Ramses I returns to Egypt
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By Ryad Abou Awad -CAIRO
Egypt celebrated the return of a 3,000-year-old mummy believed to be that of Ramses I, after more than 140 years in exile spent in Canada and the United States.
The mummy was temporarily put on display at the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo after arriving here Saturday from the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Atlanta's Emory University in Georgia, which acquired the mummy three years ago.
A band played triumphant military tunes as the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, opened a case containing the mummy in a ceremony at the museum.
Hundreds of people, including tourists, clapped as schoolchildren in pharaonic costumes sang a tune to the glory of Egyptian history.
"We are one hundred percent sure that the mummy before us is a royal mummy, because of the way it was embalmed" and has his arms folded across the chest, Hawass said.
"We are not sure that it is Ramses I," he said. "But what makes us think it is, is that his face looks like Sethi I, his son."
Hawass escorted the mummy back from Atlanta to Egypt after the Carlos Museum offered to transfer ownership back to Cairo.
Three years ago, the mummy was in a small museum in Niagara Falls, New York. It became available when the museum closed.
The director of the Carlos Museum, Bonnie Speed, said her institution bought the mummy for two million dollars and gave it back to Egypt for free.
She said an examination by her museum indicated that the mummy was "95 percent" Ramses I.
Hawass rejected the possibility of carrying out DNA tests on the mummy because "its results are only 42 percent exact."
But Gaballah Ali Gaballah, Hawass's predecessor at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said "with modern methods, especially using DNA, it (his identity) can be investigated very very easily."
Gaballah, who started negotiations for the return of Ramses I, hailed the return of the mummy as reinforcing the principle that Egypt's ancient treasures be returned.
Hawass, and Gaballah before him, has been on an international mission to recover artifacts that were taken out of Egypt over the past 200 years.
Questions have been raised as to whether Hawass wants to recover the renowned basalt Rosetta stone kept in the British Museum, and 3,300-year-old bust of legendary beauty Queen Nefertiti, housed in a Berlin museum.
Hawass last month denied he wanted to recover them for good, although he wanted them on loan for a few months.
Ramses I, founder of the 19th dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, is little known compared to his grandson, Ramses II, remembered for his military campaigns and his extensive building program, the remains of which are still conspicuous.
Ramses I reigned for little more than a year, between 1320 and 1318 BC. He planned and started to build the colonnaded hall of the Karnak temple at Thebes, the old pharaonic capital known today as Luxor, in Upper Egypt.
Hawass said the mummy will return to the temple where a special department is being set up for warring kings of the 18th and 19th dynasties.
In 1870, the Abd el-Rassul family discovered a tomb in Deir el-Bahri, near Luxor, containing 40 mummies, coffins, and other artifacts. Ramses I's coffin was found, but there was no sign of his mummy.
Ancient records from the tombs, diaries and letters from the mid-19th century, and scholarly conjecture suggest that the mummy was sold by the family to a physician from Canada named James Douglas in 1861.
Douglas acquired the royal mummy for the owner of a museum in Niagara Falls.
The museum changed hands, and crossed and re-crossed the Canadian border several times until the institution closed in 1999.
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Ramses I returns to Egypt
By Ryad Abou Awad -CAIRO
Egypt celebrated the return of a 3,000-year-old mummy believed to be that of Ramses I, after more than 140 years in exile spent in Canada and the United States.
The mummy (30/12/2003)
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