CAIRO, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The mummy of Rameses I has arrived at the Cairo Museum from the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, Atlanta.
The Atlanta Museum decided to return Rameses I to Egypt for the first time in more than 130 years, honoring a promise made when it acquired the mummy in 1999 that if it proved to be royal it would be sent home.
CT scans and other scientific analysis proved "compellingly and convincingly" that the mummy was that of the pharaoh who founded the famous 19th Dynasty and who died in 1318 B.C. after ruling for less than two years, a spokesman for the museum was quoted as saying in The Art Newspaper.
Rameses I will be put on permanent display with other pharaohs' mummies found in the Valley of the Kings, the newspaper said.
The Niagara Falls Museum in New York purchased the mummy in the late 1860s before it and other mummies found in a single valley tomb, where they had been hidden from tomb robbers, were identified as pharaohs. The Atlanta museum bought the Niagara Falls Museum's entire Egyptian collection, knowing that a German scholar had suggested in the 1980s that the mummy was that of Rameses.
