monument and not diminish its artistic value.
Museum of St. Louis bought the mask Kainefernefer - chief masterpiece of its Egyptian collection - in 1998 in Geneva Gallery "Phoenix", owned by famous art dealer, brothers Abutaam. It soon became clear that the monument left Egypt illegally, along with some other works of art disappeared during robbery archaeological storage at Saqqara in 1980. Since then, the mask that turned first in Belgium, and then - in Switzerland, had several owners. At present the Museum of St. Louis refused to meet the insistence of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Egypt and return the mask to his homeland.
On the complex history of the mask, which came illegally to the European antique market and which requires the return of Egypt