He majestic coffin in cedar wood from Lebanon in which the pharaoh ramses ii has traveled exceptionally since Cairo to Paris to illuminate a large exhibition around this emblematic figure that built the temples of Abu Simbel. The pharaoh who reigned the longest (66 years, from 1279 BC-1213 BC) and the one who lived the longest (died at 91) was also the most respected and adulated pharaoh in Ancient Egypt for his conquests and for the impressive constructions what he left
His fascinating legacy is evident in the exhibition ‘Ramesses and the gold of the pharaohs’ that has been organized in the great nave of the Villette from Friday April 7 to September 6. That same space in the northeast of Paris was the one that received in 2019 the sample of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (the most viewed in the history of Paris with 1.3 million tickets). That of Ramses will have 180 objects related to the monarch. The most emblematic and valuable of them, his coffin.
“It measures more than two meters and housed the king’s mummy, which was quite considerable in height for the time, 1.71 meters“, told EFE Bénédicte Lhoyer, French Egyptologist and scientific advisor of the exhibition.
The coffin is older than Ramses II himself
The coffin is “even older” than Ramses II himselfLhoyer clarified: The original tomb had been looted shortly after his burial and replaced by one from the royal inventory, in which Pharaoh rested for 2,900 years until it was found by a family of Egyptian looters in the Valley of the Kings at the end of the 19th century. That’s why the face carved on the coffin does not correspond to that of Ramses II, but to one of the sovereigns of the previous dynasty, the eighteenth number.
This majestic coffin rarely leaves the Cairo museum. The first time he did it was precisely for an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris, in 1976, in a gesture of recognition by the Egyptian government towards France for having treated the mummy of Ramses from a critical fungus plague. The coffin of Ramses II is “a very important work in the history of humanity, extremely fragile”Lhoyer noted.
With coffins made of an organic material such as wood, it is necessary to be extremely careful and measure “every second” the degree of humidity or the difference in temperature to prevent it from degrading, he added. ‘Ramesses and the Pharaohs’ Gold’ also features several statues, weapons, necklaces, jewelery and other objects that tell the legend of the man known as the “great monarch”, some of them never seen outside of Egypt.
In its preview this monday, the French Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, and the Egyptian ambassador in Paris, Alaa Youssef, were present. Speaking to reporters, Abdul Malak noted that, with this exhibition, they are “3,000 years of history” those who arrive “intact” in France. “This exhibition gives the impression of transporting us to that time (Egyptian civilization). It is extraordinary,” he said.
Source: Lasexta
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