Latest / Ramses the Great: Egypt's Most Powerful Pharaoh — Fexingo History / Ramses the Great's Mummy: The Secret of His Survival
Transcript
- Lucas: We've talked about Ramses's monuments, his battles, his diplomacy — but there's one thing that actually survived all of it, and that's Ramses himself. Or rather, his mummy. Luna: Wait, we still have Ramses the Great's actual body? Lucas: We do. It was discovered in 1881 in a hidden royal cache at Deir el-Bahari, near the Valley of the Kings. By that point, he'd been dead for over 3,000 years. And if today's episode was useful for you in understanding what it took to preserve that body — the resins, the rituals, the sheer care — well, the way we keep this show ad-free is listener support. You can buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Just a warm acknowledgment that this kind of deep dive matters to you. Luna: Absolutely. And I mean, I'd love to hear how they even kept him in one piece for that long. Lucas: Right. So mummification in Ramses's time — the Nineteenth Dynasty — was at its peak. The process took seventy days. They removed the internal organs — except the heart — and dried the body with natron, a natural salt. Then they packed it with resin-soaked linen, wrapped it in hundreds of meters of bandages, and placed amulets between the layers for protection. For Ramses, they would have used the finest materials: Libyan linen, precious oils, and gold foil. Luna: Seventy days — that's a long time to keep a body from decaying. Lucas: It is, and the natron did most of the work. But the real key was the resin. They poured molten resin over the bandages to seal everything — it created a kind of waterproof shell. And they did something interesting with the mouth: they performed the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, so the mummy could eat and speak in the afterlife. For Ramses, they even placed a small gold plate over his mouth, inscribed with spells. Luna: So his mummy was almost like a statue of himself, but made of flesh and linen. Lucas: Exactly. The Egyptians believed the body had to be preserved for the ba — the spirit — to reunite with it each night. If the body decayed, you lost your afterlife. So Ramses's mummy was stored in a series of nesting coffins, then placed in a stone sarcophagus in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. But his tomb, KV7, was robbed in antiquity. So the priests moved him — along with dozens of other royal mummies — to a secret cache at Deir el-Bahari. Luna: They actually moved him? Like, centuries later? Lucas: Yes, during the Twenty-first Dynasty, around 1000 BCE. The priests rewrapped many of the mummies and labeled their coffins with the date of reburial. Ramses's coffin still has that inscription. It was a massive operation — they moved pharaohs like Ahmose, Amenhotep I, Thutmose III, and Ramses himself to that hidden tomb. And it worked — the cache wasn't discovered until 1881, when the Egyptian Antiquities Service, led by Gaston Maspero, finally tracked it down after years of rumors about a family selling antiquities on the black market. Luna: So Maspero was the one who actually found him? Lucas: He was the director. The actual discovery was made by local workers, guided by a man named Ahmed Abd el-Rassul, who had known about the cache for years but kept it secret to sell items. When Maspero's team entered the tomb, they found forty mummies — including Ramses the Great. And Ramses was in remarkable condition. His hair was still intact — it had been dyed with henna, probably in his old age. His fingernails were still preserved. You could see his aquiline nose, his strong jaw. Luna: They could see his face? That's incredible. Lucas: It is. And they didn't just look — they unwrapped him. In 1886, Maspero himself supervised the unwrapping. It was a public event, almost a spectacle. They cut through the bandages layer by layer, and what they found was a body that had been so thoroughly embalmed that even the skin was supple. Maspero noted that the arms were crossed over the chest in the Osirian pose — typical for pharaohs. And they found amulets, jewelry, and a small scarab placed over the incision where the embalmers had removed the organs. Luna: Wait — they cut the bandages? That's so destructive. Lucas: It was standard practice at the time, unfortunately. They didn't have the conservation techniques we have today. But they did learn a lot. For example, they found that Ramses had been circumcised — which was common for Egyptians, but they also found evidence that he had suffered from arthritis in his hips and probably had a bad back. Later, in the 1970s, a CT scan revealed more: he had a severe dental abscess that likely caused a blood infection — probably what killed him. Luna: So he died of an infected tooth? That seems so mundane for someone so powerful. Lucas: It does. But it's also a reminder that even pharaohs were human. The abscess was so bad it had eaten into his jawbone. And the CT scan also showed that he had been over six feet tall — very tall for the time — and that his arteries had signs of atherosclerosis. So he had heart disease too. But the real drama came in 1974, when his mummy developed a fungal infection. The French offered to help, but the mummy needed a passport to travel to Paris. Luna: A passport? For a mummy? Lucas: Yes — the Egyptian government issued him a passport. Under occupation, it listed him as 'Ramses II, King of Egypt.' And he flew first class, I believe. In Paris, they treated the infection with gamma radiation and then put him on display for a while. The whole thing was a huge media event. Luna: I have to ask — did his passport have a photo? Lucas: It did — a photo of his mummified face, wrapped in linen. So he's probably the only person in history whose passport photo shows them dead. Anyway, after the treatment, he was returned to Cairo, where he now resides in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, in a climate-controlled case. Visitors can see him, and his face is visible — though it's darkened by the resins used in embalming. Luna: So we can literally look at the face of Ramses the Great. After 3,200 years. Lucas: We can. And it's a powerful thing. You're looking at the man who built Abu Simbel, who fought at Kadesh, who signed the first peace treaty — and he's right there. There's a poem inscribed on his coffin, by the way. It's a plea to the gods to protect him in the afterlife. It says, 'O you who are in the necropolis, hear me! I am Horus, the avenger of his father.' He was still playing the role of the divine king, even in death. Luna: That's moving. It makes you think about what we leave behind. Lucas: Exactly. And his mummy is a testament to both the skill of his embalmers and the dedication of the priests who hid him. Without them, he would have been lost to looters. Instead, we have this direct link to the past. And we keep learning more — in 2022, a new CT scan was done to prepare for a museum display, and it revealed details about his embalming techniques that we hadn't seen before. For instance, they found that his brain had been removed through his nose, which was standard, but they also found that his heart was still in place — and it was abnormally large. That might have contributed to his health problems. Luna: So even after all these years, his body is still teaching us. Lucas: Absolutely. And it reminds us that the ancient Egyptians weren't just building monuments — they were building a civilization that understood preservation in a way we're still trying to match. Their goal was eternity, and in a sense, they achieved it. Ramses's body has outlasted his empire, his language, even his religion. And every time someone looks at him, they're participating in that ancient desire to be remembered. Luna: I think that's why I find mummies so fascinating — they're not just remains, they're messages from the past. Lucas: They are. And Ramses's message is loud and clear: he wasn't just a king, he was a god — or at least, he wanted to be seen as one. And through his mummy, he's still commanding attention, thousands of years later.