by Steve Rockwell
I was introduced to Ramesses I, the founder of Egypt’s 19th Dynasty, in his then 468 Wellington Street West residence in Toronto in the late 1990’s by Bill Jamieson. It is difficult to describe my sense of excitement, as the identity of the mummy was just in the process of being confirmed. Canadian Egyptologist Gayle Gibson had made evaluations. There had been discussions with the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta for a possible sale and transfer of residence. After scans, anatomical analyses, and comparisons with royal mummies Jamieson’s Egyptian collection went to Atlanta in 1999. Then in 2003, Ramesses I received a ceremonial state welcome and was placed on display in Egypt’s Luxor Museum, barely two miles from where Ramesses I ruled just over 3,200 years ago.
Socially, it had been the shrunken heads that broke the ice. Jamieson’s purchase of the Niagara Falls Museum collection, however, was the big story. The timing mattered. He came across as a grand curiosity-cabinet figure at a time when museums were beginning to reconsider the ethics of collecting. Essentially, he had been a Toronto contractor whose loft became a museum, and who now holds a place in history for discovering a lost Egyptian pharaoh.
(to be continued)