The Daily Mail (London) gets breathless in reporting that -
museums are hiding away mummies and human remains for fear of offending pagans and other minority groups, it has been revealed.Claims of privacy for the ancient have been highlighted in past posts on this blog (eg here) and pose questions for how we conceptualise post-mortem rights and the rights or responsibility of the living.
They are putting up warning signs, closing previously opened coffins and displaying exhibits in darkened cases.
The move is designed to give the skeletons and mummies 'privacy' and to avoid upsetting faith groups and even some museum staff, according to academic findings.
The newspaper item indicates that Manchester University Museum "at the insistence of a pagan group called Honouring the Ancient Dead" [found here] -
removed the head of an Iron Age bog body – the skull of Worsley Man, which was found buried near Manchester 50 years ago – from display.Apparently we're supposed to snort into our cocoa - pagans!
It also covered up the unwrapped mummy of Asru, the partially-wrapped mummy of Khary, and a child mummy with sheets. The three mummies were uncovered only after a public protest.
Meanwhile, the Egypt gallery at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery has changed its display of Egyptian human remains.
Instead of the previous display of mummies in open coffins, it now exhibits them with half closed lids, which it considers more respectful.
And the Royal Cornwall Museum, in Truro, does not show any images of human remains, other than wrapped mummies, in its online or publicity material.
The Mail reports that the Museum of London policy is that -
As a general principle skeletons will not be on open display but located in such a way as to provide them some “privacy”. This might be in a specially partitioned or alcoved part of a gallery.As you might expect, it gets better -
The trend towards political correctness in museums has been highlighted by Dr Tiffany Jenkins ... her book, Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections, published today, she reveals the radical change in policy on ancient human remains, including Egyptian mummies, skeletons and bog bodies.Perhaps not very remarkable at all ... but I'll suspend judgment until I've read the book and meanwhile not be too fazed by the 'Pagans'.
... such appeals are not confined to once-colonised groups. British pagans formed Honouring the Ancient Dead in 2004 to campaign for reburial and respect for pre-Christian skeletons from the British Isles.
Dr Jenkins said: 'The profession is over-reacting to the claims of small minority groups – such as the Pagan organisation, Honouring the Ancient Dead'.
'Most remarkable of all is that human remains of all ages, and which are not the subject of claims-making by any community group, have become subject to concerns about their handling, display and storage, expressed by influential members of the museum profession.'
The Honouring the Ancient Dead site is rather sweet, with spokesperson (or maybe spokespagan) Emma Restall Orr explaining that reburial -
is at the heart of my work as a priest within the modern Pagan Druid community.Being able to 'breathe' without inconvenient constraints imposed by facts - much more fun to concoct a supposedly timeless tradition and rely on claims of authority that date from the pre-Roman era rather than the forgeries of Iolo Morganwg or the vapid imaginings of 1890s and 1920s romantics - might lead to some scepticism. 'Disputing Stonehenge: Law and Access to a National Symbol' by Penny English in (2002) 1(2) Entertainment Law1 in describing the plethora of self-described UK Druids quotes one authority's comment that -
Let me pose an idea: how would you feel if it were necessary, on every dig, to be in contact with an organisation concerned with the spiritual aspects of the work?
... The project team, including the Highways Agency, construction contractors, landscape architects and archaeologists, have acknowledged Stonehenge to be a working temple for modern Pagans, and sacred for many others. Should the work go ahead, all site personnel will be briefed about the sanctity of landscape and monuments. Archaeologists will talk to Pagan priests who will feed information back into their faith communities worldwide. Rituals to ease environmental and ancestral spirits will be made, and if archaeologists unearth human remains there will be clear consultation between all parties, including Pagan priests, as to their fate.
Stonehenge may be exceptional as an archaeological site; for Pagans the issue of the ancient dead is the same wherever their remains are found.
The root of my spirituality is reverence for nature. Its practice is the forging of sacred relationships within humanity and the environment. As an oral tradition, Druidry does not anchor itself with scientific or historical facts; instead it breathes, shaping itself through stories ancient and modern.
None of these groupings may truly lay any claim to be druidic, separated as they are by at least a millennium from the last vestiges of practising Druid religion. However, Druids claim that their inspiration comes from a spiritual source which transcends linear time, and have as much right to call themselves Druids.Restall Orr explains that -
Attitudes towards the ancient dead are a significant part of the clash between Paganism and fact-searching archaeology. Within Paganism, the dead are revered. Where known, their actions are honoured through stories retold, their wisdom remembered. We breathe their breath, singing the same songs, crying the same tears in the same wind and rain, as we live within the same powers and patterns of nature. As abuse of nature damages an environment, so to dishonour our ancestors is to shift natural patterns. Problems ensue.The same songs? The same tears? Surely not, unless you've been ingesting a magic mushie or two.
