A large parade of royal mummies roamed the streets of Cairo to reach their new home. “Diario The Capital of Mar del Plata

An unprecedented parade of 22 mummies of kings and queens of ancient Egypt, including Ramses II and Hatshepsut, walked the streets of Cairo last night to reach the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC), which will be the new home of the pharaohs, informed the museum authorities.

The approximately seven-kilometer journey from the Cairo Museum, where the mummies have rested for over a century, and the NMEC lasted approximately 40 minutes, aboard pharaonic style tanks and under strict police surveillance.

The Plaza Tahrir, where the historical museum is located and which was recently decorated with an ancient obelisk and four goat-headed sphinxes, remained closed “to vehicles and pedestrians” to make way for the procession.

“The whole world will see it. They are 40 important minutes in the life of the city of Cairo“Said the famous Egyptian archaeologist to the AFP news agency Zahi hawass.

As access to the parade was limited for security reasons, Egyptians were able to watch it on TV or online.

Photo: EFE / EPA / KHALED ELFIQI

The organizers explained that, in chronological order, Pharaoh Seqenenre Tâa (16th century BC) led the way, which was closed by Ramses IX (12th century BC).

The event also featured musical performances by various Egyptian artists.

The NMEC, which occupies a large building south of Cairo, partially opened in 2017, will open on April 4, but the mummies will not be on display to the public until April 18, as officially announced.

The Director-General of Unesco, Audrey Azoulay, who will be present at the parade, said in a statement that the transfer of the mummies is “the culmination of a long work to better preserve and display them”.

“Before our eyes scrolls the history of Egyptian civilization”said the head of the UN organization, which participated in the creation of the NMEC.

Discovered near Luxor (south) from 1881, most of the 22 mummies had not left Tahrir Square since the turn of the 20th century.

The mummies each traveled inside a special tank bearing the ruler’s name and equipped with damping mechanisms, in an envelope containing nitrogen to preserve them.

Photo: EFE / EPA / Mohamed Hossam

At the NMEC, they will be displayed in more modern drawers “for better temperature and humidity control than in the old museum,” he told AFP. Salima Ikram |, Professor of Egyptology at the American University of Cairo, specialist in mummification.

The parade of mummies had a lot of impact on social networks, and under the hashtag in Arabic # maldición_de_faraones, many Internet users associated the recent disasters in Egypt with a “curse” that would have been caused by this displacement.

Within a week, Egypt suffered the blockade of the Suez Canal by a container ship, a train crash that killed 18 people in Sohag (south) and a building collapse in Cairo that killed at least 25 people.

The “curse of the pharaoh” had already been mentioned in the 20s of the last century after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, followed by the deaths considered mysterious of the members of the team of archaeologists.