Atlanta Sends Mummy Home

A 3,000-year-old mummy that many scholars believe is ancient Egypt's King Ramses I is the star attraction of an exhibit at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta that will run from April 26 to September 14.

How the mummy came to reside in North America for 140 years, and wound up in Atlanta, is a tale that includes the collapse of law and order in ancient Egypt, grave robbers, stolen antiquities, a two-headed calf and a five-legged pig, the wonders of modern science, and an international gesture of good will.

The royal mummy will make its final journey home this fall, part of a gift from the people of Atlanta to the people of Egypt. Tuesday, museum officials presented Zahi Hawass, general director of Egypt's Supreme Council on Antiquities, with four fragments of painted limestone relief that are part of the tomb of Seti I, son and successor of Ramses I.

Researchers believe that this mummy is King Ramses I, which ended up in Atlanta after a long journey and will be returned to Egypt this fall.

"By returning these items to Egypt, the museum is doing something no other museum has done before and should set an example for museums all over the world," said Hawass, who is also a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. "This is being done at a time of great destruction of antiquities and emphasizes the great importance of our cultural heritage."

The royal mummy and four fragments are part of a 145-piece collection of mummies, coffins, and artifacts the Carlos museum purchased in 1999 from a tacky museum in Niagara Falls that also featured a "Freaks of Nature" exhibit.

"There was never any question about whether the mummy would be returned to Egypt if it proved to be a royal," said Peter Lacovara, an Egyptologist and curator of ancient art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum. "It was simply the right thing to do."

Gayle Gibson, an Egyptologist at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, who has studied the Niagara mummies for years, concurs. As part of the ceremony to open the exhibit, the Carlos Museum hosted a reception for an international gathering of Egyptologists April 25—a night that Gibson remembers for a particularly spectacular storm.

"Ramses was from northern Egypt, and the family's god was Seth, the god of storms," she said. "The night of the reception there was a powerful storm, with thunder and lightning and hail; a tornado just missed us. It was a very unusual storm for Atlanta. I think it was Rameses, letting us know that he's happy to be going home."

Following the trail of the royal mummy from the Valley of the Kings to the Carlos Museum is a fascinating tale.

Ramses I ascended to power in 1293 B.C. Though he died two years later, he managed to found Egypt's 19th Dynasty; his son Seti I and grandson Ramses the Great are known as two of ancient Egypt's most illustrious rulers.

"Don't be deceived by the fact that he was king for just two years," said Gibson, who is president of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. "Prior to claiming the throne, he was the vizier of Egypt, the equivalent of a prime minister today."

His official title before becoming king was Master of Horse, Commander of the Fortress, Controller of the Nile Mouth, Charioteer of His Majesty, King's Envoy to Every Foreign Land, Royal Scribe, Colonel, and General of the Lord of the Two Lands.

Ramses, who was known as Paramessu before he claimed the throne, worked closely with Horemheb, the king who preceded him, to restore law and order to a country that had been torn apart by ill-conceived religious reforms.

"Tutankhamen's father, Akhenaten, created horrible suffering and economic dislocation; the country was a real mess," said Gibson. "It was almost like Iraq today; they had to appoint judges, reestablish law and order. Horemheb and Ramses were instrumental in getting the country back into a position where future kings could start building beautiful monuments and fighting wars to successfully defend or expand their borders."

Upon his death, Ramses I was carefully prepared for his arduous journey in the after world, mummified, and buried in the Valley of the Kings around 1290 B.C. But he was not left in peace.

During periods of civil unrest and civic corruption, the tombs were victims of almost unfettered grave-robbing. To protect the mummies, if not the grave goods, many of the tombs were opened and the bodies of the kings and other royals moved to more secure, secret locations. Around 900 B.C., many were laid to rest in a hidden tomb in the cliffs of Deir el-Bahri.

Sometime in the mid-1800s, the tomb at Deir el-Bahri was accidentally discovered by Ahmed Abd el-Rassul while he searched for a lost goat. He and his family, who were widely known at the time as "tomb breakers and mummy snatchers," began selling off mummies, coffins, and royal artifacts to tourists and collectors. They were eventually caught and the tomb was officially discovered in 1881. At the time of its official discovery, the tomb contained 40 mummies, coffins, and other artifacts. Ramses I's coffin was found, but there was no sign of his mummy.

