Hall of the Royal Mummies in the Gizeh Museum
“Here the dead lift up their voice and tell the tale of their whole life.”—Renan. In this museum at Gizeh, once at Bûlâk, one may trace the history of Egypt back to the times of the ancient kings. The Hall of the Royal Mummies contains the valuable find at Derel-Bahri (Thebes), July 5, 1881, by M. Mariette-Bey. Cases of great size were found formed of countless layers of linen cloth tightly pressed and glued together, and then covered with a thin coating of stucco. This mass of linen is fully as hard as wood, and is adorned with painted and incised ornaments and inscriptions. The principal representatives found either as mummies, or represented by their mummy cases, include a king and queen of the seventeenth dynasty, five kings and four queens of the eighteenth dynasty, and three successive kings of the nineteenth dynasty, namely: Rameses the Great, his father and his grandfather. The twentieth dynasty is not represented, but belonging to the twenty-first dynasty of royal priests are four queens, two kings and princes and a princess. All the royal mummies, twenty-nine in number, are now lying in state in the Gizeh Museum, “arranged side by side, a solemn assembly of kings, queens, royal priests, princes, princesses and nobles of the people.” Among the group are the mummied remains of the greatest royal builders, the most renowned warriors and the mightiest monarchs of ancient Egypt. They speak to us of the military glory and the architectural splendor of that marvelous country of thirty-five centuries ago.
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