Editoral: Exploitation Of Mummies
In 1820, after an Egyptian mummy had created a considerable sum from its public viewing, John Warren, a Harvard professor of anatomy and surgery, was commissioned to cut it open, but Warren remarked he had been “unwilling to disturb” the Egyptian mummy and “left everything on the body in the same state as it” came from Thebes, Egypt (Warren 13).
The storing and displaying of Egyptian bodies started in the mid-sixteenth century as looted and excavated items began making their way into private collections and showings in France and Britain (Gordon). These mummified bodies are in the intimate journey of “Ka '' or the soul led by Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, into the kingdom of Osiris, the land of the dead. The elaborate practice of mummification was a 72-day process in which all the body’s organs except for the heart, the house of the soul, are removed. A process that is to ensure the safe passage of the soul by preserving the dead’s earthly life.
This past year I have been fortunate enough to visit the Egyptian exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Life, which houses the coffin of Hornak, acquired in 1994 and the After Life exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, which houses the coffin of Pa-ankh-en-Amun, acquired in 1910. Both these exhibits affect the perception of death by visitors, making it seem objectified and otherworldly to die. The modern world continues to undermine the intimate rituals of the ancient Egyptian people by exploiting, dehumanizing, and objectifying the cultural sacredness of death.
Art exhibits have used alluring shows such as the famous traveling Samurai, Dali, and Egyptian exhibits to create a fast cash flow for the museum’s venture. Before having their permanent Egyptian feature of Horankh, the Dallas Museum of Art hosted Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs in 2008, and Divine Felines in 2016. During the 40 years of the traveling Tutankhamun show was live, it had turned into a multi-million dollar industry that brought in millions of visitors to look at the boy king, attracting various documentaries, archaeologists, and scientists to examine his long-dead body. Problems of ownership also came up during the tour, as Egypt disputed the selling of sculptures from the tomb under a 1970 UNESCO act, an act to prohibit the export of cultural property, but the auction house claimed the items within Tutankhamun's tomb were acquired before the UNESCO act (Cohen). These problems of ownership play into the curation of how art is traded throughout the world. Based on this we start to consider, who really owns the Egyptian mummies? The Egyptians that had long worshiped them or the archaeologists and great lords that had dug them up.
The ancient Egyptians believed that the pharaohs were the protectors of Maat, the Egyptian way of life. As such the pharaohs were considered to be the divine intermediary between god and humans (“Pharaohs”). This became especially vital when excavating the Valley of Gods, the burial site of the pharaohs of the new kingdom. Located in modern-day Luxor, the Valley of Gods had been looted by soldiers and excavated by rich lords in search of glory and valuable artifacts that were buried underneath with the kings. These ancient tombs are ideally graves that start the process of the soul from the living to the afterlife, built by the deceased’s family to ensure a safe passage to the land of Osiris. Are we disrupting the peace of ancient resting places in the name of science and curiosity? This question of ethics was brought into perspective during the 1990 Act of Native American Graves and Repatriation.
In 1990, the United States passed the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act as an echo of the civil rights tension of the era. This act called for the return of remains and funerary objects to native people of lineages it was taken (“Native American”). It was enacted by the United States Congress to create a greater understanding of different cultures and to acknowledge that human remains of ancestors must be treated with respect and dignity. This act begs the question of the difference between the remains of Native Americans and Egyptians.
After we returned from the museum I conducted a review with my fellow classmates at Liberty High School and based on how they felt about the coffin and Mummy of Hornakin at the Dallas Museum of Art; 57% of my classmates agreed that showing a coffin in a museum is objectification. This viewing of mummies to the public through private collections and museums had been around for many centuries; it’s important that we treat mummies as humans in their death rather than pieces of history.
Ancient cultures and rituals continue to be undermined for science, history, and most importantly, money, this exploitation and dehumanization of death continues to exist in the modern world. The current society understands the rituals of mummification, so it’s time to stop digging graves of the dead just for them to be objectified like the rest of history as they lie in the peace of death. Now, let’s put down our scalpels of curiosity as Dr.Warren once did, and let them rest.
Work Cited
“Coffin of Horankh.” Dallas Museum of Art, 2023, www.dma.org/art/collection/object/3304922. Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.
“Coffin and Mummy of Pa-Ankh-En-Amun.” Arts of Africa, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2023, www.artic.edu/artworks/64339/coffin-and-mummy-of-pa-ankh-en-amun. Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.
Cohen, Alina. “How King Tut Exhibitions Became a Multimillion-Dollar Industry.” CNN, Cable News Network, 26 Nov. 2019, www.cnn.com/style/article/king-tut-exhibitions-artsy/index.html. Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.
Gordon, Alexander. An Essay towards Explaining the Hieroglyphical Figures, on the Coffin of the Ancient Mummy Belonging to Capt. William Lethieullier., 1733,
https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/99104543113506421. Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.
“Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 2022, www.nps.gov/subjects/nagpra/index.htm. Accessed 19 Oct. 2023.
"Pharaohs." Education, National Geographic, 2023
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/pharaohs/. Accessed 17 Oct. 2023.
Warren, John. Description of an Egyptian Mummy, Presented to the Massachusetts General Hospital : With an Account of the Operation of Embalming, in Ancient and Modern Times, 1821, https://wellcomecollection.org/works/vubn4tyc. Accessed 19 Oct. 2
