Among the most notable of the ancient kings of Egypt thus discovered
were Thothmes III., Seti I., and Rameses II. Thothmes III. was the most
distinguished monarch of the brilliant Eighteenth Dynasty. When this
mummy was unwound “once more, after an interval of thirty-six centuries,
human eyes gazed on the features of the man who had conquered Syria and
Cyprus and Ethiopia, and had raised Egypt to the highest pinnacle of her
power. The spectacle, however, was of brief duration. The remains proved
to be in so fragile a state that there was only time to take a hasty
photograph, and then the features crumbled to pieces and vanished like an
apparition, and so passed away from human view for ever.” “It seems
strange that though the body of this man,” who overran Palestine with his
armies two hundred years before the birth of Moses, “mouldered to dust,
the flowers with which it had been wreathed were so wonderfully
preserved that even their colour could be distinguished” (Manning’s Land
of the Pharaohs).
Seti I. (his throne name Merenptah), the father of Rameses II., was a great
and successful warrior, also a great builder. The mummy of this Pharaoh,
when unrolled, brought to view “the most beautiful mummy head ever
seen within the walls of the museum. The sculptors of Thebes and
Abydos did not flatter this Pharaoh when they gave him that delicate,
sweet, and smiling profile which is the admiration of travellers. After a
lapse of thirty-two centuries, the mummy retains the same expression
which characterized the features of the living man. Most remarkable of all,
when compared with the mummy of Rameses II., is the striking
resemblance between the father and the son. Seti I. is, as it were, the
idealized type of Rameses II. He must have died at an advanced age. The
head is shaven, the eyebrows are white, the condition of the body points
to considerably more than threescore years of life, thus confirming the
opinions of the learned, who have attributed a long reign to this king.”
(4.) Rameses II., the son of Seti I., is probably the Pharaoh of the
Oppression. During his forty years’ residence at the court of Egypt,
Moses must have known this ruler well. During his sojourn in Midian,
however, Rameses died, after a reign of sixty-seven years, and his body
embalmed and laid in the royal sepulchre in the Valley of the Tombs of
Kings beside that of his father. Like the other mummies found hidden in
the cave of Deir el-Bahari, it had been for some reason removed from its