NOVA | Transcripts | The Mummy Who Would Be King (2024)

PBS Airdate: January 3, 2006
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NARRATOR: To the untrained eye, this might look like any otherEgyptian mummy, but not to the experts.

AIDAN DODSON (University of Bristol): My first reaction, when Isaw this mummy, was, "Oh, my god, it's a pharaoh!"

PETER LACOVARA (Michael C. Carlos Museum): He looked impressive.I mean, you could see why people had suggested he was one of the missing royalmummies.

NARRATOR: There's a growing consensus this is the long lostmummy of a great king. As science probes the mystery of his identity, the taleof his life after death is unfolding.

He had arranged to spend eternity in the sanctuary of his tomb, but hetraveled far, to strange lands beyond the boundaries of the world he knew. Heexpected to enjoy an afterlife in the company of the gods. Instead, he wasexiled for ages in a cabinet of curiosities, surrounded by monsters. Hebelieved the gods would judge him by weighing his heart. He never could havedreamed every inch of his body would be scanned and digitized to answerone question: "Who was he?"

Researchers are closing in on the name of a pharaoh, but the final word isnot yet in.

ZAHI HAWASS (Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt): I thoughtthat this is really speculation. How a king will appear suddenly like this. Howwill we know that this mummy of a king left Egypt and no one knows anythingabout it?

NARRATOR: This man has begun to share his secrets. Will weever grant him eternal peace? The Mummy Who Would Be King, right now, onNOVA.

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NARRATOR: On the campus of Emory University, in Atlanta, theMichael C. Carlos Museum celebrates a royal visitor. It's a gala co*cktail partywith a twist: the guest of honor has been dead a few thousand years.

When the museum acquired this mummy four years ago, no one knew who he was.Since then, scholars and scientists have reached a startling conclusion: thisis the long lost mummy of a great pharaoh. The museum discovered him in themost unlikely place on Earth.

Niagara Falls has always attracted crowds: novelty seekers, nature lovers,just plain lovers. The relentless flow of tourists made this an ideal spot forone of Canada's first museums. Founded in 1827, the Niagara Falls Museum wasstate of the art for its day, designed to educate and entertain in equalmeasure. It served up a microcosm of all the wonders of the world to a publichungry for distant horizons. It had something for everyone. Visiting scholarspraised its vast collections of specimens; children were enthralled by itsassorted "freaks of nature."

BILL JAMIESON (Ethnographic Art Collector and Dealer): Thesecabinets of curiosities, full of all this wacky stuff, are basically the originof museums. And, sadly enough, I think some of the academics today, and expertsin this and that, forget that this is where it came from. In my view, museumswere even more entertaining back then. They really were set up to romance theimagination.

NARRATOR: In the mid-19th century, little could match theromance of Egypt, and the Niagara Falls Museum decided to purchase somemummies. It was an age when such commodities were readily available.

GAYLE GIBSON (Royal Ontario Museum): What you had in Egypt inthose days was poor people who made their living taking tourists around. So, ifa European tourist said, "I'd really like to take a coffin home," and you knewthat the price you'd get for that coffin might feed your family for the rest ofthe year, I certainly would have gone and got a mummy out of a tomb forthem.

NARRATOR: In truth, the land nearly overflowed with bodies.The ancient Egyptians had practiced mummification for 3,000 years, compelled bythe conviction that the body had to last forever.

PETER LACOVARA: The Egyptians believed that, in order for your spirit tohave continued existence, it needed the body as a home base on Earth, and sothat was the important part of keeping the tomb closed and keeping the mummyintact in the tomb.

NARRATOR: Over the centuries, mummification techniques evolvedand different styles emerged, but the goal remained the same: to prevent thedecay of the body. Sometimes the brain and internal organs were removed. Often,the body was dried out with natural salts. Linen wrappings preserved a lifelikesilhouette. Resin, the sap from pine and fir trees, sealed the body and killedbacteria.

The ancient embalmers did excellent work. Still, it's a wonder any mummiesare left at all. Europeans imported them by the boatload—in the MiddleAges and beyond—to pulverize into potions to treat everything fromheadaches to impotence. Later, countless mummies were ruined at fashionable"unwrapping parties." The lucky ones ended up in museums where Egyptology wastaken seriously.

To obtain its mummies, the Niagara Falls Museum enlisted the services ofDr. James Douglas. A physician from Quebec, Douglas was obsessed with Egypt andsailed the Nile most winters. He had bought mummies for himself, which hedisplayed on his front porch back home. Around 1860, Douglas secured thepurchase of several coffins and mummies, and arranged shipment to the NiagaraFalls Museum. The deal was strictly aboveboard.

