Should Mummies Be in Museums?

It was a parade unlike any other. On the night of April 3, crowds gathered to watch 22 golden trucks drive slowly through the streets of Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Each one carried the mummy of an ancient ruler. The pharaohs and other royalty were being taken to their new home at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

The bodies were mummified more than 3,000 years ago. In ancient Egypt, people often carefully wrapped the bodies of the dead to preserve them. They believed that a person needed his or her body in the afterlife. 

People have been fascinated by mummies for more than a century. They’ve visited museums around the globe to see mummified bodies and learn more about the people of ancient Egypt.

But many museums are rethinking whether mummies are too sacred—or too scary—to display. In September, the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, removed a mummy exhibit that had been on display for decades. Sanchita Balachandran is the museum’s associate director. She says showing the mummy no longer felt right to the museum’s staff. 

“We are really trying to think more carefully about how to be responsible to people of the past,” she says.

Archaeologists point out that bodies from the past provide valuable information.

“Mummies are an important part of history,” says Peter Lacovara, an archaeologist who has studied some of Egypt’s most famous ancient sites. “It is amazing to be able to see people who lived thousands of years ago.”

Studying mummies has helped researchers determine a lot about ancient people, including what they ate and which diseases they suffered from. Some experts argue that displaying mummies in museums will inspire future generations to learn even more from them.

Lacovara says that as long as mummies are treated respectfully and taken care of properly, there’s no reason to remove them from museums. He also points out that the dead were mummified so they could live eternally.

“To have their bodies preserved, visited, and remembered was very important,” Lacovara says. “Museums are doing exactly what they would have wanted.”

Some historians argue that displaying unwrapped bodies in museums disregards the wishes of the dead.

“We know what Egyptians wanted to happen after death, and it never included such a public display,” explains Heba Abd el Gawad. She’s a historian who studies ancient Egypt. “They wanted their bodies left undisturbed.”

Seeing dead bodies can frighten some museum visitors. Abd el Gawad adds that experts can study mummies behind closed doors and then share their findings. 

“We learn nothing by seeing a dead body publicly displayed without her or his consent,” she says. 

Many scholars say it’s not OK to disturb a body in its final resting place just to satisfy curiosity. 

“Mummies are not things—they were humans, like us,” says Abd el Gawad. “It’s disrespectful to display them like objects that museum visitors use as backgrounds for selfies.”