John Warren, chief surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital was preparing to autopsy a corpse that had been there for 2,500 years in 1823. Warren believed that examining the Egyptian Mummy, a gift from a patron who was placed in the hospital's surgical ward to receive quarters from gawkers, would advance our knowledge about the ancients. After carefully removing the old linen, he stopped. The blackened, but perfectly preserved, head was exposed: high cheekbones and wisps brown hair. Warren later recalled that this was a person and he refused to disturb him any further.Then, it was October last year, when Egyptian archaeologists revealed the body of an intact wrapped body in the first of a cache containing 59 newly discovered mummies. The video went viral and there was a lot of Twitter backlash. One user wrote: Even in death, POC cannot escape the prying eyes and opportunistic advances made by white people. This tweet gained almost a quarter of a million likes.Since Warren began his career nearly 200 years ago, the question of whether it's unseemly or ghoulish to display ancient corpses or a valuable contribution to science and education has been a constant nag for mummy displays. The Black Lives Matter and other movements have only fueled a continuing ethical dilemma for experts and museums who study mummies.This issue is the subject of academic forums and scholarly articles, but the implications are real, both at home and abroad. Pamela Hatchfield (ex-president of the American Institute for Conservation), a professional association for art conservators, stated that it is a hot topic in our field.Onlookers witnessed 22 mummies being transported from Cairo to a new museum during a grand parade through Cairo streets. According to one estimate, there are at least 350 museums that display Egyptian mummies. The fascination with Egypt's ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs has made these displays an important draw for museums. Scientists and curators must now weigh the many questions, including: Should mummies whose linen wraps have been removed be rewrapped for sensitivity? Should the body, including linens, be returned to its coffin? Should that coffin be kept open, closed, or taken off display?Heba Abd El Gawad, an Egyptologist based in Cairo, finds the idea of displaying human remains disturbing. However, she says that she can't speak for all Egyptians so it is important to consider other perspectives. She said that being an expert or specialist does not mean that I can dictate to people how to feel about their ancestors.The Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence is one of the American museums that has rethought how it displays mummies. Since 1938, the museum housed a 2,100-year old mummified priest named Nesmin. He was found wrapped in his coffin and enjoyed by sixth-grade students on field trips. He was eventually moved to a larger central hall in April 2014. This made him the center of a debate about how to treat cultural and racial histories.AdvertisementSome people found the display to be disrespectful or offensive. The museum held a public meeting in 2016. One researcher from Egypt said that she was shocked to see the remains of one of her ancestors displayed in this manner. She also offered hymns and silence and expressed her desire to send flowers to the old man.After much reflection, the museum staff helped Nesmin to his coffin in August 2018. They then closed the lid and returned the mummy back to eternal darkness.CrocodileAdvocates of greater modesty claim that mummies refused to be publicly displayed and that cultural respect requires their removal. Experts also argue that the ancient Egyptians believed in the union of life and death, and that the dead were mummified to give their spirit a body. They would therefore have been open to modern interaction with the living. These arguments are against the current demand to be more culturally sensitive.Jasmine Day, a scholar who is also president of the Ancient Egypt Society of Western Australia, in Perth, stated that everyone is afraid to speak out. She claimed that objections to the display of mummies have been coming from those who are fashionably offended and she was alarmed at the rise of conservatism and risk-aversiveness in museums.Some critics believe that racism was a factor in the White-dominated collection. Mummies were brought back by White collectors, explorers, and archaeologists from Egypt by the hundreds in the 1800s and the early 1900s. Many of the mummies were either purchased from Egyptian authorities or dug up by Egyptian tomb raiders.In 1833, a French tourist stated that it was not acceptable to return from Egypt with only a mummy and acrocodile.The Goucher mummy is a partially unwrapped female, found at the Baltimore Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum. Her arms are crossed and her chest is exposed. Sanchita Balachandran was the conservator and associate director of the facility in 2008. She said that she spent weeks trying to stabilize the condition. Balachandran stated that she spent much time alone with her and has since developed feelings about the public exposure of her mummy.She said that people can be very disturbed when they see a person lying there. Balachandran stated that she was conflicted by the display and has become more protective about the Goucher mammal. People used to take selfies of Balachandran before the pandemic shut down the museum. I'd say, She doesn't consent to being photographed. You can't do this.Scholars and activists calling for change claim that museums have treated mummies as artifacts for years. In fact, Warren's 19th-century realization that Padihershef was the mummy he cared for, the corpse is still under glass in the hospital's old surgical ward, with his head unwrapped and staring forever upward.After the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the ethical view of mummies changed in the United States. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 required that Indigenous remains be returned to the U.S. tribes. After that, museum officials started to be uncomfortable looking at the Egyptians held in their collections. It's easy to see the differences between Egyptian and Native American art when you think about it. Gina Borromeo is chief curator and curator of Ancient Art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum.AdvertisementAre mummified human remains appropriate for an art museum? He is not an art object. Ingrid Neuman (a senior conservator) said that he is a human being. She was there when students raised objections to Nesmin's display at a packed meeting in 2016. A human body is not the same as a painting in a museum.Museums are in trouble because of the clashing opinions. When it comes to displaying mummies, who is listening? What is the modern Egyptian? Researchers and scientists? Or museum patrons? Abd el Gawad stated in a Skype interview that she believes the views of modern Egyptians are often overlooked because of the racist colonial misconception that ancient Egyptian human remains are unclaimed or uncontested.She said that we are not the ancestors the ancient Egyptians see us as,Others believe it is not clear what ancient Egyptians who longed for immortality would have wanted or who should speak on their behalf. Day, an Australian researcher, believes that mummies should be respected, but that it is counterproductive to modern antipathy to the dead. She said via Skype that museums should present mummies as individuals and not just objects in an art museum. Museums can still humanize ancient Egyptians by using Human Remains warnings signs, darkened lighting and restricted access to mummy displays.Peter Lacovara is a former senior curator at Atlanta's Carlos Museum and currently directs the Ancient Egyptian Heritage and Archaeology Fund (New York). He says that objections to the display mummies are uninformed about ancient Egyptian religion. Egyptians were more interested in being seen than anything. They wanted their likenesses to appear. Lacovara stated that they wanted to be remembered. They wanted to be part the world of the living. This is what museum displays do.Mimi Leveque is a Boston consulting conservator that has examined or preserved over 40 mummies. She believes that if handled properly, mummies could be very enriching. She said that a body can tell us a lot if it is treated with respect. Leveque stated that she worked often on mummies in museum laboratories open to the public, which invariably increased the number of people who visited the museum. It was a popular attraction.Leveque stated that she also believes that the ancient Egyptians would approve of museums, and that they are actually helping to fulfill an ancient desire to be remembered for posterity. She said that the excavated person wanted their personality and name to be remembered. "The ancient Egyptians believed that your name will be remembered even if you don't live to see it again, so you will have an eternal life.She suggested that a museum would be a better place for a mummy than the one she had seen. She said, "[Mummies] have in, what is actually, a glorious tomb." "Isn’t that what these museums do?Abd el Gawad says that while this may be true, at least some wishes of ancient Egyptians are known and cannot be interpreted. She said that there are clear instructions about what ancient Egyptians would like to see happen to their bodies upon death. "That doesn't include unwrapping or displaying mummies from the coffin."Doug Struck, a veteran reporter, has covered the Middle East for The Washington Post (The Baltimore Sun). He is a journalist at Emerson College, Boston.This article was originally published by Undark. You can read the original article.
