Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-01-19
THE G|zEH MUSEUM
Where Mummies of Rameses
andOth er Great Men Repose.
A GREAT COLLECTION
RESULTS OF SCIENTIFIC EXPLO-
RATION IN EGYPT.
Work Entrusted to a Frenchman
Named Marietta, Who Performed
His Task Faithfully.
A GREAT COLLECTION
BY WILLIAM e. CURTIS.

Special Correspondence of The Evening Star and
Chicago Record Herald.
CAIRO December 81, 1903.
I went out this morning TO cali upon Ra-
meses the Great who holds daily receptions
Sundays included) at the Gizeh Museum
and receives more visitors than the khedive
and Lord Cromer combined. He Is the old
gentleman who compelled the children OF
Israel to make bricks for his palaces and
Notifications and refused to furnish straw
to hold the clay together. They not only
had to hustle around and get the straw for
themselves. but he paid them nothing for
their labor and required every man to turn
in a certain number of bricks each night.
He now lies in great stone coffin hand
somely carved in the place of honor in what
is considered one of the most instructive
and valuable museums in the world. Around
him in various alcoves and corridors is ar
ranged the largest and most interesting col
lection of Egyptian antiquities and every
body who knows anything about such mat
tiers agrees that in point of arrangement and
classification this institution surpases every
thing in Europe and furnishes an excellent
model for other museums to copy.
Work of Marietta
There are something like ninety rooms in
which the results of scientific explorations
in Egypt since 1853 are displayed according
to chronological order so far as possible.
When Ismail came to the throne he issued
an edict placing young Frenchman named
Marietta in charge of the antiquities and
historical relics of Egypt and made regula-
tons to govern foreigners and native arch
biologists in their explorations and to re-
strain and punish the native vandais Who
were plundering the tombs. palaces and
temples Marietta was a genius and proved
to be exactly the man needed for such an
important service. He began work in 1880
and lived until 1881, and his body Is en-
tombed in a marble sarcophagus in the
courtyard of the museum which is monu-
ment to his patience, energy and ability.
There has been considerable discussion
among people of extreme notions of pro-
priety as to the taste of exposing the re-
mains of these resurrected monarchs to
the public gaze, of making a show of the
bodies of the dead and some critics go
far as to declare that representatives of
a cultured Christian race are setting bad
example to the unc.vlized by hunting up
the bones of ancient kings and exhibiting
them to satisfy the curiosity of tourists
Several visitors to the Gizeh Museum have
written protests and it is frequent sub
ject of discussion by those who write books
and magazine articles on Egypt. But bless
your soul. mummies of Egyptian kings and
queens and princes are scattered all over the
world; there is scarcely museum of i'm
portance without at least one, and for fifty
years the HeSH anu DOTeS OF Cleopatra.
that dark queen for whose smile a world
was bartered." have lain in a corridor of
the British Museum, where hundreds of
thousands of shameless people have looked
upon her features and passed along making
remarks concerning her personal appear
ance that would be considered very rude if
the lady were alive to resent them.
The Original Cleopatra.
I am sorry to be compelled to say. how
E,0yntn1psyiStS hat
the dried woman In the British Museum
is our Cleopatra. If we may speak in such
friendly term of lady whose manners
and morals were not quite what they should
have been. 1t is claimed that seven queens
of that name sat upon or shared the
Egyptian throne at one time or another
and that our Cleopatras body has never
been discovered because she was buried in
Alexandria and not in one of the big royal
mauSoleUms of the desert. Nevertheless
and Notwithstanding. we have the right to
stick to the original story and believe that
the lady in the British Museum labelled
Cleopatra is the same who made so much
trouble for the Roman kings until she
proves an alibi
But l started to talk of Rameses. who
vas better known Sesostris, the greatest
or all the Egyptian kings. according to his
own testimony, corroborared by many wit
nesses. He lies under theodome with Set
l. his father at the right, and Ramescs
XII. MS grandson. on the lett. Setl Meme
pista. his son. and the man who was final
~ compelled by Moses plaques to let Israel
go. is not here and the reason of his alb
sence is not explained. They found his tomb
some years ago, but it had been looted
centuries before, probably by the Persians
o. some of the many other foreign invaders
OF Egypt: but thirty-six other kings now
lying quietly around the great Sesostris
will answer present" from the GiZeh Mu-
scum when their names called on res
direction morning.
Bodies Well Preserved.
Their bodies are almost perfectly pre-
served. That of Seti l. who died more than
$500 years ago, is the most perfect of them
all and his lips actually wear a smile.
Rameses III has a rather cynical express
sion upon his face and his nose is as Ro-
man If he were Caesar instead of
Pharaoh. One of this party of sleeping
kings Sequen Rae by name, of the seven
teenth dynasty. who was killed while fight
ing 10 save his throne more than 300 years
ago. shows the scars of the wounds he re-
Ceived in battle. You can see where blow
from a battle ak or some warriors sword
split his left cheek and lower jaw; and
above the right eye is hole made by
lance that probably passed through the
skull to his brain and finished him. His
agony in death is portrayed by the lines
upon his face. and his tongue, half bitten
of protrudes from his teeth.
These CHASTITY and gruesome relics are
great attraction of course. and the emo
tions of even the least sentimental or I'M
aginatiye of travellers could not fail to be
moved by the sight of it upon meeting Pha-
raoh of the Bible face to face, and II you
are a newspaper reporter you Will be dis
appointed because you cannot interview
him about Moses and the Israelites and get
a straight story about the water swallow
ing his army in the Red sea.
Science of Undertaking.
The marvellous preservation of these
mummies. which have been lying for thou
sands of years under the sands of the desert
and can still be exhibited in public without
other than moral objections is due to a
science which modern undertakers might
perhaps revive If they were given OPP
portunity. According to .Diodorus, 1t cost
a talent of silver about 81 ,259) In those days
to mummify body In a first-class manner,
and Herodotus tells us how IL was done by
a special guild, who received their licenses
from the king. They preserved the dead in
three different ways, for three different
prices The first and most expensive
method was to remove the brain through
the nose by means of iron probes and hooks
and the "insides" through an incislon made
in the side with a sharp Ethiopian stone