Hall of the Royal Mummies in the Gizeh Museum
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 b...