SALIMA IKRAM (American University in Cairo): In the 19th century,and into, in fact, the 20th century, it was legal to purchasegovernment-approved antiquities from Egypt. So, in fact, this mummy is not anillegal purchase at all and never was.

NARRATOR: The mummy was headed west, where the ancientEgyptians believed the soul traveled after death. The journey to the next lifeis described in their sacred funerary text, the Book of the Dead,"Westward, westward to the Land of the Just. I am a Spirit-body. I am aSpirit-soul..."

When Douglas's shipment arrived in the "Honeymoon Capital of the World,"the Niagara Falls Museum had an instant hit. People flocked to see the mummiesin their painted coffins, especially the beautifully wrapped GeneralOssipumphneferu, even though his name and rank were entirely fabricated.

No one thought twice about the unwrapped mummy with crossed arms.

GAYLE GIBSON:The study of mummies is really pretty new. Nobody hadunwrapped a royal mummy until the 18...until the1890s, and so nobody knew whatto expect. Nobody knew how a royal mummy would look different from another kindof mummy.

NARRATOR: The mummy was seen by thousands of visitors whosigned the museum guest book. Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and P. T.Barnum dropped by. The museum changed locations five times. The world went towar twice. For a century, the mummy lay exposed, sharing the limelight with areal crowd-pleaser, the museum's whale skeleton.

All sorts of people gazed upon the mummy, just not the right people.

SALIMA IKRAM:Few Egyptologists seem to have honeymoons, so we don'twind up in Niagara Falls. And I think it had just not really been noticed bymost people for a long time, because no one really went there.

AIDAN DODSON:Egyptologists all have their own little specialties, andunless you were somebody who knows your mummies, you probably wouldn't even,wouldn't even think anything odd about it—as well as the unbelievablething that a pharaoh could be found in, effectively, a freak show.

NARRATOR: For a century, the mummy got no respect. And thensomeone finally gave him a second glance. In 1966, a German engineer on abusiness trip found himself with time to kill on a Saturday afternoon.

MEINHARD HOFFMANN (Systems Analyst, retired): We took a walkaround Niagara Falls, and we stopped by the Niagara Falls Museum which claimedto have the best prepared mummies in the world.

NARRATOR: Inside, Meinhard Hoffmann was drawn to a mummy intattered wrappings. Its name, Septhnestp, was probably made up, but the wife ofAmenhotep the Fourth? That would be Queen Nefertiti, whose famous bust residesin a museum in Berlin and whose mummy has never been found.

MEINHARD HOFFMANN: The Germans have a certain affinity for Nefertiti, sothat's really how I started wondering. Was it possible that a queen, mummifiedby the ancient Egyptians, could end up in a cabinet of curiosities at NiagaraFalls?

NARRATOR: For a decade, Hoffmann hit the books for clues toNefertiti's fate. Then, in 1976, he found an article suggesting Egyptian queenswere mummified with the left arm crossed over the chest.

That sent him to his slides of the Museum. The mummy named Septhnestp hadstraight arms. But there --the unwrapped mummy draped in a shroud... Hoffmanncould see its left hand. Clearly, its left arm was crossed over itschest.

Next, Hoffmann compared a replica of the Nefertiti bust to that mummy'sprofile.

MEINHARD HOFFMANN: The similarity was so impressive, it could only bethat face. This had to be Nefertiti.

NARRATOR: Hoffmann bolstered his case with a computer and, in1985, convinced a television producer he was onto something big.

GÜNTER ALT (Television Producer): Of course, we figured thatif he was right about what he was saying—and I was convinced hewas—then this was a world sensation, and we wanted a contract with him.We wanted him to do this with Germany's Channel Two, to be our man, perhapswrite a book.

NARRATOR: But first, Günter Alt would make a TV show. Hetook Hoffmann back to the Niagara Falls Museum, with Egyptologist ArneEggebrecht. His first move was to unveil the mummy, revealing two crossed armsand the unmistakable anatomy of a man.

In a café next door, Hoffmann awaited Eggebrecht's expertopinion.

ARNE EGGEBRECHT (Egyptologist/Clip from 1985 film): Well, I think wehave a very simple solution.

MEINHARD HOFFMANN (Clip from 1985 film): Yes.

ARNE EGGEBRECHT: We saw her naked; she is a man.

MEINHARD HOFFMANN (Clip from 1985 film): Ah, yes, that's veryinteresting.

GÜNTER ALT:He didn't faint or scream. He immediately said, "Thenit must be a pharaoh." Immediately!

