 Moulds were then taken from the reserve heads in plaster, and the gouges that appear on many of the heads, the seeming mutilation to the ears and the excess plaster that appears on at least one of the heads can be explained as the type of damage that would be expected by trying to remove tight-fitting plaster casts from a reserve head.Egyptologist Roland Tefnin suggested that the heads were ritually mutilated to prevent them from harming the living.Tefnin proposed that the reserved heads were created by a master sculptor, and upon the subject's death the reserve head received a ritualized mutilation to ensure that it could not harm the deceased in the afterlife.