Though the trail of stolen antiquities is often murky, ancient records from the tombs, diaries and letters from the mid-19th century, and scholarly conjecture suggest that the mummy was sold for seven pounds to a physician from Canada named James Douglas in around 1860. Douglas acquired the royal mummy for the owner of a museum in Niagara Falls.

Over the next 140 years the royal mummy, along with several others, some coffins, and other Egyptian artifacts shared floor space with "freaks of nature"—the two-headed calf, and the five-legged pig—memorabilia of the Wild West and the Civil War, and the barrels of Falls daredevils. The museum changed hands, and crossed and re-crossed the Canadian border several times until it closed in 1999.

Rumors that the Niagara Falls collection included a royal mummy had swirled since the 1980s, when German Egyptologist Arne Eggebrecht visited the museum and visually examined it.

"Anyone looking at the mummy, at least any Egyptologist, could see that this was a powerful man, a fine looking man, and special," said Gibson, who first saw the mummy 18 years ago. "But until the radiocarbon dating came in, giving us a 3,000-year-old date, no one imagined it might be Ramses I."

When the mummy reached Atlanta, scientists at Emory University, which is affiliated with the Carlos museum, swung into a full-on investigation. CT scans, x-rays, radiocarbon dating, computer imaging, and other techniques were all used to narrow the identification.

"Most scholars agree that the Ramses I identification is the most likely," said the Carlos Museum's Peter Lacovara. "All the different lines of investigation converge to make it the most probable."

One indication that the mummy is royal is the position of the arms, which are crossed high across the chest, "a position reserved for royalty until about 600 B.C. or later," Lacovara said.

The quality of the mummification, the position of the embalming scar, its remarkably well-preserved condition, and other factors all place it in the time frame of Ramses' rule, he said.

The physical resemblance to Seti I, and Ramses the Great is also startling, according to many scholars.

"It's definitely a royal mummy," said Zahi Hawass. "I only saw it half an hour ago, so more than that I can't say. But we are very happy it will be returned to Egypt where the rest of the royal mummies are."

Hawass is similarly thrilled to be returning to Egypt with the fragments from Seti's tomb.

"The pieces are small, but they are very important," he said. "The museum is completely volunteering these fragments as a gift to the Supreme Council of Antiquities. They were obtained legitimately and we had no legal claim to them. It's a wonderful gift and I hope other museums will follow this example. I cannot imagine missing parts of tombs on view in museums when the original tombs are left incomplete."

From the Britannica:

Nefertiti

also spelled Nefertiit, or Nofretete flourished 14th century BC

queen of Egypt and wife of King Akhenaton (reigned 1353–36 BC) who supported her husband's religious revolution and is thought by some to have adhered to the new cult of the sun god Aton even after the king began to compromise with the upholders of the old order.

Nefertiti is best known for her portrait bust, found at Tell el-Amarna (ancient Akhetaton), the king's new capital. Her parentage is uncertain, but some scholars believe she was an Asian princess from Mitanni. She appears prominently at her husband's side in reliefs found at Tell el-Amarna, and she was a faithful follower of his new cult. Nefertiti had six daughters, two of whom became queens of Egypt. In the 12th year of Akhenaton's reign, or possibly later, Nefertiti either retired after losing favour with the king or, less probably, died. Objects belongingto her have been found at the northern palace in Amarna, suggesting that she may have retired there.

Life and rule at Akhetaton

(Amarna). The new temples were built at Karnak, near Thebes, a region dominated by the god Amon and by the families that had run the state for several generations. The new king had to break away sharply from this traditional setting. In the fifth year of his reign he changed his name from Amenhotep (“Amon Is Satisfied”) to Akhenaton (“One Useful to Aton”), thus formally declaring his new religion; and he moved his capital from Thebes more than 200 miles (300 km) north to a desert bay on the east side of the Nile River, a place now called Tell el-Amarna or Amarna. Here he began to build a new city, which he called Akhetaton (“Place of the Aton's Effective Power”). He took an oath that hewould never go beyond the bounds of this place, which seems to mean not that he would never leave it but that he would not push the city limits beyond designated boundary stones. He was now free from the hostile forces at Thebes.