NARRATOR: No, it wasn't a queen, but Hoffmann knew it justmight be a king, because of those arms, crossed high over the chest.

Mummies with crossed arms are common in just two eras of Egyptian history.Around 1500 B.C., during the New Kingdom, crossed arms were a sign of kingship,reserved strictly for the mummies of the pharaohs. Crossed arms also show uparound 2,000 years ago, when Egypt was conquered and ruled by Rome and commonpeople were embalmed in this position.

Was the mummy a common man from the Roman Era, or an ancient king?Radiologist Wolfgang Pahl was sent to find out.

WOLFGANG PAHL (University of Tübingen): I was the onlyperson in Germany who was active in the area of mummy research. On this basis,I was contacted to provide my expert opinion on the mummy in Canada.

NARRATOR: Pahl took hundreds of X-rays for clues to themummy's origins. His conclusion would rest on these masses in the chest. Whatwere they?

During the New Kingdom, embalmers removed the internal organs, and packedthe chest cavity with linen or other materials, to preserve its shape. In laterperiods, embalmers often wrapped the internal organs in linen, and placed theseorgan packets back in the body.

Wolfgang Pahl would deliver a clear interpretation of the X-ray to producerGünter Alt.

WOLFGANG PAHL: With absolute certainty, I can say that these are twoorgan packets. We can therefore make the unequivocal statement that theso-called Nefertiti mummy is not a royal mummy and is not a king's mummyof the New Kingdom.

GÜNTER ALT:Clearly, if the expert, with all his studies and allhis knowledge of 5,000 or so mummies, if he says it is not, then it is not.

NARRATOR: German television pulled its funding. Pahl's reportwas never published. It had been an outrageous long shot, the idea that NiagaraFalls might be home to a pharaoh, much less one from the New Kingdom.

Some of Egypt's greatest pharaohs ruled during the New Kingdom. It was agolden age that began around 3,500 years ago, and lasted five centuries. Thearts flourished, shining monuments arose, Egypt became one of the most powerfulnations on Earth.

The pharaohs of the New Kingdom were the first to carve their tombs intothe rock of the Valley of the Kings. Sealed in underground chambers stockedwith treasure, their mummies would be safe for eternity, or so they believed.

Excavations began in the Valley of the Kings over a century ago, but onlyone pharaoh was found undisturbed in his tomb. His dazzling grave goods andgold coffin were sent to Cairo, but the mummy of Tutankhamen still rests in hisburial chamber.

All the other royal tombs had been robbed in antiquity. It seemed themummies of the pharaohs had been lost in the plunder. But just outside theValley of the Kings, the hills were honeycombed with the tombs of noblemen. Andthough it was illegal, villagers mined the cliffs for treasure. The members ofone local family, the Abd el Rassuls, seemed to have uncanny luck. Sometime inthe mid-1800s, they nearly fell into the biggest find of their lives.

PETER LACOVARA: They told people they were looking for a missing goatand stumbled upon the tomb by accident, but in fact, I'm sure they wereprospecting for tombs to rob.

NARRATOR: At a place called Deir el Bahri, they spotted asteep shaft carved into the rock, so deep they would need ropes to investigate.They had discovered a royal tomb they would keep secret for years. Buteventually, royal grave goods appeared on the antiquities market. By 1881,rumors reached the authorities in Cairo.

PETER LACOVARA: They sent agents down to investigate and there was afalling out in the Abd el Rassul family, and eventually one of them squealed onthe others and brought the people from the Cairo Museum to see where the tombwas. And of course, when they went in there, they were shocked beyondbelief.

NARRATOR: The moment was recreated in an Egyptian featurefilm. The tomb was filled with coffins bearing the names of some of the mostimportant pharaohs of the New Kingdom: Seti I, Ramesses II, Tuthmosis III.Within the coffins were the long lost mummies of nine kings. Why were theyassembled here in an unmarked, unadorned tomb?

AIDAN DODSON:The royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings were plunderedduring the New Kingdom, and it got so bad that the priesthood of around 1000 orso B.C. decided to give up on trying to preserve the mummies in theirindividual tombs and instead move them to a couple of hiding places where theywere all concentrated together. There was nothing left on them to, to temptrobbers, and they could be watched.

NARRATOR: The authorities moved the royal mummies to Cairo.Years later a second cache was discovered, and today, the mummies of some 20New Kingdom pharaohs rest in the Egyptian Museum.

SALIMA IKRAM:You can read about the exploits of these pharaohs; you cango and look at their monuments. But we're very fortunate, because we canactually look at the pharaohs themselves.

