Issue No. 593
Heritage
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
4 - 10 July 2002 Issue No. 593 Heritage |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Mummies as salted fish
The Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens were the resting places for royalty. Some privileged nobles and officials during the Golden Age of the Pharaohs in Egypt were also laid to rest in the Theban necropolis.
Back in the late 19th century, the necropolis had been taken over by the hunters, tomb robbers and collectors of antiquities who had established residences there. European countries were even sending their consuls to Egypt to collect antiquities in addition to attending to affairs of state. Antiquities were all the rage, and none more popular than mummified flesh which was thought to have therapeutic qualities. Ground mummy powder was believed to cure a wide range of ailments.
Excavators ranged from scholars like Flinders Petrie, called the "Father of Egyptology" because of his scientific methods of recording excavated sites, to explorers and treasure hunters such as Giovanni Belzoni and Howard Vyse, who excavated everywhere in Egypt -- the latter even used dynamite to open pyramids and tombs. The Rape of the Nile by Brian Fagen tells the tale of this period of the exploitation of Egypt's heritage, with the permission of the Egyptian rulers, it should be added. There was yet no law governing the transportation of antiquities abroad, and museums around the world amassed great collections.
In 1880, the Abdel-Rasoul family was well known in Luxor. They were said to be able "to smell out" the location of a tomb. They would go to the West Bank and, armed with no more than a hand-held torch, would search for treasures. They discovered the hidden royal mummies in a cache at Deir Al-Bahri, and were the only people who knew its exact location. They would enter the shaft in the dead of the night and take small but precious artefacts which they sold to antiquities dealers and European consuls in Luxor.
The head of antiquities, Gaston Maspero, went to Luxor to investigate how royal artefacts were suddenly appearing on the market. He and the director of police in Qurna soon realised that the secret lay with members of the Abdel- Rasoul family. They arrested Ahmed, one of its members and put him in jail. However, he would not talk, not one word. He would not reveal any of the family secrets.
The police had insufficient evidence to hold him, so Ahmed was released. Back with his family, he told them that he deserved a much larger percentage of profits from the royal cache because he had suffered at the hands of the police, and yet had remained true to the family and breathed not a word about what they had found.
Other members of the family refused his proposal. So Ahmed went to Maspero and told him everything about the discovery, including the secret entrance beneath the hills at Deir Al-Bahri. Maspero was the first to enter and look at the 40 coffins. He recognised them as royal and had them moved for safety to Cairo.
Days were spent extracting the mummies from the shaft and transporting them to the Nile for shipment by boat. The day of the departure of the mummies was a sad day for everyone in the village of Qurna, the small village next to the Valley of the Kings. Women dressed in black stood on the west bank of the Nile in stoic silence, watching ancient Egypt's kings and queens being carried aboard. As the boat began to sail, the mourning women trilled in grief, tears spilling down their cheeks.
Maspero accompanied the royal mummies all the way to Cairo. When the boat arrived, the customs officials did not know how to document the cargo. After all, mummies were not mentioned in the manual. This caused quite a dilemma. Finally, one of the officials suggested that they should be considered salted fish because they had rules and regulations concerning such a cargo.
The mummies were at first displayed in the museum in Bulaq. They now rest in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, in the new galleries known as the Mausoleum of the Mummies.
A film directed by Shadi Abdel- Salam, The Night of Counting the Years, with the brilliant acting of my friend, the movie star Nadia Loutfi, returns one to the drama of the discovery of the royal mummies at Deir Al-Bahri.
Why were they interred in the cache?
To be continued...
|
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
