volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

394 The Royal Mummies in Cairo.
mists which enshroud Cairo on winter mornings—and
little pools of water on the floors of the cases. The Nile
actually washed the wall of one of the main sections of
the old Bulik Museum, and Maspero lived in constant
dread lest the whole building should subside into its
waters. When at last the Egyptian Collection was
removed to the tawdry palace at Gizah, nothing was
done to protect the royal mummies, and the old cases
were again used to contain them. Everyone hoped that
the scandal would be removed when the Collection was
housed in the new Museum in Cairo, but such was not
the case, and unhappily the Royal Mummies were replaced
in their ancient wooden shells in wretched cases.
I inspected them carefully in 1913, and found that they
were much less complete than they were when at Bulak,
and that they had suffered much at the hands of those
who had examined them " medically and scientifically,"
as Maspero said. Sir William Garstin did the right thing
when he insisted that the mummy of Amenhetep II
should be replaced in his sarcophagus in his tomb at
Thebes, and there seems to be no good reason why the
mummies of all the great Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and
XlXth dynasties should not be replaced, if not in their
sarcophagi, at least in suitable chambers of their tombs
at Thebes.^ The Royal Tombs are now effectively
watched and guarded, and if the kings for whom they
were made were replaced in them, the self-interest of
the natives alone would be sufficient to keep them there
uninjured and in safety.
Whatever blame may be attached to individual
archaeologists for removing mummies from Egypt, every
unprejudiced person who knows anything of the subject
must admit that when once a mummy has passed into
the care of the Trustees, and is lodged in the British
Museum, it has a far better chance of being preserved
there than it could possibly have in any tomb, royal
or otherwise, in Egypt. In the British Museum mummies
^ See Schweinfurth's letter advocating the provision of proper
receptacles for the Royal Mummies in The Times, September 8th, 1886.