Mummy threatens relations

With one diplomatic incident already on its hands (see last post) today, Paris has run into a second incipient row over an ageing ruler. This time the offended party is Egypt.

The affair hangs on a question: Does a French Alpine village postman have in his possession the hair of Ramses II, the great pharaoh who died in 1213 BC and was entombed in the Valley of the Kings ? [see update at end]

The story began at Saint Egrève, a peaceful spot near Grenoble. The police went this morning to the home there of Jean-Michael Diebolt, 50, and detained him after he offered on the internet to sell hair, samples of embalming resin and fragments of bandages from the mummy.

The case is being taken seriously because Diebolt says that his father was one of the experts who analysed the mummy in France in 1976. He offered photographs and certificates to prove the authenticity of the artefacts, for which he is charging 2,000-2,500 euros per lot.

So far, the story sounds plausible because the mummy was flown to Paris in 1976 on a trip that the French state treated with the protocol of a royal visit. The remains of the pharaoh, who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BC and died in his 80s, arrived to a state welcome at le Bourget airport with an Egyptian passport citing its profession as "King (deceased)." It was returned to the Cairo Museum and no mummy of such importance has left Egypt before or since.

Complaints have been pouring in from Egypt. Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said: "If these elements are authentic, it would be a scandal that would risk harming relations between France and Egypt". The French Foreign Ministry has moved into damage control, saying that it is closely following the affair.

Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, an Egyptologist who took part in the 1976 study, said that she did not believe that anyone would have clipped hair from the mummy. However, it would be "a shameful sacrilege towards human history" if it proved true," she said.

Detectives seized a dozen plastic packets containing samples of hair and centimetre-long scraps of bandage from the postman's home. The Grenoble office of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) said that fragments of hair and bandage had fallen from the mummy when its shroud was unbound in Paris in 1976. These had been sent to 40 laboratories for analysis, including a CEA facility in the city. "We do not know what became of these fragments," said Francois Michel, deputy director of the CEA.

Sonia Diebolt, the seller's wife, said that her husband had put the items on the internet as a joke "not really for making money, just to see if people were interested." The "samples" were genuine, she said. "They came from his father, who is dead. I don't know if his father had the right to take them, but they are real enough."

The Ramses II mummy was discovered in 1881 in a cave where it had been long hidden after removal from the Valley tomb.

It is not clear what charges if any Diebolt might face if the items prove genuine, according to French lawyers. 

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Thursday update: The mummy's hair is indeed genuine. Jean-Michel Diebolt was released from police custody after promising to send the lot back to Egypt with a letter of apology. No charges have yet been brought. Asked by le Parisien if he regretted his internet offer, he said: "Of course I do when I see the diplomatic consequences of all this affair. I present my apologies to the Egyptian government. If I had known the consequences of my act, I would never have don it. I was very naive."

Diebolt said that he got the idea of the auction after seeing how much people were prepared to pay for the hair of Napoleon, Marilyn Monroe, Abraham Lincoln and others. 

Comments

[Frank Schnittger]

A follicle = a chronicle of folly = a hair raising scheme to make lolly

[Edward Johns]

quel ras le bol !

[Isabelle]

Oh my gosh! Queke burlesque