Cairo’s mummies head to new museum. And get a grand parade through the streets.

At 8 p.m., the mummies — 18 kings and 4 queens — left the famed ochre-hued Egyptian Museum around Tahrir Square, wherever they experienced rested for many years. They were being every single atop specially decorated gold-and-blue-hued motor vehicles resembling boats. Or perhaps the symbol of a winged solar, an ornament worn by Egypt’s ancient rulers and observed as delivering security. Every single of the 22 cars was emblazoned with the title of the royal mummy it carried.

The multimillion-dollar affair — named the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade — had been promoted for months. Egyptian authorities are seeking to appeal to travelers, a vital supply of international currency, and alter the course of an economic system battered by the coronavirus pandemic, Islamist attacks and political chaos in earlier several years.

The remarkably choreographed ceremony was also a nationalist automobile to emphasize Egypt’s spot in historical past. The nation’s authoritarian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who himself is frequently referred to as “a new pharaoh” for his bold initiatives and iron-fisted rule, presided above the ceremony.

In a Facebook put up, Intisar al-Sissi, Egypt’s 1st girl, reported Saturday’s event “expresses the greatness of the ancient civilization that furnished humanity, and continue to does, with a exceptional and various legacy, contributing to its development and prosperity.”

Most Egyptians observed the parade on television, as the overall route and bordering bridges and streets ended up closed for stability. With parts of the software prerecorded, viewers were treated to an orchestra and singer actively playing patriotic audio and films extolling several of the country’s renowned temples, churches and mosques.

Sissi, alongside with senior officers and aides, viewed the parade on a giant display screen inside a corridor of the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, wherever the mummies will be shown.

The ceremony sought to re-produce the royals’ historical existence. In the procession were being horse-drawn chariots and hundreds of performers garbed in the regular apparel worn by ancient Egyptians.

The automobiles circled all-around Tahrir Sq., the epicenter of Egypt’s revolution, which is now centered with an historical obelisk and four statues of ram-headed sphinxes. Flood lights bore into the night time sky as yellow and blue lights lit up the area.

The mummies, carried in bins loaded with nitrogen, and their automobiles were equipped with special shock absorbers to defend their millennia-aged continues to be. Almost nothing was taken to prospect: Even their route was freshly paved.

The mummies in the procession have been lined up in chronological get. The oldest rulers arrived initially, setting up with Seqenenre Taa, the last king of the 17th Dynasty, who reigned in the 16th century B.C. The past was the 12th century B.C. pharaoh Ramses IX.

In concerning had been two of the most effectively-regarded of historical Egypt’s rulers: Ramses II, extensively observed as the best pharaoh of the New Kingdom time period, and Queen Hatshepsut, who dominated at a time when woman pharaohs have been incredibly exceptional. The temples of equally rulers, in Luxor and Abu Simbel, are between the most frequented.

At 8:30 p.m., soon after adhering to a substantial bike escort by way of the empty Cairo streets, the 22 cars stopped in entrance the Nationwide Museum of Egyptian Civilization in the capital’s Fustat enclave. Then, a 21-gun salute adopted. Minutes later, the parade entered the compound and Sissi walked out to greet the new arrivals.

They will be housed in the museum’s royal hall of mummies and will go on show by mid-month, officials reported.