Naked of all his
bandages, with crossed arms denoting his royal status and having
been preserved in natron salts, the mummified pharaoh had lain
unrecognised for decades. More puzzling still is how the ancient
Egyptian king could have been transported from Egypt to the
Niagara museum, where, for 138 years, it was one of the main
exhibits.
In an attempt
to solve the mystery, Atlanta's Michael C. Carlos Museum purchased
the mummy last year. Now its scientists are hoping to extract
DNA to determine which pharaoh they have in their possession.
Yet, if you follow events taking place in Luxor during the second
half of the 19th century, it would appear that the Niagara mummy
may well be the body of Rameses I, founder of the 19th Dynasty.
Early in 1874,
Amelia Edwards, the famous romantic novelist, was undertaking
a 1,000-mile journey up the river Nile from Alexandria to Nubia.
She reached the little town of Luxor (the site of ancient Thebes)
in March and stayed there for several weeks. Within hours of
her sailing boat mooring alongside the temple, Edwards sensed
the excitement lurking in this otherwise sleepy community.
She wrote: "There
were whispers about this time of a tomb that had been discovered
on the western side - a wonderful tomb, rich in all kinds of
treasures. No one, of course, had seen these things. No one
knew where they were hidden. But there was a solemn secrecy
about certain Arabs and a conscious look about some of the visitors
and an air of awakened vigilance about the government officials,
which savoured the mystery".
During her stay
in Luxor, she was even offered a papyrus roll complete with
its own mummy. Days of protracted negotiations over the sum
of backsheesh (money) appropriate for such a trophy ensured
before two other English ladies, the Brocklehurst sisters (also
doing a Nile cruise), intervened and, as Edwards wryly notes,
"bought both mummy and papyrus at an enormous price".
Having purchased
this gruesome hoard from certain undisclosed residents of Sheikh
Abd el-Gurna village near the Valley of the Kings, the ladies
set sail for Cairo. However, before the day was out, the mummy
obviously not long from its tomb, began to putrefy in the burning
summer heat. The "dearly departed" met its sorry end in the
thick black mud at the bottom of the river.
Throughout the
1870s, papyrus scrolls and other funerary artifacts were appearing
in "antika" shops of the Middle East. Clearly an important discovery
of a royal tomb, or series of tombs, had been surreptitiously
made in the mountains of the west bank of Luxor. The Egyptian
Antiquities Service implemented a rigorous policy to flush out
the culprits. A spy was sent to try to discover who was behind
the illicit dealing. In 1881, one family had come under suspicion
and one member in particular.
Ahmed Abd er-Rassul
was brought to the Antiquities Service steamboat which had come
from Cairo carrying director Gaston Maspero and his deputy Emil
Brugsch. The interrogation was long and searching but Ahmed
was more than a match for Maspero's delving. This "upright citizen"
of Gurna continued to deny all knowledge of the tomb, constantly
professing his good name. How could an Egyptian with such an
exemplary reputation indulge in nefarious activities of this
kind?
The Antiquities
Service men failed to extract any sort of confession from the
wily Ahmed and had to release him, allowing him to return safely
across the river back to the safety of Gurna. Maspero and Brugsch
headed back to Cairo . Shortly after, Ahmed and his brother
Hussein were arrested by the local police and send to be "interviewed"
by the governor of the province, Daoud Pasha. This time, the
niceties of European scholarly interrogation were not observed.
Daoud's men had more direct methods of extracting information.
The Rassuls were
subjected to hours of brutal questioning which Daoud set about
"with his habitual severity". This included the use of bastinado,
a form of torture where the victim's feet are caned. Still the
brothers refused to surrender their secret. Ahmed and Hussein
(the latter now crippled by the torture) were thrown into prison
for two months. They were finally released after the constant
petitioning of the elders of their village.
Despite their
success in avoiding prosecution, things were not going well
in the Rassul household. The need to save face dominated village
life, especially among male elders of the tribe. On his triumphant
return home to Gurna, Ahmed decided that he and his younger
brother should be rewarded for their suffering at the hands
of the Kena authorities. Head of the family, Mohamed, had got
away scot free so it was only right, in Ahmed's view, that he
and Hussein should get a greater share of the loot in recompense
for their tribulations. A furious and long-lasting row erupted
among the brothers and the entire village was thrown into turmoil.
