In Ramses II – The Mummy Who Had To Get A Passport, we learn about how the mummified Ramses II had to get an Egyptian passport in 1976 while being transported from Egypt to France. The deceased pharaoh was issued the passport to make it more difficult for someone to steal his mummified body. I love looking at this image of his passport and seeing 1303 BC under the "Date of Birth" section. He looks pretty badass in his passport photo, too.
However, Boom reports that the passport photo isn't real, and was created by an archaeology blog:
The mummy was transferred to Paris for a treatment of a mysterious disease linked to a fungus infection. Upon its arrival, the Garde Republicaine, France's equivalent of a Marine honor guard, presented a military honour to the former King, according to The New York Times report. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the president of the French Republic between 1974 and 1981, explained that he convinced the then-Egyptian leader Anwar al-Sadat for the transfer of the mummy by promising him that the late Pharaoh would be treated "like a sovereign", as documented in Ramses II: The Great Journey, a documentary published in 2011. Also Read: Photo Of Georgian Rivers That 'Never Mix' Shared As DR Congo Rivers Neither the articles from the Antenne Newspaper and the New York Times, nor the documentary report on any passport being issued for the mummy of Ramesses II. Élisabeth David, the documentary studies officer in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities in the Louvre Museum, told AFP on October 12, 2020 that the claim about the existence of a passport had no basis. She explained that the confusion might be due to a report published by the National Museum of Natural History in 1985, in which the archaeologist Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt pointed out it is required to obtain a "passport" in order to bring the mummy of Ramesses II out of Egypt.
Bummer!
