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Curse or no curse, Cairo's mummy parade goes smoothly

Cairo's procession of royal mummies roused national pride among Egyptians, though observers warned that disturbing the dead may have unleashed the "curse of the pharaohs."
The carriages carrying 22 ancient Egyptian royal mummies depart from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo's Tahrir Square on April 3, 2021, during a parade on their way to their new resting place at the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Old Cairo.

All was pomp and pageantry as 22 royal mummies — 18 kings and four queens — paraded through the streets of Cairo on the evening of April 3 to their final resting place at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, located where the ancient capital of El Fustat once stood in Old Cairo overlooking Ain El Seera Lake.

The remains of the pharaohs had been showcased in a gallery at the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square, transported there from the Valley of the Kings on the Nile's West Bank near Luxor more than a century ago.

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