In their new home, Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and their six daughters gave themselves over to the new “truth.” Their family life was open to the public. They worshiped the Aton in a temple open to the sunlight. The newly made nobles and officials gave their devotion to Akhenaton and Nefertiti.

Although the Egyptian texts always asserted that the king was a god and therefore the source of every benefit for the land, the complexities of a large empire, the activities of the bureaucrats, and the enticements of royal privilege had made Akhenaton's predecessors captives of the state. His political reforms were hence reactionary, inasmuch as he tried to recapture the old authority of the king. If the focus is only on the spectacular new elements that he introduced, the fact that his domination of rule was a restoration of a very old “truth” may be obscured.

The new city at Amarna must have had charm. Officials lived in spacious villas with trees, pools, and gardens. Indoors the walls were painted in the free flowing new art, with marsh scenes near the floor and floral bouquets near the ceiling. Amarna art ranged from the very gracious, such as the famous bust of Nefertiti, to the grotesque. Everything was lively. Probably the elegant fragility of the portrait of Nefertiti displeased the traditionalists. Instead of presenting a solidity that might last forever, it gave a delicate and fleeting impression. The new “truth” came down to earth. The prime minister was shown running in front of the king's chariot, an exertion that would have been unthinkable in the staid old times. Scenes of the busy market and the soldiers' guardroom, with lively comments of the people, are depicted. Present-day viewers of this ancient art feel as though they were there.

The new religion.

The religion of the Aton is not completely understood. Akhenaton and Nefertiti worshipped only this sun-god. For themhe was “the sole god.” Akhenaton had dropped his older name Amenhotep, and the name “Amon” was also hacked out of the inscriptions throughout Egypt. Here and there the names of other gods and goddesses were removed, and in some texts the words “all gods” were eliminated. The funerary religion dropped Osiris, and Akhenaton became the source of blessings for the people after death. The figure of Nefertiti replaced the figures of protecting goddesses at the corners of a stone sarcophagus. Yet Akhenaton and Nefertiti directed their worship only to the Aton. It was the closest approach to monotheism that the world had ever seen.

The king addressed a beautiful hymn to his god, expressing gratitude for the benefits of life. The Aton, says the hymn, gave these blessings not only to the Egyptians but also to “Syria and Nubia” and to “all distant foreign countries,” to “all men, cattle, and wild beasts,” to the lion coming from his den, the fish in the river, and the chick within the egg. Men live when the sun has risen, but at night the dark land is as if dead. It has often been pointed out that this hymn has a remarkable similarity to Psalm 104 in the Bible. Both the hymn and the psalm reflect a common family of ideas,according to which God or the god is praised for his bounties.

The Aton religion was a happy nature worship, without an ethical code. Men were asked only to be grateful to the sun for life and warmth. It was unlike the awful austerity of the great gods of former Egypt, who might punish man for disobedience. It was quite unlike the heavy demands that the Hebrew god would lay upon his people. In the Aton religion there was no “Thou shalt . . .” and no “Thou shalt not. . . .”

An aesthetic and intellectual religion, it probably had no deep roots. There is no evidence that the people worshiped the Aton happily; in their tombs they prayed to the Aton but also to Akhenaton and Nefertiti. The people wanted to see adefinite force. Akhenaton was the same god-king who had always ruled Egypt, and Nefertiti could substitute for all the former mother goddesses. The king and queen seem to have accepted this worship as their just due.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

· GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach · · join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Antiquity Journal & archive Archaeologica Archaeology Archaeology Channel BAR Bronze Age Forum Discover Dogpile Eurekalert Google LiveScience Mirabilis.ca Nat Geographic PhysOrg Science Daily Science News Texas AM Yahoo Excerpt, or Link only?	Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
· History topic · history keyword · archaeology keyword · paleontology keyword · · Science topic · science keyword · Books/Literature topic · pages keyword ·