NARRATOR: Majestic, even in death, is King Seti I, whoexpanded Egypt's empire in a series of military campaigns. His son, RamessesII, was unrivaled in Egyptian history. He earned the title Ramesses the Greatfor reigning 67 years and building more monuments than any other pharaoh. Hisson and successor was the pharaoh Merneptah. Tuthmosis IV lies with hisforebears, as does Ramesses V. But not all the royal mummies have beenrecovered.

The New Kingdom saw the rise of three dynasties and more than 30 pharaohs.About a dozen have yet to be found.

Was there a chance one of the missing kings had made his way to NiagaraFalls? The German scientists had ruled it out, but then the mummy caughtsomeone else's eye.

GAYLE GIBSON:I first went to the Niagara Falls Museum back in the1980s, when I started working on my M.A. in Egyptology, and became interestedin these four beautiful 21st Dynasty coffins down there. And so I went andstarted looking at the coffins very carefully and gradually got interested inthe inhabitants of the coffins.

NARRATOR: Soon, Gayle Gibson began to speculate about thesuperb preservation of this mummy...the position of his arms.

GAYLE GIBSON:The mummy was always a very interesting fellow to look at,but it never occurred to me that it was not just my own romantic imagination,thinking he was a king.

NARRATOR: But in 1991, Gibson had a reality check when sheinvited a visiting mummy expert to Niagara Falls for the day.

AIDAN DODSON: We went out to the museum, saw they got a really nicecollection of coffins and mummies and so on. Then my eyes fell on thisgentlemen lying...just exposed on a shelf in this glass case, and I'm afraid myimmediate thought was, "Oh, my god, it's a royal mummy."

Well, first of all, there was just this general feel about him, and the sheerquality of the mummification, clearly New Kingdom. But the key thing was thearms crossed at the breast, and that's not something you'd expect with a mummyof that kind of quality. Arms crossed at the breast are normally something youget in the Roman period where mummies aren't going to be that well preserved,normally. So, it was very much a case of, "All taken together," I was thinking,"this looks like a pharaoh."

GAYLE GIBSON:When Aidan took very seriously my suggestion that thismight really be a royal mummy, I was pretty impressed. If Aidan thinkssomething, it's probably so.

AIDAN DODSON:When I got back to U.K.,...this was something, reallyquite something, so I was talking to colleagues about it.

SALIMA IKRAM:Aidan called me, and I thought, "Okay, he's obsessed byroyalty, so he's seeing royals everywhere he goes."

AIDAN DODSON: And everybody was just sort of saying, "Well, it may looklike it. It's probably just a very, very nice Roman. It's not, it's just notone of the usual grotty Romans."

SALIMA IKRAM:And I thought, "Okay, you know, maybe he's had one gin toomany, or he's just seen too many museums, and he's having an excess ofEgyptological excitement."

NARRATOR: It was exciting, the thought that a missing pharaohmight be hiding in Niagara Falls. But how to prove it? To be a mummy of the NewKingdom, he would have to be over 3,000 years old. Unfortunately, radiocarbondating can be problematic when dealing with Egyptian mummies because ofcontamination.

GAYLE GIBSON:The Niagara Falls mummies left Egypt back in the 1860s,then they were shipped across the ocean, landed in Montreal, came up the St.Lawrence Seaway into Toronto, at last. All the way along, people are handlingthem, people are breathing on them, people are smoking in their faces, openingthe coffins, taking a look. And all of that contaminates the subject. And, so,you might get a date that was quite wrong.

NARRATOR: Still, in 1994, the owner of the Niagara FallsMuseum allowed a researcher to date a small tissue sample from the mummy.

The test produced a range between 790 and 1085 B.C., right at the end ofthe New Kingdom, but old enough to rule out the possibility that the mummy wasfrom the Roman Era.

AIDAN DODSON:This clearly showed at least a thousand years older thanthe Roman period, and once you know that, it becomes even more likely to be aking's mummy because crossed arms at the breast are really not found at anyother time in Egyptian history, except in the New Kingdom pharaohs.

NARRATOR: Finally, a piece of hard evidence he really could beone of the missing kings, but which one? Probably not one of the pharaohs atthe end of the New Kingdom, who were buried near the Nile delta, where theirmummies would have decayed; presumably not one of the kings whose mummies maywell have been destroyed by vengeful priests or noblemen. Ultimately, onecandidate seemed to stand out: the founder of the 19th Dynasty, Ramesses I.

The mummy bore a strong resemblance to that king's descendants.

GAYLE GIBSON:Many people have thought that this mummy looks an awfullot like King Seti I and Ramesses II and Merneptah. He really looks like thatgroup of kings who are father, son and grandson.

