These elaborate earrings were attached by tubes that passed through the king’s lobes. Both outer ends are closed by round disks of transparent quartz. The front faces show tiny portraits of the king and are decorated with two uraeus snakes. Multi-coloured composite birds with inlaid falcon wings and blue glass duck heads hang from the central tubes. Each holds shen (eternity) signs in its outstretched feet. Five uraeus snakes with beaded tails hang down under the birds. According to the excavator Howard Carter, the king’s mummified remains showed ‘the lobes of the ears are perforated by a circular hole’.