Morality of displaying human remains (Mummies Etc)

[Leader Bee]

What is the general opinion on display of human remains in musems? Originally these people were given a burial according to their religious and cultural beliefs and it would seem to me disrespectful to exhume and display them for the public.

 

There's the argument of course that placing mummies for example in a museum instead of leaving them in their dusty, secluded desert homes is safer and saves them from destruction and theivery as "artefacts" but i still can't get past the fact that Egyptian mummies at the very least have obviously been dealt with ceremoniously (perhaps ice mummies and ones found in peat bogs could be argued differently; or is there evidence of this being a burial practice too?)

 

Although their value in historical research is undeniable i find it somewhat wrong for this to happen. Cases like Lenin, who was recent enough to give consent for his display I am fine with but I would like to see what others opinions on the practice is or if you have any further points you feel we could discuss?

[Doc. Josh]

That is a great point however i believe the lesser of the two evils would be to protect such great kings and mummies from theives. But for those persons on display without consent like the john doe's from china on display at the ""bodys"" exibit i feel is very taboo indeed. But for the greater good of science and knowledge it is a necessary evil. we must cross boundrys to exceed the next.

[John Cuthber]

I shall reserve judgement on this issue until I am dead. If anyone then displays my mortal remains I will see how I feel about it. If it troubles me, then I will come back and haunt them.

[zapatos]

The dead person and their dead relatives don't care.

The further in time you move from when the person died, the less the opinion of their decendants (or others with a vested interest) matters.

The less effort the relatives (or others with a vested interest) put into caring for the remains, in other words if they effectively abandoned the remains, the less their opinion matters.

Any display of remains should be respectful.

 

From my perspective the decision on whether or not (and how) to display remains should in large part be based on the above.

[Marat]

The problem is that archeology hybridized with a heavy dose of political correctness now assumes that the distant racial descendants of important archeological finds which happen to be human burials are vitally concerned about what happens to these remains. The result is that the remains cannot be disturbed and knowledge for the entire world cannot advance because some people who are only theoretically linked to the remains are deemed to have some sort of legal or moral interest in the bodies' 'sacredness,' even though their own religious views would be anathema to those of the mummies and the people who buried them. So for example, before disturbing an ancient burial site sacred to the ancient Incas you now have to beg the local Roman Catholic Native people for their permission, which they often refuse to give after you explain to them what an Inca mummy is and they get the idea that you think it's valuable.

 

A major mistake in ethics is made by assuming that the sacredness of humans, which no one should dispute, involves the sacredness of the human body per se, which is erroneous, since what we really value morally in humans is their freedom, their autonomy, and their lives, not whether every bit of their body is intact even if they no longer want it, or their corpse is treated as though it still had the noble attributes of a genuine human. Every time you defecate you shed some tiny skin cells in your feces, so you might as well preserve your turds in a sacred human tissue museum as require the equally imaginary 'sacredness' of a rotten corpse to inconvenience science, medicine, or the advance of any other area of knowledge.

 

I would extend the point further and say that we should freely disinter the corpses of famous persons to solve various historical mysteries with no qualms about getting the consent of their relatives, such as had to be done to open the tomb of President Zachary Taylor recently to settle the issue of whether he was poisoned. Historically important knowledge belongs to the world, so its empirical sources do as well, and not just to the relatives of the dead. The Russian government has recently refused to let the grave of Tsar Alexander I be opened to settle the important mystery whether he was really buried there or in fact slipped away to become a Siberian monk after faking his death, and this just superstitiously impedes the advance of knowledge.

[Dekan]

All this hoo-ha about displaying corpses in museums. Doesn't it mainly come from ethnic minorities like Native North Americans and Australian Aborigines. Who are only raising the silly issue, to get back at Whitey and reap some compensation money.

 

Wouldn't you be gratified and honoured to have your corpse preserved and displayed in a museum? It's a kind of glass-cased immortality. I love the idea.

[rktpro]

All this hoo-ha about displaying corpses in museums. Doesn't it mainly come from ethnic minorities like Native North Americans and Australian Aborigines. Who are only raising the silly issue, to get back at Whitey and reap some compensation money.

 

Wouldn't you be gratified and honoured to have your corpse preserved and displayed in a museum? It's a kind of glass-cased immortality. I love the idea.

 

No, that's not what everyone thinks. All have their own views and they feel that right which their religion specifies.

If you are going to be preserved then you would be a great mind or a single corpse they could get.