NARRATOR: If he was Ramesses I, here were his son, hisgrandson and his great-grandson.

In addition to his striking looks, it was clear this was the mummy of amature man, not a boy king. Ramesses I was Egypt's top military commander andpast middle age when the pharaoh he served appointed him to the throne. He diedafter ruling less than two years and was buried in the Valley of the Kings. Butwhen his tomb was opened in the 19th century, his mummy was gone.

Ramesses I was not among the pharaohs the authorities discovered in theRoyal Cache at Deir el Bahri. But they did find an intriguing clue: a shatteredcoffin bearing the name of Ramesses I, with inscriptions by the priests statingthey had moved his body to safety. Exactly how and when his mummy might haveleft the cache remained to be solved.

The case for Ramesses I was promising but needed serious research. And sothe man with crossed arms continued to play second fiddle to GeneralOssipumphneferu. He was a footnote in a freak show that had seen better days.The roof leaked, the owner wanted out, the Museum needed a savior.

Ethnographic art collector Bill Jamieson lives in his own cabinet ofcuriosities. A connoisseur of shrunken heads and other oddities, Jamieson was alongtime fan of the Niagara Falls Museum.

BILL JAMIESON:I probably went a couple times a year, and I startedtalking to the owner. I said, "Have you ever thought of selling the place?" Andhe said, "Make me an offer."

NARRATOR: In the fall of 1998, Jamieson signed a deal to buythe entire contents of the Museum. To offset the expense, he decided to selloff what seemed most valuable: the Egyptian artifacts. He consulted GayleGibson, who explained that the coffins, though battered, were of exceptionalquality. The mummies were probably average folks from late in Egyptian historyexcept for the man with crossed arms.

BILL JAMIESON:She said he did have the look of a king, if I recall, orhe looked like somebody in some kind of royal capacity. But I never really tooknotice of it, you know?

NARRATOR: Jamieson put the entire collection on the worldmarket.

BILL JAMIESON:All these letters went out telling people we had thiscollection for sale for $2,000,000 U.S. Where I came up with the price, I don'tknow. It just kind of seemed...I liked that figure.

NARRATOR: Word drifted south. At Emory University, the MichaelC. Carlos Museum had a new curator of Egyptian Art. Peter Lacovara hoped toexpand the museum's holdings. He was surprised to hear a trove of artifacts wason sale in Niagara Falls.

PETER LACOVARA: I think most people knew that there was sort of acollection up there, but it had never been published and, or, in any way, madeavailable to the scholarly community.

NARRATOR: On the advice of a Canadian colleague, Lacovaratraveled north.

PETER LACOVARA: I was very impressed with the number and quality of thecoffins, the fact that they weren't too far gone, not yet.

NARRATOR: The Carlos Museum snatched up the Egyptiancollection with funds raised in just two months. A team mobilized to NiagaraFalls to prep the precious coffins for shipping. The mummies were of lessinterest, but Lacovara was intrigued by the one that had spawned all thoserumors.

PETER LACOVARA: It was sort of sitting on a shelf next to another evenmore gruesome looking mummy in a sort of very ignominious kind of display. Sohe looked kind of sad, but he looked impressive. I mean, you could see whypeople had suggested he was one of the missing royal mummies.

NARRATOR: He, too, needed a touchup before the trip. No longera creepy curiosity, now a valued archaeological artifact, the mummy was enroute to his final judgment, just as foretold in the Book of the Dead:

"Fleeter than greyhounds, quicker than a shadow, I have traveled the Earth.I come to you without a witness against me."

At the Carlos Museum, the question could no longer be ignored. Was thisRamesses I? In theory, DNA could provide the answer.

Researchers at Emory University began tests on the loose teeth from anothermummy, with limited results.

PETER LACOVARA: People have not had a lot of success in DNA tests onEgyptian mummies anyway—and we're still not sure why that is, whethersomething in the mummification process sort of degrades the DNA—not tomention the utter futility of the effort if samples of the DNA of thedescendants of Ramesses I were not available.

SALIMA IKRAM:In Egypt, we're not going to be giving out DNA samplesunless we are assured that this technology works. But at this point, it wouldbe a crime to abuse these royal mummies and take sections out of them. And youwould generally have to take teeth out, so that is quite a dramatic thing. Itwould be like having an object in a museum, like a perfect stone vessel andthen chipping out a chunk, so it is very destructive. And, until we are assuredof results, it is a complete waste of time.

NARRATOR: The issue of the mummy's identity would have to beresolved with more circ*mstantial evidence—time to call in theexperts.

