Back to eternity
A 3000-year-old funeral procession was replayed this week as the mummy of King Ramses I arrived in Luxor, continuing its eternal spiritual journey.
Nevine El-Aref was among the reverent onlookers
Borne on a horse-drawn chariot decorated by white, orange and yellow flowers, the mummy of Ramses I -- the 19th dynasty king -- started its trip to eternity. Along the avenue of Ram, at the awe-inspiring Karnak Temple, the feel of a 3000-year-old royal funeral cortege was evoked. Two rows of soldiers bearing musical instruments played a processional march while the sound of applause and trilling cries of joy filled the air.
Dozens of children in shining white garb, holding garlands of white flowers, lined the route leading to the boat on which another mummy, that of warrior-King Ahmose I, was awaiting. Both embarked on a water-borne journey to their final resting place.
The vessel serenely crossed the calm ripples of the Nile to the newly built extension of Luxor Museum dedicated to the "Golden Age of the Pharaohs". To the rhythm of the Egyptian national anthem both mummies were laid to rest in the museum inside two high-tech plexi-glass showcases, along with their respective military arms.
"It is really a thrilling experience that deeply touched my heart," Professor Ali Radwan head of the Arab Archaeologists' Union told Al-Ahram Weekly. "It is, in fact, the least we can do to greet and mourn two Pharaohs who devoted their lives to defeat invaders and build up the great Ancient Egyptian civilisation."
These rituals reminded Radwan of a similar event held during the 1980s celebrating the arrival of the mummy of the great King Ramses II in France for UNESCO restoration. When the mummy was disembarked from the plane, French guards lined the path and both Egyptian and French national anthems were played. "I felt really very proud," Radwan recalls. "Three thousand years after his death, Ramses II's mummy was treated as a living dignitary. The celebration boded well to a great Egyptian king of a civilisation that once ruled the whole world," Radwan concluded.
Back in Luxor, Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Secretary-General Zahi Hawass told reporters and journalists, surrounding him as he uncovered both mummies from their huge wooden boxes wrapped with the Egyptian flag, "I am very pleased. Both mummies have finally returned back to where they originally belong, to Luxor or Ancient Thebes."
After 130 years of being shuttled around US museums and archaeological laboratories, said Hawass, the mummy of Ramses I returned to its rightful place of rest, and its eternal spiritual journey.
The mummy of Ramses I is believed to have left Egypt in 1871 as part of a wide-scale selling-off of treasures looted from Luxor's Valley Of Kings. Tombs robbers from the Abdel-Rassul family had accidentally stumbled upon the cache and sold a number of mummies, coffins and royal artefacts. Regretfully, the mummy of King Ramses I was among them. It came in the possession of Canada's Niagara Falls Museum and then to the Michael C Carlos Museum where the mummy was subject to intensive study to determine its identity. When they realised that it was the mummy of the Ancient Egyptian King Ramses I they offered it back to Egypt. The mummy was handed over to Egypt last October. As for the 18th dynasty King Ahmose I -- the warrior-king who succeeded in liberating Egypt from the Hyksos -- his mummy was found among others found at Deir Al-Bahari. Since then his remains have been on display, along with several counterparts, in the mausoleum of royal mummies at the Egyptian Museum.
Hawass sees the extension of the Luxor Museum as the best place to exhibit both mummies not only because the museum combines the educational and the cultural, but because both mummies fit within the museum's focus on armies in the golden age. Hawass explained that the collection on show narrates how the Pharaohs ruled Egypt and established their unique civilisation. "Some believe that they built it only with wars and conquest, but on the contrary, they founded and enhanced it with peace and passion," he asserted.
History witnesses, says Hawass, that the first ever peace treaty was signed during the reign of Ramses II after his victory over the Hittites.
Mahmoud Mabrouk, head of the museum department at the SCA, said that the newly organised annex of Luxor Museum, scheduled to open next April, will showcase the Ancient Egyptian military system, specially that of the New Kingdom. It features a wide collection of military tools such as swords, knives, war chariots, armoured shields and arrows. Statues of well-known warrior-kings such as Tuthmosis III, Seti I, Ramses II and Ramses III are also among the exhibited items.