Well, we can't ask anyone about mummie's wish to be preserved or not. There isn't an authority. Is there any?

[Dekan]

No, that's not what everyone thinks. All have their own views and they feel that right which their religion specifies.

If you are going to be preserved then you would be a great mind or a single corpse they could get.

Well, we can't ask anyone about mummie's wish to be preserved or not. There isn't an authority. Is there any?

 

 

As for mummies, perhaps the authority is this - the mummified person clearly wanted to achieve "immortality". Otherwise, why bother to get mummified at all?

 

But getting mummified, while necessary, isn't sufficient. Not if you want to achieve "immortality", in the sense of being a kind of continuing "presence", recognised by future generations. You can get future generations to recognise you best, if you're on display in a public place - such as a museum. Like the Cairo museum, where Tutankhamen is displayed. (Or least his coffin is - the actual mummy is presumably down in the basement, getting X-rayed and pulled to bits).

 

The point is - Tutankhamen has achieved his world-wide fame and immortality, by reason of being displayed in a museum.

 

If he wasn't in the museum - if Carter and Carnavon hadn't dug him up in 1922 - he'd be just an insignificant minor pharaoh, unknown to the world at large.

 

So don't you think Tutankhamen must be very pleased to be in the museum - it's given him his desired "immortality." Or at least, the best version of it a human can achieve.

[Dave World]

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 is a valuable model for how we should think about this topic. The sovereign Indian tribes of the U.S.A. are firm on this matter. All such remains should be given over to the people from whom they were taken if such people can be identified, and if they express a desire for such to take place. At the very least, ALL human remains should be codified as sacred.

For further information please go here.

Edited August 7, 2011 by Dave World

[rktpro]

As for mummies, perhaps the authority is this - the mummified person clearly wanted to achieve "immortality". Otherwise, why bother to get mummified at all?

 

But getting mummified, while necessary, isn't sufficient. Not if you want to achieve "immortality", in the sense of being a kind of continuing "presence", recognised by future generations. You can get future generations to recognise you best, if you're on display in a public place - such as a museum. Like the Cairo museum, where Tutankhamen is displayed. (Or least his coffin is - the actual mummy is presumably down in the basement, getting X-rayed and pulled to bits).

 

The point is - Tutankhamen has achieved his world-wide fame and immortality, by reason of being displayed in a museum.

 

If he wasn't in the museum - if Carter and Carnavon hadn't dug him up in 1922 - he'd be just an insignificant minor pharaoh, unknown to the world at large.

 

So don't you think Tutankhamen must be very pleased to be in the museum - it's given him his desired "immortality." Or at least, the best version of it a human can achieve.

 

Are you sure that he wanted immorality of public show? I guess he might have wanted immorality because most of the Pharohs at that time wanted so. But, the point here is whether he wanted to be displayed or at least put somewhere else than his burial site, which he might have himself chosen.

[CaptainPanic]

What is the general opinion on display of human remains in musems? Originally these people were given a burial according to their religious and cultural beliefs and it would seem to me disrespectful to exhume and display them for the public.

I do not think it is disrespectful.

 

The ancient pharaos believed in an afterlife, and their burial was intended to make it easy/comfortable/happy in the afterlife.

In these days however nobody believes in those rituals anymore, and the idea of the afterlife has been completely disconnected from any personal posessions or even your physical body. Some people don't believe in an afterlife at all.

 

So, given the modern beliefs, and combine that to the fact that nobody has an emotional bond with someone who is dead for over 3000 years, and I conclude that this is OK.

[Arete]

All this hoo-ha about displaying corpses in museums. Doesn't it mainly come from ethnic minorities like Native North Americans and Australian Aborigines. Who are only raising the silly issue, to get back at Whitey and reap some compensation money.

 

Might pay to educate oneself before making inflammatory false remarks...

 

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/people/aboriginal-remains.html

 

"Aboriginal remains have been removed from graves and burial sites, but also from hospitals, asylums and prisons throughout the 19th century until the late 1940s. Sometimes declared as 'kangaroo bones', they were illegally exported to France, Holland, Scotland, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, England, Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy and the USA".

 

"It is actually on record in the history of Mackay, Queensland, that one overseas collector made a request to the trooper that he shoot a native boy to furnish a complete exhibit of an Australian aboriginal skeleton, skin and skull." —The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 January 1955.

