Considered the crown jewel of the museum, the Royal Mummies’ Hall is specially designed to display the mummies of the ancient Kings and Queens of Egypt. The design aims to give the visitor the feeling of strolling down the Valley of The Kings, where most of these mummies were originally resting. The hall includes 20 Royal mummies,18 Kings, and 2 Queens, from the 17th until the 20th dynasty. The most famous mummies are Hatshepsut (Maatkare), Thutmose III (Menkheperre), Seqenenre Taa II.
The discovery of the Royal Mummies of the New Kingdom was one of the greatest and most unexpected discoveries in the history of archaeology. On this particular occasion, the discovery did not involve the usual architectural and artistic masterpieces, but the sacred bodies of the builders of Egyptian civilization during the New Kingdom. These were the same builders that believed in life after death and devoted a large part of their wealth to defeating death.
In accordance with their beliefs, they preserved their bodies for the sake of their souls. They constructed their tombs within the cliff of the valley on the West Bank of the Nile, near their capital at Thebes, and equipped them with all the necessary objects for life after death. The tombs’ entrances were then blocked and the chambers were hidden in order to allow the mummies to be preserved for eternity and carry out their role as a home for the soul in the Afterlife.
The Deir el-Bahari cache
In this cache, they had found forty royal mummies, among them …the most famous kings of the New Kingdom. Found in this cache was the mummy of the famous Pharaoh Seqenenre-Taa II, ruler of the 17th Dynasty (Second Intermediate Period) and who died in a battle defending his country against the Hyksos. The cache also contained the bodies of Ahmose I (the liberator of Egypt), Amenhotep I, Thutmose I, Thutmose II, Thutmose III, the “Napoleon of the East”; Seti I, Ramesses II, the builder of great monuments such as Abu Simbel; Ramesses III, and Ramesses IX. These kings ruled during the 17th to 21st Dynasties.
Queens also were found among them, including Ahmose Nefertari (wife of Ahmose I), Sitkamose, Meryetamon, Nodjmet, Maatkare, and Isiemkheb of the Eighteenth through the Twenty-First Dynasties.
The Tomb of King Amenhotep II cache (Tomb No.35)
Another important cache was to be discovered, seventeen years after the cache at Deir el-Bahari. In 1898, Victor Loret, a French Egyptologist, discovered the tomb of King Amenhotep II in the Valley of the Kings. It had another treasure of royal mummies. Amenhotep II, a King of the Eighteenth Dynasty, was found resting in his sarcophagus, and with him lay the famous bow. In another chamber, which had been selected by priests of the Twenty-First Dynasty as a hiding place, he found thirteen mummies including nine kings. Among them were Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Merenptah, Seti II and Siptah of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and Ramesses IV, V, and VI of the Twentieth Dynasty.
