Ramesses I (Menpehtyre)

A new military dynasty

The 19th Dynasty was founded by a commoner. Because the previous pharaoh, Horemheb, lacked a royal heir, he selected his trusted vizier and military general, Paramessu, to succeed him. Paramessu hailed from a military family in the Nile Delta region near Avaris. He was specifically chosen because he had no ties to the old Theban aristocracy of the Amarna period, and he already had a son and a grandson to secure the line of succession. Taking the throne name Ramesses I, he ruled for only 18 months and left behind few monuments, but his brief reign officially launched the famous Ramesside period.

A mummy lost and found at Niagara Falls

Ramesses I's mummy vanished from the historical record after being looted from its tomb in antiquity, resurfacing in the nineteenth century in the hands of a Canadian antiquities collector who eventually placed it on display at the Niagara Falls Museum, where it sat largely unrecognized for roughly 140 years. When that museum closed in 1999, its Egyptian collection was acquired by the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University, whose researchers used X-rays, CT scanning, radiocarbon dating, and comparison with the skull of his son Seti I to conclude the mummy was Ramesses I with roughly 95 percent confidence. Egypt formally received the mummy back in 2003, and it now rests in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.