'Before us, occupying the whole of the interior of the golden coffin, was an impressive, neat and carefully made mummy, over which had been poured anointing unguents as in the case of the outside of its coffin-again in great quantity-consolidated and blackened by age.  In contradistinction to the general dark and sombre effect, due to these unguents, was a brilliant, one might say magnificent, burnished gold mask or similitude of the king, covering his head and shoulders, which, like the feet, had been intentionally avoided when using the unguents.'

The gold mask is a masterpiece of Egyptian metalwork, not known even to todays standards. It was beaten from two separate sheets of gold and then joined by hammering the two together, remarkably consistent in thickness it measures some 54cm(1ft 9in) and weighs some 10.23kg(22.7 lbs). Together with the mask were found another 150 items of jewellery.

'The youthful Pharaoh was before us at last: an obscure and ephemeral ruler, ceasing to be the mere shadow of a name, had re-entered, after more than three thousand years, the world of reality and history! Here was the climax of our long researches!   The tomb had yielded its secret; the message of the past had reached the present in spite of the weight of time, and the erosion of so many years' -Howard Carter

The unwrapping of the mummified king began on November 11th 1923, the autopsy was undertaken by Douglas E. Derry, the first parts unwrapped were the kings legs, then the sexual organs, slowly working their way up the body until the whole corpse was visible.

The findings from the autopsy suggested that Tutankhamun was 1.63m(5ft 4in) tall, the exact measurements of the guardian statues in the Antechamber, and that he had died between the ages of 17-19, it was found that there were small fragments of bone within the skull and it was concluded that the king had been murdered and had not died of tuberculosis as was previously thought.