Araldite and the Beard
According to the Bible God created woman to be a "help meet" for man, though as some have pointed out, Eve was made from Adam's rib. A bone from his head might have indicated women's superiority, a bone from his foot implied inferiority, but a rib implies equal stature and, for the romantics, that she is to be near to his heart. Considerable human experience has shown that the happiest marriages are when husband and wife have mutual respect for one another rather than one dominating the other.
Unfortunately, sometimes a marriage partner's efforts to be a "help meet" can be unappreciated or even go disastrously wrong. The wife who tidies her husband's office is a prime example of the former and most wives soon learn that the ideal way of "tidying" an untidy male den is to simply shut the door. (Nailing it shut or disguising the doorway with matching wall paper or large pot plants may be taking things too far!)
And example of the latter could be - well - for example - how about what happened when one of the female cleaners employed by the Cairo Museum decided that it was time to dust down Tutankhamun's death mask. Exactly what happened next is uncertain: museum staff contacted by reporters have come up with at least three different tales, but the most likely ones are that either the cleaner was a little too enthusiastic with her feather duster and knocked Tut's beard off, or that the heat and humidity in the museum had caused the 3,300 year old glue to deteriorate and the conscientious employee noticed that the beard was loose and, to prevent damage when it fell off, she deliberately pulled it off.
Whichever is the case, the woman did what was undoubtedly the right thing and reported the fact - that Tut had lost his beard - to the proper authorities. Aghast at the idea that the museum's premiere attraction might not be on view for next day's hordes of visitors or, possibly even worse, be on display without its beard, the word came down from on high to fix it and fix it fast.
It is at that point that our heroine took a fateful decision. Instead of contacting the museum's conservationists - and to be fair, she may not even have been aware that such people existed - the unfortunate cleaner whipped out her mobile phone and pressed the speed button to call her husband. In a few succint words of gutteral Arabic she explained the problem and back came his words of reassurance and comfort, the Egyptian equivalent of "Don't worry, darling, I'm on my way."
How long it took this gallant gentleman to come to his wife's rescue we are not told. In due course he arrived, the calm, masterful male riding to the rescue of his lady-love and bringing with him two tubes of epoxy resin. He carefully squeezed equal amounts from tube A and tube B, mixed them briskly with a matchstick and applied the glue to the beard, then firmly pressed the beard into position on the golden death mask.
Well, almost into position. Fortunately epoxy resin doesn't set instantly and those standing nearby and filming the whole thing on their mobile phones were able to advise him to move it "a bit more to the left - no, too far, leetle bit to the right - now forward a bit - no, not that much - there, just hold it there". Which he duly did, but by the time the glue had set hard enough to hold the beard in place, the smears left by moving it around on the royal face had dried also.
Not one to leave a job half done, our hero borrowed a metal spatula from somewhere and chipped the bits of excess glue off. Inevitably this left scratches in the smooth gold surface, but what to do? A "mashallah" and a couple of quick "Allahu akbar"s and he left, his wife walking a regulation two paces behind him, conscious of a job well done.
Alas, our friend was not as proficient with the glue as he thought he was, and a thick layer of yellow glue is now visible in the join. Nor are the scratches as easily overlooked as he hoped. The horrified authorities at the musum are at a loss to know what to do, because epoxy is certainly an exellent glue for attaching things to metal and it seems impossible to get the beard off without damaging either it or the mask or both. Furthermore epoxy resin is impervious to any solvent, so they cannot dissolve the glue away.
I do, however, have a word of comfort for them. Just do nothing for a couple of years. The pale yellow of the epoxy resin will gradually turn a deep orange or even brown and in five or six years - or possibly ten or twelve - you will be able to tweak the beard off with your fingers. That, at least, has been the fate of all the repairs I have done using it.
cleaner Other news reports state that the person whose husband sprang to the rescue was, in fact, one of the curators of the museum. If so, she is slightly more blame-worthy, but I do wonder exactly what is meant by "curator". In the western world the term implies a highly-educated specialist, but in Egypt it is as likely to mean the second cousin thrice removed of the museum director's fourth wife, who couldn't find a job anywhere else because of lack of ability and was apointed on the basis of nepotism pure and simple. Return
© Kendall K. Down 2015
