No comments Death and Burial
In Year 67 (1212 BC) Ramses II, perhaps 92 years of age, was called to the west to join the gods. His tomb had long been prepared in the Valley of the Kings (KV 7), and was as large, if not larger in area, than that of his father Seti I, although not so well decorated. Now it is much damaged and virtually inaccessible. The splendour of the contents of the tomb must have been incredible, if only by comparison with that of the tomb of the short-lived Tutankhamun. Few items, however, survive that can be associated with the burial: a wooden statuette of the king (British Museum), four pseudo–canopic jars (Louvre), the upper half of a hollow-cast, flattened bronze ushabti (Berlin), and two large wooden ushabtis (Brooklyn and British Museum).
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| Ramses II Mummy |
The mummy of Ramses was found in the great cache of royal mummies at Deir el–Bahari in 1881 (DB 320). A docket written in hieratic on the coffin in which it lay recorded that the body was moved in Year 15 (c. 1054 BC) of Smendes from its previous resting place to the tomb of his father, Seti I, whence it was taken to its last secret hiding place. In 1976 the mummy was flown to Paris where a great Ramses II exhibition was staged. Deterioration had been noticed on the body and the journey was also for Ramses to receive the best conservation treatment available. The mummy was examined by xeroradiography which revealed that Ramesses‘ distinctly aquiline nose had retained its shape because the ancient embalmers had packed it full of peppercorns (other noses on mummies tend to be flattened by the bandaging around them). As befitted visiting royalty, although he had been dead for nearly 3200 years, Ramses was greeted at the Paris airport by a full Presidential Guard of Honour.
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