The first in the history of Egypt ... a procession touring Cairo to transport 22 pharaonic mummies

The streets of Cairo decorate today, Saturday, to receive an unprecedented, majestic procession that transports 22 mummies of the kings and queens of ancient Egypt under the name of "Procession of Royal Mummies" from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, where they stayed for more than a century, to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in the historic Fustat region, south of Cairo.

The mummies of 18 kings and 4 queens from the ages of the seventeenth to twentieth Pharaonic families will be transported on carriages decorated in the Pharaonic style bearing their names, respectively, according to the chronological order of their rule, as of six o'clock in the evening Cairo time (16:00 GMT).

The 7-kilometer journey takes about 40 minutes, under heavy security guard, until it reaches the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, which is one of the most important projects carried out in cooperation between the Egyptian government and UNESCO, and includes various collections of Egyptian civilization from prehistoric times to our time. the present.

The museum is scheduled to open its doors to the public on Sunday, but the public will not be able to see the mummies until the 18th of this month, after completing their preparation for display.

The royal procession is led by the Pharaonic King Sqnen Ra Taa, one of the kings of the seventeenth dynasty in the sixteenth century BC, and he was the ruler of Thebes (Luxor now) and began the liberation war against the Hyksos.

The procession also includes some of the Pharaohs kings and queens widely known to the masses of Egyptians, such as King Ramses II, the most famous king of the modern state (from the Twentieth Dynasty) who ruled Egypt in the twelfth century BC for about 67 years (from 1279 to 1213 BC), Their mummies were found in the Deir el-Bahri cache, west of Luxor, in 1881.

The show will also include the mummies of Seti I and Ahmose-Nefertari, as well as Queen Hatshepsut, one of the most famous female figures in ancient Egyptian history, who declared herself Queen of the country in the Eighteenth Dynasty.

The mummy of Queen Hatshepsut was found in 1903 in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, and the historical mummies date back to the era of the Pharaonic families (about 1580 BC - 1085 BC).

New headquarters

Egyptian television broadcasts these ceremonies with live music performances.

The 22 mummies have not left the Egyptian Museum, located in Tahrir Square in central Cairo, since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Since the 1950s, they have been displayed next to each other in a small room, without historical explanation or explanation.

On Saturday, the mummies will be placed in packages containing nitrogen, in conditions similar to those in the display boxes, and the vehicles that carry them will be equipped with shock-absorbing mechanisms.

At its new headquarters in the Museum of Civilization, the mummies will be displayed in more modern boxes “for better temperature and humidity control compared to the old museum,” says Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo who specializes in mummification, explains to AFP.

The mummies will be presented individually next to their coffins, in a picture that simulates the underground tombs of the Pharaonic kings, with a biography of each mummy and x-rays of some of them.

"The mummies will be presented for the first time in a beautiful way, for educational purposes and not for excitement," Egyptian Egyptologist Zahi Hawass told AFP.

According to him, the terrifying mummies body was a reason in the past for few visits, and he says, "I will never forget when I took (Princess) Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II's sister, to the museum ... She closed her eyes and ran away."

"The Curse of the Pharaohs"

The Grand Egyptian Museum will house Pharaonic collections from the Tahrir Museum in central Cairo, including the famous treasure of the Pharaonic King Tutankhamun.

The tomb of Tutankhamun (fourteenth century BC) was discovered in 1922. It contained the mummy of the young king and many things made of gold, alabaster and ivory.

Hawass comments on choosing the Museum of Civilization to display mummies instead of the grand museum, saying, "The large museum has King Tutankhamun, the star, and if you do not put the mummies in the Museum of Civilization, no one will go (to him)."

The royal procession is causing a sensation on social media, as many users of these platforms have linked the tragic disasters that occurred in Egypt over the past week with the tag "# Curse of the Pharaohs" resulting from the transfer of mummies.

In one week, Egypt witnessed the stranding of a giant ship that stopped navigation in the course of the Suez Canal for a period of 6 days, and a collision of two trains that left dozens dead and wounded in Sohag in the south of the country, in addition to the killing of at least 25 people in the collapse of an apartment building in eastern Cairo.

The term "Curse of the Pharaohs" appeared in the press in the 1920s, after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, when members of the archaeological team died in mysterious circumstances.