Merry Christmas, everyone! Just spent a happy hour musing a question I've never thought about before, found in the slightly-off-topic comments section of the excellent war history blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry . Namely, about the legal status of a mummy that came to life in the style of a horror movie, but decided to pursue legal avenues to getting what it wants instead of the usual horror movie trope of attacking people. I tried to post a response but it didn't post, so I include it here instead:
ajay's statement of the positions:
A great deal would depend on the exact legal position of the mummified pharaoh in question. Let’s call him Ptah for short. Quaere, as they used to say, is he in the eyes of the law:
a) The living Pharaoh Ptah? b) Still the person Ptah, and alive, but no longer pharaoh? c) The person Ptah, not pharaoh, and dead, but still legally a person? d) The person Ptah, not pharaoh, and dead, and therefore not legally a person? e) An independent living person who came into existence at the point of the mummy’s awakening but who shares the memories of Pharaoh Ptah?
My reply:
I would posit g) Ptah is a Pharaoh reborn (not a sitting Pharaoh, but a former Pharaoh socially), who would likely not be legally alive as Ptah. [A different respondent had already posited a position f)].
I am not aware of anything in the ancient Egyptian law that rules carrying the title of Pharaoh from an original life and death to a new one in or out. Pharaohs maintained the title into death due to their divine status. Presumably this would also be true in the case of rebirth. Thus, Ptah would be a Pharaoh.
However, there are no cases of Pharaohs getting their thrones back by arguing they were reborn. I don't know of any mechanism by which an attempt to do so would succeed, either. Unless the judge and/or the invited Egyptologists were aware of such a precedent or mechanism, the modern fallback of "leaving a post means the process to regain it must be started from scratch" would likely be taken. Therefore, the existence or lack of same of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Egypt is moot. Even if it existed, and even if there was a vacancy for "current Pharaoh" at that specific moment, Ptah would be one of its former Pharaohs, not its current one. Changing that would require a procedure accepted by said Upper and Lower Kingdoms.
The fact no post or kingdom exists for Ptah means he would have to be more creative if he wanted being Pharaoh to mean ruling over anyone at all. (Perhaps see if it is possible to parlay the "former Pharaoh" status into resolving the dispute between Egypt and Sudan over who governs Bir Tawil)? Ordering anyone from modern Egypt to acknowledge his political authority due to a title definitely won't work! (Expected result: another court case concerning the modern Egyptian equivalent term for "sovereign citizen", with the same result as USA court cases of that type…)
For the "legally alive" bit, I will assume from the hypothesis that Ptah is biologically alive at the time of the court case. (The court would expect a medical examination to that effect before even considering the case, but I allow that medicine could accept him as a human with unusual, mummification-influenced, biology. Without that, the court isn't even obliged to give mummies legal standing).
Standard convention is that if someone is believed to be died, but evidence is found that the person is alive, their death certificate gets cancelled and this starts the administrative process of being declared legally alive. Between 7000 and 14000 people are declared dead by mistake each year, so there is actually a system for this…
…if the person in question has a death certificate. Ptah might. Some Egyptians did get death certificates, although it's not yet clear if everyone got one, or whether a Pharaoh's tomb was considered equivalent in ancient Egypt. If Ptah's body was one of the many stolen by grave robbers and subsequently discovered as a living mummy, then he's been missing for over 7 years and working around this becomes feasible (with extra paperwork to account for documentation).
However, even if Ptah does have a death certificate, it won't be in a format the modern Egyptian computer system recognises.
Many countries allow a workaround, whereby identity can be proven by walking into a government office with one (or more) IDs, usually provided one of them has a matching photograph. I trust nobody on this blog needs an explanation of why this won't work for Ptah.
Spouses and close relatives can also confirm Ptah was alive, but since Ptah's nearest and dearest are either dead or fellow mummies presumably also fighting for legal alive status, this doesn't help much. It's not even clear they would be allowed to be witnesses.
Also, there's usually a statute of limitations to being able to challenge a declaration that one is dead. Even a limitation of many decades would be a problem here. Even though Ptah may lack a death certificate, as a Pharaoh, he almost certainly has a known regnal number and dates. Including an estimated death date. Archaeologists will have spent many years confidently declaring that Ptah was dead, and Ptah didn't challenge them then despite being a divine being and (per Fifth Dynasty and beyond belief systems) being aware this was the case.
This means Ptah's chances of being able to continue the previous legal identity is zero. One reason that would matter is that with continuous legal identity, Ptah would be able to immediately naturalise as Egyptian, if mutually desired. The grounds would be, " Persons who have performed exceptional services to the nation, including as the head of a religious sect, can be naturalized without other requirements". To be a sitting Pharaoh was to be head of the entire ancient Egyptian religion, and nothing in the rule requires the person being naturalised to be the current head.
He'd get the social identity because that's not within the court's gift to grant or deny (which is why he'd be a prior pharaoh), but good luck if he wanted a bank account or chariot-… sorry, road car licence! He could probably argue that he had been reborn if using the hospital loophole, and this would at least establish Egyptian citizenship (as an orphan in the territory, with parents known to be dead and legally either stateless or Egyptian), but Ptah would then have to accept being a ward of the state and having homework about himself in six years' time due to having to attend primary school despite being mentally an adult.
His grave goods wouldn't be his in this life. If he got them in the afterlife, then they served the intended purposes and he did not suffer damages, thus no standing to sue for theft. The fact that others gained from them in this life would not affect anything. If he didn't get them in the afterlife, the thefts were so long ago as to be outside the jurisdiction of any modern court (except in the hypothetical case of Upper and Lower Kingdoms still existing, in which case curses and compensation would be more likely than the return of the grave goods themselves. Especially for immovables like the tomb itself).
