Mummies: Who owns the dead?
Overview
Are mummies pieces of history, or the sacred remains of human ancestors?
Mummies: Who owns the dead?
Mummies are very old dead human bodies that were preserved with flesh still on their bones. Some peoples have a tradition of making mummies when people die. Early Egyptians preserved the bodies of dead kings and queens. They believed this would make sure of a good afterlife for these people.
Recently, people have discovered naturally created mummies. These have been found all over the world. One mummy was found in the Alps. It looks like it was accidentally frozen in a glacier. This mummy is called the Iceman. Scientists have presumed that the Iceman is over 5,000 years old!
There is a diversity of opinions about what to do with mummies when they are discovered. Should they be removed and examined? Should they be left where they are? Many people believe that moving a mummy from its burial place shames the dead. They argue that mummies preserved by humans were honored by their culture for religious or other reasons. We should respect these rituals. We should not damage the burial ground. We should not move the dead. Some people argue that even mummies that were created naturally, like the Iceman, should not be moved after death. Keeping mummies in place should be done out of respect.
Other people say it would be wrong to give up the chance to learn from mummies. We can discover a lot about human history by studying these ancient human bodies. They can reveal clues about these people. We can find out what people ate. We can learn about the tools people made. We can know about what they wore, and how they lived and died. They can also help to enhance archaeologists’ understanding of human migration patterns. For example, scientific tests have revealed information about where the Iceman might have traveled in his lifetime.
Even among people who agree that we should remove and study mummies, there are a lot of different ideas about where the bodies should be taken. Some think that each mummy belongs to the country where it was first identified. They believe that researchers in its home country have the right to take ownership of the mummy.
Others believe that each mummy should go to the museum or university that can study and protect it best. This could mean the mummy would be moved to a different country. These people say that the home country cannot always take the best care of the mummy. If a mummy isn’t handled carefully, it will deteriorate. It will no longer be useful for scientific knowledge at all.
What do you think?
Credits:
- Text source: Word Generation by SERP and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
- Image source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0