After years of hearsay, Salima Ikram would finally see for herself. Shewrote a volume on the pharaohs in the Cairo museum. How would this mummymeasure up?

SALIMA IKRAM:Well this mummy is a very nice, well preserved mummy, andit doesn't smell bad, so it must have been quite a good job of mummification,because most mummies that have not been well prepared are completelyodoriferous.

It certainly isn't a late 20th Dynasty royal mummy because if it were, itwould have had onions put into its eyes, and this one doesn't. It's got nicebits of resin in the ear which is something you see in the 18th and 19thDynasties, as well as earlier.

Now, over here, you see the incision, and it's not a very big deep gouge,which is what you start getting later on in 20th Dynasty, because that's whenpeople become much more careless in how they're doing these things, even ifthey're doing it to kings.

Down here, his genitalia is also wrapped, and this again you get with a lot ofthe royal mummies in the same way. Sometimes it's more attached to one leg orthe other, but he seems to be quite well centered.

The most thrilling moment was actually looking at the mummy and thinking, "Oh,you cannot possibly be a royal mummy." And then looking at it and thinking,"Oh, my god, you probably are a royal mummy." And so I e-mailed Aidan and saidthat he was totally right, that, as far as I could tell, it was a royal mummy.

AIDAN DODSON:Gayle had had this view, I had this view, and now Salimahad joined me in this. It suggested there really was something in it, andwe...and it wasn't just one of us having a hallucination.

NARRATOR: Momentum was building. Emory Hospital volunteeredits services.

Orthodontist James Harris has a unique claim to fame. In the 1960s, when hetraveled to Egypt with a portable X-ray machine, the authorities invited him tostudy the pharaohs. Twenty years later, he had compiled an X-ray catalog of allthe royal mummies in Egypt. He flew in from Michigan to assess thiscontender.

JAMES HARRIS (University of Michigan, Retired): I actuallyassumed it would not be royal, because of my previous experience with othermummies that are in collections around the United States, which are non-royal.Almost all of them are Late Period. They're Greek Roman, they're, they're veryend of the, of the Pharaonic Period and, and they were not royal.

NARRATOR: Harris would focus on the skull, because its shapeis largely inherited, to determine whether this man might be related to any ofthe pharaohs.

It was critical that he X-ray this mummy's skull in precisely the samealignment he had used on the royal mummies. On the X-ray, Harris identified keyanatomical "landmarks" and generated a series of skull measurements. He hadtaken identical measurements on the collection of pharaohs in Egypt.

Then he entered these numbers into his royal mummy database. The computerarranged the pharaohs into a tree of relationships, and placed the mummy fromthe Carlos Museum squarely with the descendants of Ramesses I.

JAMES HARRIS:Statistically, it appeared that he was most close to the19th Dynasty. We're talking about Ramesses II and Seti I. His profile fit theseindividuals best. We weren't able to narrow it down further than that, but heis a candidate for a royal mummy in that dynasty.

NARRATOR: Advanced technology would yield several morestunning clues. A CT scanner provided three-dimensional views of the mummyinside and out.

RADIOLOGIST : We'll take some high resolution detailed images of thehead and neck.

NARRATOR: The brain had been removed through the nose,standard practice in New Kingdom mummifications. The skull was nearly filledwith a hardened mass of tree resin, a rare commodity in Egypt.

PETER LACOVARA: It was very expensive, and so you would consider that itwould be lavished on royalty and not used so much on lesser people.

NARRATOR: Then the team explored the contents of the chestcavity. First up: more resin.

RADIOLOGIST: You can see the resin has pooled in there.

PETER LACOVARA: It's a huge amount.

RADIOLOGIST: These are tubular structures in both chest cavities,inside the resin.

NARRATOR: Fifteen years earlier, Wolfgang Pahl had claimedthese structures were organ packets, which are rarely found in mummies of theNew Kingdom. This team would anxiously contemplate the same conclusion.

PETER LACOVARA: We began to see some ghost images in the body and wewere, you know, wondering, whether, "Oops, does that mean that this is a latermummy?" But then they turned out not to be the, these organ packs but tightlyrolled strips of linen.

NARRATOR: The CT scan revealed what an X-ray could not:embalmers had stuffed rolls of linen beneath the mummy's ribs. The sametechnique was used on several royal mummies.

PETER LACOVARA: That was a nice confirmation that it's a New Kingdommummy. We became secure in the fact that this most probably was Ramesses I.

NARRATOR: With the tools of science, the museum had gone asfar as it could to uncover this man's identity. Then Bill Jamieson provided onelast clue, when he received an unexpected package from a fellow collector. Itwas a copy of a travel journal written and photographed in 1860, by DoctorJames Douglas, on a cruise up the Nile.

