Human remains display
Paper given at an Association of Curators for Collections from Egypt and
Sudan workshop, Exposing Objects- experience of designing and installing
display
The new Egypt gallery at Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery has addressed the
issue of displaying human remains. In the gallery there are two mummies
and a crouched burial. All were on display before in the old gallery. Readers
may have seen the displays here, all will know other galleries, where the
approach to displaying the dead is different in each place.
There is no absolute rule on the display of human remains. There are
guidelines, and there is an ongoing debate. It is a question that
Ethnographers have long discussed, it is current in Archaeology and
Egyptology. Outside pressure is often an issue: in Ethnography, descendants
and more recently national governments have called for repatriation of
human remains, Archaeology is dealing with groups such as Honouring the
Ancient Dead and pagan organisations to discuss the appropriate treatment
of ancient British human remains. As far as I know, Egyptology is not under
this pressure from descent groups or the national government, but the
display of human remains is an issue for museums so Egyptology is involved.
The new gallery at Bristol was done by a project team consisting of
curatorial, learning and design staff. When we were planning the gallery, we
thought long and hard about how we were going to use or show the human
remains in the collection.
We were influenced and informed by the recent discussions raised by the
DCMS Report of the Working Group on Human remains and the Human
Tissue Authority licensing arrangements. Egyptologist Sally MacDonald was
on the DCMS Working Group, but the main thrust of the Report relates to
modern populations and human remains, such as Maori and Aboriginal
Australians. Rosalie David was the only Egyptologist to submit evidence out
of 47 submissions. The DCMS recommendations apply to all HR: that on
display refers to ‘the highest professional standards’
Many museums now have policies on the display of HR: Manchester’s policy
has been adopted by several:

All such displays will always be designed so that the remains are
accompanied by an explanatory interpretation that places them in an
historic context. Display of human remains for aesthetic or artistic
purposes alone will not be permitted.

Research will be carried out to ensure that the display of each set of
human remains is shown in a culturally sensitive manner.

Where human remains are displayed in the museum, there will be a
notice outside the relevant display space alerting visitors to the
presence of human remains.
We were also influenced by our own feelings: maybe an accumulation of
ideas from the debates on human remains, but we did feel it was wrong to
show HR in a blatant manner. Carolyn Graves-Brown at Swansea had the
same feeling: there they decided not to put exposed human remains on
display because it felt ‘wrong’ and disrespectful. She felt that mummies
should be on display: mummies are part of Egypt’s history; human remains
can help people to learn about cultures; it is healthy to understand death;
and the displays can allow people to choose to look, as in the
groundbreaking Digging for Dreams exhibition.
I am probably influenced by being an Ethnographer rather than an
Egyptologist, so I have been thinking about HR in that context for many
years. There is a big difference: with Ethno collections, we are usually
dealing with living relatives only 4 or 5 generations removed. With
Egyptology, we are looking at 70+ generations of not necessarily genetically
related populations. But all this informed our thinking and helped to develop
the philosophy behind the gallery.
Two points from our brief:
2.5
All artefacts will be treated with respect.
3.3 It will also consider current debates and ethical questions.
Respect is the word most used in talking about displaying the dead. We had
to put the mummies on display as we have no storage space for the
mummies and coffins, and they are what people expect to see in an
Egyptology gallery. But having decided they would be in the gallery, we
planned to show them very differently to the way they were shown in the old
gallery.
The old gallery had 2 mummies and the crouched burial on display. The
mummies were shown in their open coffins, one upright and one in a ‘pit’
beneath a glass cover. This way of displaying them was very ‘in your face’,
there was no opportunity of avoiding them, and their burial was split with the
coffin lids on display elsewhere. In any survey of visitors, the mummies were
always the favourite item in the whole museum, but we also knew from
comments and questions that they were the thing many children found
frightening and that many thought they were fakes.
They are now on display in their coffins again, but this time with the lids only
slightly open. The mummy is visible, but not obvious. We feel it is more
respectful, we don’t yet know how our visitors feel.
The box burial is a good example of how thinking about displaying HR has
changed. The box burial was excavated at Meidum in 1909-10 and came to
the museum in 1910.

At some point the complete burial was put into a mahogany display
box that recreated a tomb dug in the sand, where the burial itself was
in a stone cut shaft tomb. A drawing of about 1920 shows small
children hanging over it, fascinated by the body inside. I presume at
that date that it was somewhere in the gallery displaying antiquities
from Britain, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Probably in the 1960s, with no Egyptology gallery, it was isolated from
any other Egyptian material and positioned outside the gent’s toilets,
where it was displayed with no context or reason for many years

In 1982, it was incorporated into the new Egptology gallery, in an area
looking at early dynastic material, but again in a very limited context
and in its sandpit box still.

In 2008, the box burial has been put back on display in the new Egypt
gallery. The context of the burial has been explained, the sand pit
replica removed, the humanity of the dead man emphasised. It is not
on open display: visitors have to choose to look at the body.
The designer has observed visitors and talked to them, and is very happy
with the way that the display works: one young woman who had chosen to
look said it had made her think about respect for dead bodies on display,
which she never would have done before. Our conservator thinks it is like
the worst peep show giving people a vicarious thrill. Who is right? We
planned it to be respectful, is it?
In the last few weeks, there has been much publicity for next years
conference at Manchester. The Egyptology department there is planning a
conference on the ethics of keeping, displaying and analysing Egyptian
mummies: should mummies be displayed outside of Egypt? Should they be
repatriated? Should they be shown in decontextualised displays? There will
be some interesting ideas coming out of that. An archaeology blog about it
wrote:
‘it is a great shame when well meaning organizational pressure leads to the
artificial sanitization of the way in which we perceive past societies and their
cultural output, particularly as regards the exhibits that museums can and
cannot have on display. … museums have a responsibility to display
mummies (and other forms of human remains) in ways which are designed to
inform, involve and interest, rather than to sensationalise’
But maybe we do need to discuss whether mummies and HR should be on
display at all? And what about photographs and X-ray images?
Is there a difference between a wrapped and an unwrapped body? I feel
comfortable putting a wrapped mummy on display in a respectful way. I do
not feel comfortable putting unwrapped mummies or body parts on display.
I admit to being shocked at a display in Truro, where an unwrapped body is
displayed on an intrusive Perspex mount. I was uncomfortable with our old
display of the box burial, where it was displayed in a ‘pit’ and became a peep
show. It had limited information, did not refer to the human in the box, and
misrepresented the context of the burial. Evaluation will show whether we
have just replaced one peep show with another.
I found some interesting comments on the Te Papa blog. Te Papa is the
national museum of NZ, and obviously had an exhibition on Egyptology
featuring one or two mummies. The blog raised the question of the ethics of
displaying human remains and produced interesting views.
One young blogger wrote
‘get over it...
there’s nothing human about a 2,700 year old mummified corpse! