Impressive pharaonic parade: mummies of kings and …

An unprecedented parade of 22 mummies of kings and queens of the Ancient egypt, between which Ramses II and Hatshepsut are listed, walked the streets of Cairo to go to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC), which will be the new home of the pharaohs.

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

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

The organizers explained that, in chronological order, Pharaoh Seqenenre Tâa (16th century BC) led the way, which was later 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 reported.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, who was present at the parade, said in a statement that the transfer of the mummies is “the culmination of a long effort to better preserve and display them”.

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

A century in one place

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

The mummies each traveled inside a special tank that bore the ruler’s name and fitted with shock absorption mechanisms, in an envelope containing nitrogen to preserve them.

At the NMEC, they will be exhibited in more modern drawers “for better temperature and humidity control than in the old museum”, explains Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, a 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 by members of the team of archaeologists.