 

"What is also abundantly clear is that there would be no debate at all if the remains were the immediate ancestors of living white Australians."

http://dingonet.com/questfor.htm

 

It's estimated that between 1000 and 10 000 aboriginal remains are still in universities, museums, private collections and other institutions in England alone. I wonder how your average Briton would react if these were British remains forcibly exhumed, not released to families or even bodies of people who were potentially murdered so they could be sold to institutions and private collectors for profit... I don't think there's any sensible way to question the ethics regarding the repatriation of indigenous remains or any sensible scientific argument to keep the remains, specifically when no permission to gather them was sought or given, no work has been published using them and UN declarations insist on their repatriation.

 

Though human remains is the most charged issue, the problems with big European museum and university collections withholding materials is much more widespread. In my own experience working on Australian lizards - the initial type sample of the genus I was working on was held in the PMNH. Despite it not having been even looked at since the early 60's, they refused a loan request from Australian museum I was working at. Finally, when a visit was arranged, they were unable to locate the specimen. We requested it declared lost so we could nominate a lectotype and move forward with our research, which was denied. That type should have been repatriated to an Australian institution long ago. Any argument that a big European institution was a more reliable repository for the specimen is rather invalidated by the fact they LOST it.

 

Collective research experience in Australia would suggest it's not an isolated incident - there's a strong argument that all these artifacts, specimens etc would be more useful, relevant and safe back in the nations they were originally removed from. The colonially inspired attitudes of big, European collections is obsolete and obstructionist in a global scientific community.

[Dekan]

Ok, perhaps I'm being too cynical. Perhaps the Aborigines genuinely want to venerate the purloined bones. But personally, I think lawyers told them: "You could get some compensation money out of this".

 

You mentioned Britons, and how they might react. A few years ago, it emerged that specimens of liver, or kidneys, had been taken out of dead babies. These specimens were preserved in jars, to benefit the progress of medical science. Quite rightly so.

 

But when the relatives of the deceased babies, found out about it, they raised an outcry. Claimed they were "outraged" and "devastated". Wanted the bits of offal back. To be decently buried. Grisly or what!

 

Do you reckon the relatives were motivated by:

 

(a) the desire to bury detached kidneys; or:

 

(b) the desire to win some compensation money

 

I rest my case.

[Arete]

I rest my case.

 

Care to provide any evidence suggesting that compensation has been sought before resting your case on personal speculation?

[Dekan]

Care to provide any evidence suggesting that compensation has been sought before resting your case on personal speculation?

 

No, Arete, I don't need to. I am a human being (well almost) and from my knowledge of human behaviour, I'm quite confident that anyone who says he wants to venerate some old bones, actually wants some money. De essentia hominum.

[Arete]

No, Arete, I don't need to.

 

Actually yeah, you do.

 

The evidence suggests that your statements are false. Over a thousand sets of human remains have been repatriated from Britain to Australia, there's no evidence of single compensation claim and the people actively persuing the repatriations claim cultural and spiritual motivations:

 

"Indigenous appeals for the return of their cultural property is fuelled by a strong belief that the spirits of the dead cannot rest until returned to their 'Country', but is also part of a general reassertion of control over their cultural heritage, whether archaeological sites, sacred landscapes or cultural material, and practice in cultural centres and keeping places." http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/emerging/repatriation/index.html

 

Without proof your speculation is dismissible in its entirety, especially in a science forum.

[Dave World]

To clarify this discussion a bit more, let's try for the correct wordage. To distinguish between mummies and mummy's: "mummies" is the plural of "mummy"; "mummy's" is the possessive form of "mummy". As in "A group of mummies was transported to the museum" versus "The mummy's state of preservation was remarkable". Take it up a notch, if the latter sentence involved more than one of the things, "The mummies' state of preservation was remarkable". Now that's grammar, Mommy. Makes my Mommy's tummy ache. Hah!

Edited August 25, 2011 by Dave World

[GateOfRain]

It just makes them depressed, and depression is a big nono these days. Not moral. Thoughts about dying are for old and dying people. I don't want to show them a mummy either.

 

 

[Guest lab_supplies]

I think the mummies would rather be preserved and showed than being stolen and sold. The ideal situation is if someone would protect the bodies in their resting place but no one would do that without being compensated.

[Ophiolite]

No, Arete, I don't need to. I am a human being (well almost) and from my knowledge of human behaviour, I'm quite confident that anyone who says he wants to venerate some old bones, actually wants some money. De essentia hominum.

Your confidence is misplaced, your humanity questionable.