Howard Carter's team cut Tutankhamun's body apart to free it from his coffin in 1925, and Carter's published account left it out

On 24 October 1925 Carter's team found that Tutankhamun's innermost coffin was solid gold and fixed to the second coffin by thick resin. Resin poured over the king at his funeral had also glued the body inside. On 11 November 1925 the examination began in the nearby tomb of Sety II, with Pierre Lacau of the Antiquities Service, the anatomists Douglas Derry and Saleh Bey Hamdi, the photographer Harry Burton and the chemist Alfred Lucas present. More than 100 objects came out of the wrappings, among them two daggers, one with a blade of meteoritic iron. Leaving the coffin in the sun did not free the body. The team used hot knives to prise off the gold mask. They cut the head from the neck, separated the arms and legs at the joints and cut the torso at the pelvis. Afterwards they laid the remains on a tray of sand in the coffin and glued some parts together so the body looked whole. Burton's photographs record the damage. Carter's 1927 volume printed an image with the head wrapped in cloth. The Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley notes that the dismemberment is missing from Carter's public account and from his excavation records. The detached penis was missing for decades, was found under the sand tray in 1968 and was located again in 2005. On 4 November 2007 the body, in 18 pieces, was moved to a climate-controlled glass case in the tomb, where it remains.