A Mummy in Jerusalem

The focus of this exhibition is a 2,200-year-old Egyptian mummy displayed in its original coffin, alongside objects from various tombs typically used in Egyptian funerary rites until the rise of Christianity in Egypt in the fourth century CE. The mummy, the only one in Israel, was given to the Jerusalem Pontifical Biblical Institute in around 1930 in honor of its inauguration by the Jesuits in Alexandria (hence the mummy’s nickname “Alex”). It arrived in Jerusalem in an anthropoid coffin decorated with images of gods and inscriptions identifying Alex as a high-ranking priest from the Egyptian city of Akhmim. The exhibition also includes a coffin containing an embalmed ibis, presented at the peace agreements of 1979 as a gift from President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt to Yigael Yadin, then Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister.