Marie Gicquel, edited by Laura Laplaud 08h55, 07 April 2023
After the record-breaking exhibition "Tutankhamun" in 2019, the pharaohs return to the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris for a new exhibition that already promises to be the event of the year. "Ramses II & the gold of the Pharaohs" opens its doors this Friday at 10 am.The exhibition "Ramses II & the gold of the Pharaohs" opens its doors this Friday at 10 am at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris. Ramses II, considered the greatest pharaoh of Egypt, is honored with exceptional loans that will only come in France, since the France had saved the mummy of Ramses II from a fungus nearly 50 years ago.
Exceptional pieces from Egypt
After the gold funerary masks, the mummies of cats, lion cubs and even a sarcophagus of beetles, never seen before, here is the jewel of this exhibition: the coffin of Ramses II in cedar wood, in an incredible state of preservation. "The cedar of Lebanon is really a wood that is preserved naturally because it is rot-proof. It means that insects do not attack it," explains Egyptologist Bénédicte Lhoyer. "And besides, in Egypt you don't have moisture, so the preservation is absolutely perfect."
>>
Ramses II, Nefertiti, the queens of Egypt facing the pharaohs: listen to the podcast Au Coeur de l'Histoire on all your platforms to discover unpublished stories and interviews.
The pharaoh's mummy did not make the trip
This setting protected for more than 3,000 years the mummy of Ramses II, which remained in Cairo. "It shows on the mummy, we see the extreme care given to the hair, the nails that are done and also the shaving, he shaved three days before dying, we see the small hairs of the little beard that grow back," she adds.
A precise video of this mummy closes the exhibition with a very Hollywood scenography that corresponds well to this king revered as a god. The legacy of his sumptuous reign for 67 years spans 2,000 m2. An exhibition where we take full eyes.