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The Austrian Mint’s Gold of the Pharaohs coin earned top billing in the Best Gold Coin category at the 2022 Coin of the Year awards. The coin, dated 2020, is the second coin in The Magic of Gold series.

As described by the Austrian Mint:

Made of pure gold, the ‘flesh of the gods’ and the symbol of eternity in Ancient Egypt, the coin features the death mask of the ‘boy king’, Tutankhamun. More than 3,000 years old, the most celebrated of all the famous burial objects uncovered in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings is still casting its spell in the 21st century.

The obverse and reverse of the Gold of the Pharaohs coin were designed by Herbert Wähner and Helmut Andexlinger of the Austrian Mint. The reverse depicts the death mask of Tutankhamun. While Tutankhamun was not even 20 years old when he died, his legend lives on thanks to Howard Carter, a British archaeologist  who made a historic discovery in 1922 when he came across Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.

The coin’s obverse features a collage of Ancient Egyptian images, with Tutankhamun’s father Akhenaten in its center. The elder Pharaoh is on his knees with hands raised in homage to the sun god, Aten, as the lance-shaped rays of the solar disk descend towards him. In the background we see a sarcophagus containing a Pharaoh, under which the hieroglyphic for gold can be seen. Mintage of the Gold of the Pharaohs coin is limited to 20,000. The coin weighs 15.78 grams and measures30.0 mm in diameter.