Ramesses…

Ramesses The First's Visit To Niagara Falls

Few have traveled further, or longer.

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A lot of folks visit Niagara Falls, including me. I went in the mid-sixties. Little did I know that a distinguished Egyptian Pharaoh was there as well. Ramesses I arrived ahead of me and stayed longer. I enjoyed seeing the falls, the shops, and curiosity museums. Unfortunately, Ramesses never had opportunity to see any of that because he’d been dead and mummified for over 3000 years. Even so, he got around.

His tomb was broken into shortly after he was entombed around 1289 BC. The thieves took everything valuable. The mummy was left behind. Nonetheless, just to be safe, the priests moved his mummy several times before settling on a final tomb at Deir el Bahri around 890 BC. along with the mummified remains of his son, Seti I, his grandson, Ramesses II, and fifty-some other mummies related to royal families.

There he rested unmolested until 1817 AD when this tomb, too, was broken into by the infamous tomb raiding family of Abd el Rassul. They took all they could carry, including several mummies.

Also in1817, the famous tomb raider Giovanni Belzoni re-discovered Ramesses’ original tomb (RV16) in the Valley of the Kings. It was small and unimpressive by Pharaonic standards; one corridor leading to a small chamber with an empty red granite sarcophagus. hieroglyphs, with some errors, were painted rather than carved. It seemed hastily done. Whatever treasure might have been there had been robbed in ancient times.

The Abd el Rassul thieves sold their ill-gotten loot including the unidentified mummy of Ramesses I to a Luxor antiquities dealer, Mustapha Aga Ayat. The mummies along with other antiquities were later sold, in 1860, to a Canadian, Dr. James Douglas, who was on a buying trip for the Niagara Falls Museum. Douglas had no idea he was buying a royal mummy. Neither did the seller. Not content to let a mummy rest in peace, The Museum, and Ramesses I, moved from the Canadian side of the falls to the American side several times. I don’t know why.

I suppose the main thing is that the mummy of Ramesses I disappeared from history around 890 BC. His whereabouts unknown until he was identified in the twentieth century. Several people with knowledge of ancient Egypt speculated, even while he was at Niagara Falls, that the mummy might be royal.

The first of these was Meinhard Hoffman, who was certain enough of royal connections to have his attorney draw up an affidavit affirming his hunch, twenty years before being proven.

Another, Egyptologist, Gayle Gibson, noticed that facial structure and mummification was indictive of the Ramesses line.

Nothing conclusive was determined until 1999 when the Museum’s Egyptian collection was sold to the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University, Atlanta.

At Atlanta, the mysterious mummy was thoroughly examined with nearly the full panoply of modern forensic inquiry (DNA wasn’t recoverable), X-rays, CT scans, and chemical testing of the cloth and resin used to seal the body. Egyptologist Salima Ikram was on hand to provide historical perspective on such thing as the crossed hands on the chest, reserved for royal mummies, how the organs were removed, what should fill the chest cavity, and so on.

The verdict was unanimous – This was the mummy of Ramesses I.

So, with his various tombs desecrated and robbed over and over, his nameless mummy shipped and stored hither and yon, never settled, that’s pretty shabby treatment for the founder of the 19th Dynasty, father of Seti I and grandfather of Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great - who was most likely the Pharaoh described in the biblical book of Exodus.

Mummies, royal and otherwise, received a lot of shabby treatment. Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad said he was told mummies were sometimes burned as fuel for the locomotive steam engines of the Trans-Sahara Railway. Google claims he was joking. I don’t know; where there’s smoke there’s often fire. Mummies were also ground-up into ersatz medical potions. Many were displayed as curiosities all around Europe and the Americas. I saw my first mummy during my childhood at a carnival in Wisconson.

While at the Niagara Falls Museum, Ramesses I, shared show-space with the skeleton of a humpback whale and a stuffed two-headed calf.

No respect.

Finally, after 3000 years on the road he was returned to his proper home or October 24, 2003 with full honors - and a marching band to greet him.

He rests now from his globe-trotting travels in permanent residence at his ”forever home" in Egypt's Luxor Museum.

By K. L. Shipley

Website: https://www.eclecticessays