BILL JAMIESON:In this journal, there was some reference to purchasingof a mummy. And I made copies of this, and I sent it to Atlanta because Ithought it might help with their investigation.

NARRATOR: It did help. In it, Douglas boasted about buying a"fine" mummy for the Niagara Falls Museum. He also wrote about one of hiscontacts in the antiquities trade: Mustapha Aga, a notorious middleman betweentourists and tomb robbers.

PETER LACOVARA: Mustapha Aga was the dealer who was working with the Abdel Rassuls who found the cache of royal mummies at Deir el Bahri. So thatjournal really linked Niagara Falls to the cache.

NARRATOR: At last, a plausible scenario for what might havehappened to the mummy of Ramesses I. When the Abd el Rassuls discovered thecache, the body of Ramesses I was probably there. Perhaps they broke open hiscoffin and unwrapped his mummy, looking for jewelry. Then Mustapha Aga couldhave alerted them that a Canadian tourist, Dr. James Douglas, was looking formummies. The Abd el Rassuls could have pulled the mummy from the cache, andsold him off to a museum in Niagara Falls. The rest is history.

AIDAN DODSON:If we look at it in legal terms, let's say that our mummyis in a court of law being accused of being Ramesses I. I think he'dbe—if it was a criminal court—he'd be not guilty, becauseyou can't prove beyond reasonable doubt. In a civil case, it's on the balanceof probabilities. And I think that the balance of probability does favor himbeing a pharaoh, and the most probable pharaoh? Ramesses I.

NARRATOR: For the Carlos Museum, the case is closed. In thespring of 2003, the staff prepares an exhibit fit for a king. News of thepharaoh in Atlanta reaches those who knew him when.

Meinhard Hoffmann has never doubted the royal status of the mummy. Back in1985, he even had his lawyer notarize a statement that he was the first todiscover a king in Niagara Falls. He listed three possible candidates: thepharaohs Aye, Horemheb and Ramesses I.

MEINHARD HOFFMANN: Here's the real reason I did that: because, if all ofa sudden, you come out and say, "Oh, I knew all that 20 years ago," people candoubt you. People will doubt you and say you're nothing but an opportunist.

NARRATOR: As for Wolfgang Pahl, who dismissed the mummy in1985, his views have been tempered by the carbon-14 date, CT scans and othernew findings.

WOLFGANG PAHL: Based on these facts, today I would no longer say, sodefinitively, that this is not a royal mummy. For me the mummy remains aninteresting object of study that is far from having yielded its finalsecrets.

NARRATOR: And what of the mummy's homeland? Will hisdescendants embrace him as the founder of a great dynasty? In matters ofmummies and all antiquities, one man speaks for Egypt: Zahi Hawass.

ZAHI HAWASS:When I heard the news that this is a mummy of Ramesses I, Ithought that this is speculation. I thought it's maybe a joke. How a king willappear suddenly like this? How will we know that this mummy of a king leftEgypt and no one knows anything about it? The only person, really, who talkedto me about this mummy is Peter Lacovara. And I told him that in the future, Ishould see this mummy.

NARRATOR: In April 2003, Hawass comes to Atlanta to providethe final word. He'll rely on a unique set of skills.

ZAHI HAWASS:Myself, I can smell royal mummies. And I know thedifference from a mummy to the others. You know, I discovered, in my career,more than 254 mummies. And I can really look at the face and from the firstsight I will find out that it's royal mummy or not.

That's him!

PETER LACOVARA: Yeah.

ZAHI HAWASS:He looks like a king, hmm?

PETER LACOVARA: Yeah. He looks like Seti, doesn't he?

ZAHI HAWASS:Yes, he looks like Seti.

PETER LACOVARA: He does, yeah.

ZAHI HAWASS:And the style of the New Kingdom is perfect.

I can confirm that this is the mummy of a pharaoh, but I'm not sure if I cansay that this is the mummy of Ramesses I or not. But since Ramesses Imummy is missing from the cache of Deir el Bahri, then maybe we can say thatthis is the mummy of Ramesses I.

NARRATOR: The Carlos Museum honors its king with a gatheringof Egyptologists and old friends.

SALIMA IKRAM:It gives one a sense of great personal connection when youcan look on the face of Ramesses I and find the missing link between all ofthese royal mummies of the 19th Dynasty.

GAYLE GIBSON:Well, there's an old saying, "To speak the name of thedead is to make them live again." So, to say "Ramesses" to him again is rathernice. He has his name back.

