Miscellaneous desk
< June 4	<< May \| June \| Jul >>	June 6 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 5

The dead and France

Does anyone know if the country of France does and did (c. 1976) require incoming persons to have a passport, regardless of status as deceased? In reference to an event up for discussion at Ramesses II. Temerarius (talk) 18:50, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why would a corpse need a passport? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:52, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Temerarius: There is some information at Agreement_on_the_Transfer_of_Corpses and Travel_document#Laissez-passers. There are two main treaties, from 1973 and 1937. France has signed the later one but Egypt signed the earlier one, so not sure which would apply in the case you refer to. Perhaps the mummy was not in a coffin that met the standard required by the treaty and so some other arrangement needed to be made. You might want to check for French newspaper reporting on the subject at the time it reportedly happened. RudolfRed (talk) 21:25, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good tip, know any good French search terms for it? Temerarius (talk) 01:40, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The claim that Ramesses II was issued an Egyptian passport is presented as a fact on this page on the website of the History Channel and repeated here on the website of the National Geographic. --Lambiam 07:08, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And it is disputed in this France24 article]. To me it doesn't seem plausible that France (who wanted Ramesses to come) should have insisted on something like a passport. Queen Elizabeth II. famously did not have a passport, yet they let her into the country repeatedly. It seems obvious though, that Ramesses' visit was accompanied by a lot of paperwork, certainly including documents with identification, detailed description and presumably photographs of the mummy — the Egyptians should have insisted on that, after all they wanted their Ramesses back and not some random Jean-Jacques, and if possible undamaged, too. Call one of these documents a "passport" if you like, but the idea of a standard-format passport seems rather ludicrous — except maybe as a publicity stunt, but then I guess we would have found pictures of it. --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:33, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The comparison to Queen Elizabeth II is particularly fitting given that, like her, Ramesses was a head of state. (What would they put in the "citizenship" field? I doubt Ramesses would be very happy at the suggestion that he was a citizen of a republic, and "He of Sedge and Bee" might cause confusion at border control.) Proteus (Talk) 12:23, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The idea that the head of a state is not a citizen of said state seems ludicrous to me. Of course, the entire concept of royalty also seems ludicrous to me.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 12:27, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My point was that any passport issued by Egypt today would have to be issued by the current state (the Arab Republic of Egypt). Regardless of whether Ramesses was a citizen when he was alive, he certainly wasn't a citizen of a republic. Proteus (Talk) 12:58, 18 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your UK passport was the Queen's letter that you may travel. So she didn't need one. Practical royal prerogatives like this don't extend to cadavers.

Temerarius (talk) 19:57, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Lambiam (and any others who didn't click through), according to Talk:Ramesses II § A mummy with a passport (redux), the article added a claim about mummy passports in November 2006, so any "RS" statements that postdate the unsourced addition to the article – such as history.com 2013 and National Geographic 2018 – may very well be the result of WP:CITOGENESIS. We'll need a pre-2006 source to establish veracity. Folly Mox (talk) 12:19, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mummies need passed-ports. Clarityfiend (talk) 08:34, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In 1974, experts discovered that Ramses II's skin was being destroyed by a mysterious infection. The royal mummy was flown to Paris three years later for medical treatment. International regulations required him to have a passport, which gave his occupation as "King (deceased)". When he arrived in France, a team of conservators successfully cured the infection, which turned out to be a fungus...

Putnam, James (1998). Ancient Egyptians. London: DK Publishing. p. 122. ISBN 978-0789414090.

Alansplodge (talk) 18:38, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fact check by French news agency Agence France-Presse disputes the story and points to a possible origin of the confusion. --Wrongfilter (talk) 19:35, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, in the dummy they used the same photo I attached the factoid to. Funny. In the link it looks like they were using "passporte" a bit informally to describe the documentation. Good work all! That's a fun investigation.

Temerarius (talk) 22:51, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The spelling is passeport. Placed between scare guillemets, the term was obviously not meant to be taken literally. --Lambiam 09:46, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wrongfilter, please could you copy that link to the talk page discussion at Talk:Ramesses II § A mummy with a passport (redux)? Alansplodge (talk) 15:09, 11 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]