Egyptian conservators give King Tut’s treasures new glow

As a teenager, Eid Mertah would pore over books about King Tutankhamun, tracing hieroglyphs and dreaming of holding the boy pharaoh’s golden mask in his hands.

Years later, the Egyptian conservator found himself gently brushing centuries-old dust off one of Tut’s gilded ceremonial shrines — a piece he had only seen in textbooks.

“I studied archaeology because of Tut,” Mertah, 36, told AFP. “It was my dream to work on his treasures — and that dream came true.”

Mertah is one of more than 150…