Books in Brief

006

Mummies of the Pharaohs

Maurice Bucaille, M.D., transl. Alastair D. Pannell

(New York: St. Martin’s Press 1990) 236 pp., $18.95.

Maurice Bucaille, a physician, has written an engrossing account of the medical research that has been conducted on the royal mummies now in the Cairo Museum. Included are a number of Bucaille’s own discoveries made during his investigation of the mummies of Ramesses II, when it was brought to Paris in 1976, and of Merenptah, in Cairo, from 1974 to 1976.

Much of Bucaille’s focus is upon the continuing deterioration suffered by the royal mummies, caused by their being unwrapped and then displayed in cases without temperature or humidity controls. This is highly laudable, especially as it has led museum authorities to undertake new conservation measures. Bucaille also excoriates Dr. Douglas Derry, a physician, and Egyptologist Howard Carter, for their dismemberment of Tutankhamun’s mummy in the mid-1920s and subsequent attempts to disguise the fact.

But Bucaille’s major thrust is to defend his thesis that Merenptah was the pharaoh of the Exodus. This was, indeed, the object of his study of the king’s mummy. Bucaille claims that Merenptah died violently, citing as prime evidence a hole made in the king’s skull. Yet this hole may have been made by the ancient embalmers as part of the embalming process, and other damage to the mummy (such as the right clavicle split by an axe or knife, the right arm wrenched out of place and the enormous hole hacked through the abdomen) is postmortem, as admitted by Bucaille, the work of tomb-robbers who attacked the mummy.

Bucaille tries to muster Islamic sources to claim that Merenptah drowned while pursuing the Israelites fleeing Egypt. The Biblical text, while stating that Pharaoh ordered the pursuit by his charioteers, doesn’t claim that he personally led them into the sea.¹ Whatever the source of the Islamic tradition, it is not a XIXth Dynasty source nor the Biblical account, and thus comes from a much later time. Bucaille’s claim that Merenptah’s Israel stela depicts the Israelites in Egypt during his reign is incorrect. As I discussed in my article in BAR,² the Israel stela and the pharaoh’s battle reliefs at Karnak plainly state and show the Israelites in Canaan.

In conclusion, the attempt to show that Merenptah was the pharaoh of the Exodus is unconvincing and indeed, Ramesses II remains the prime candidate.³ Bucaille’s claim that Merenptah died during the Exodus is especially weak, as much of the damage to his corpse is inconsistent with drowning and, in fact, is post-mortem, the work of tomb-robbers. Even if Merenptah had died a violent death, there are plenty of other causes that might be cited, including most prominently a crisis in the royal family, involving the efforts of Amenmesse (like Merenptah, a son of Ramesses II, but Merenptah’s younger half brother) to usurp the throne from Sety II, Merenptah’s son and chosen successor.⁴

Mummies of the Pharaohs

Maurice Bucaille, M.D., transl. Alastair D. Pannell

(New York: St. Martin’s Press 1990) 236 pp., $18.95.