Mohamed Abd er-Rassul
then went secretly to Daoud Pasha and confessed. To restore
his authority at home and, as a face-saving measure, he secured
a promise that no prosecutions would ensure if he agreed to
lead the authorities to the hidden tomb.
At last the truth,
or at least part of the truth, was revealed, first to the authorities
in Upper Egypt and then by telegram to Brugsch in Cairo. The
latter once again set out for Luxor arriving on June 4. Two
days later, Mohamend took Brugsch to the lonely spot south of
Deir el-Bahri where revealed the location of the secret tomb.
Brugsch was lowered by rope down to the bottom of the shaft.
"Finding Pharaoh was an exciting experience for me. It is true
I was armed to the teeth and my faithful rifle, full of shell,
hung over my shoulder; but my assistant from Cairo, Ahmed Effendi
Kamal, was the only person with me whom I trust", he wrote.
"Any one of the native would have killed me willingly had we
been alone, for every one of them knew better than I did that
I was about to deprive them of a great source of revenue. But
I exposed no sign of fear and proceeded with the work. The well
cleared out. I descended and began the exploration of the underground
passage."
Brugsch and Ahmed
Kamal pressed on into the depths of the tomb, where an extraordinary
sight awaited them in a small chamber next to the stairwell.
"Soon we came
upon cases of porcelain funeral offerings, metal and alabaster
vessels, draperies and trinkets, until, reaching the turn in
the passage, a cluster of mummy cases came to view in such number
as to stagger me," continues Brugsch. "Collecting my senses,
I made the best examination of them I could by the light of
my torch and at once saw that they contained the mummies of
royal personages of both sexes; and yet that was not all. Plunging
on ahead of my guide, I came to see the chamber and there, standing
against the walls or lying on the floor, I found an even greater
number of mummy cases of stupendous size and weight. Their gold
coverings and their polished surfaces so plainly reflected my
own excited visage that it seemed as though I was looking into
the faces of my own ancestors".
The tomb held
in its protection some of the most powerful kings and queens
of the ancient world. Over the next 48 hours, the coffins were
hauled up the tomb shaft, logged and wrapped in sailcloth before
being raised on to the shoulders of a scripted workforce for
transportation to the Nile. Some of the coffins were so large
and heavy that it required a dozen more to lift them.
By June 15, the
Antiquities Service river boat, fully laden with its royal cargo,
set sail for Cairo. As the paddle steamer made its steady progress
northwards, the banks of the great river bristled with shadowy
figures in black, the women wailing and tearing their hair,
the men discharging their rifles into the air in a final farewell
to the kings and queens who had ruled over Egypt generations
ago.
The
years following 1881 were spent examining and identifying the
mummies. The coffins and wrappings had ink dockets on them which
gave the names of the kinds whose bodies lay within - Ahmose
I, Amenhotp I, Thutmose III, Seti I, Ramese II and Rameses III.
The discovery in
1898 of a second royal cache in the Valley of the Kings produced
10 more pharaohs but this still left Egyptologists with six missing
kings - Horemheb, Rameses I, Setnakht, Rameses VII, Rameses X
and Rameses XI. In the original royal cache a docket from one
coffin detailed the reburial there of Ramese I, Seti I and Rameses
II. Seti I and Rameses II had been identified among the mummies
- but where was Rameses I?.
The evidence points
to the likelihood that Ahmed Abd er-Rassul and his brothers
had found the royal cache a full decade before they had admitted
to discovering it and 20 years before handing it over to the
authorities. In one of their earliest clandestine visits to
the secret hiding place of the pharaohs, they had removed the
mummy of Rameses I and taken it to their home.
Soon after, they
sold the "artefact" to adventurer and explorer James Douglas
on his visit to Luxor in 1860. He transported King Rameses'
body to America and sold it to Colonel Sidney Barnett, son of
the Niagara Falls Daredevil Museum's founder, in 1861. There
the Great Pharaoh lay neglected and unidentified for 138 years
before making his journey to the Michael C. Carlos Museum.
It is hoped that
DNA tests will soon determine if the royal remains are closely
related to those of Seti I (Rameses I's son) and Rameses II
(his grandson). If these tests prove positive, then the mystery
of the Niagara Falls Mummy will at last be solved. If this is
the case, then maybe King Rameses should be allowed to make
one final journey back to the Land of the Pharaohs where he
belongs. There he can be reunited with the rest of his family
in their new resting place in the Mummy Room of the Cairo Museum.