AIDAN DODSON:It's nice to see him in a fitting position, rather thanwhat looked like the cases in some cheap jewelry store.

So you're the man to be credited for getting him out?

BILL JAMIESON:I just, I just sold him, just sold him.

I don't know, I don't think you can actually own a pharaoh. It'll be around alot longer than me. I'll be dead and gone, and it'll be in another collectionor museum.

PETER LACOVARA: Looking down from heaven or wherever Ramesses I is, Ithink he'd probably be pleased that, you know, here, thousands of years later,he's back to receive prayers and visits from friends and relatives in order tocontinue his eternal life.

NARRATOR: For a season, the people of Atlanta marvel at a timetraveler in their midst, but he will not rest here long. In October 2003, themummy comes closer to heaven than ever imagined in the Book of the Dead:"I have risen up out of the chamber. I fly, I alight like a hawk. The gods haveheard my name."

In Cairo, the mummy-who-would-be-king is received like superstar.

ZAHI HAWASS:We invite everyone to come tomorrow to the press conferenceto see the face of the king for the first time, when he will smell the air ofCairo.

NARRATOR: The Egyptian Museum celebrates an extraordinary giftfrom an American museum.

ZAHI HAWASS:I would like to state that Michael Carlos Museum, I think,did the best effort by sending this mummy to Egypt. When they found out thatthis is the mummy of a pharaoh, they thought the pharaoh should be home, andhome means Egypt.

NARRATOR: In life, he may have ruled the land, but in death,he lays claim to our imagination. His journey goes on: "I am strong. I haveawakened. My body will not be destroyed in this eternal land."

How was The Mummy Who Would Be King preserved for all eternity? OnNOVA's Web site, examine the ritual. Find it on PBS.org.

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PRODUCTION CREDITS

The Mummy Who Would Be King

Narrated by
Stacy Keach

Produced by
Gail Willumsen and Jill Shinefield

Written and Directed by
Gail Willumsen

Edited by
Leonard Feinstein

Camera
Bill Mills

Music
Gil Talmi
Andrew Gross

Sound Recordists
Shirley Libby
Victor Gamble
Andreas Rauch
Noel Dannemiller
Sherif Ez El Din

Production Manager - Egypt
Romany Helmy

Gaffer
Billy Sherill

Grips
Ron Chambley
Alfons Hanna

Additional Producing by
Jonathan Wickham

Additional Camera
DJ Roller

Animation
Radical 3D

Online Editor
Bill Admans

Colorist
Randy Coonfield

Audio Mix
Mark Linden
Tara Paul

Archival Material
Bibliothèque de l'Université Laval
Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY
Corbis
Corbis Motion
Egyptian Film Center
Emory University Hospital
Fototeca Storica Nazionale/Getty Images
Getty Images
Heidi Hoffman
Keystone/Getty Images
Michael C. Carlos Museum
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Niagara Falls Museum Archives
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
WSB-TV, Atlanta
ZDF Enterprises

Special Thanks
Abd el-Rassul Family
James B. Douglas
Egyptian Museum
Emory University Hospital
Zahi Hawass
Michael C. Carlos Museum
Royal Ontario Museum
Skylon Tower
The Niagara Parks Commission

NOVA Series Graphics
yU + co.

NOVA Theme Music
Walter Werzowa
John Luker
Musikvergnuegen, Inc.

Additional NOVA Theme Music
Ray Loring

Post Production Online Editor
Mark Steele

Closed Captioning
The Caption Center

NOVA Administrator
Dara Bourne

Publicity
Eileen Campion
Olivia Wong

Senior Researcher
Barbara Moran

Production Coordinator
Linda Callahan

Unit Manager
Lola Norman-Salako
Carla Raimer

Paralegal
Richard Parr

Legal Counsel
Susan Rosen Shishko

Post Production Assistant
Alex Kreuter

Associate Producers, Post Production
Nathan Gunner
Patrick Carey

Post Production Supervisor
Regina O'Toole

Post Production Editor
Rebecca Nieto

Post Production Manager
Maureen Barden Lynch

Supervising Producer
Stephen Sweigart

Producer, Special Projects
Susanne Simpson

Coordinating Producer
Laurie Cahalane

Senior Science Editor
Evan Hadingham

Senior Series Producer
Melanie Wallace

Managing Director
Alan Ritsko

Senior Executive Producer
Paula S. Apsell

A NOVA Production by Gemini Productions LLC for WGBH/Boston in association withChannel Four, Spiegel TV GmbH, Sveriges Television and Zöe TV.

© 2006 WGBH Educational Foundation

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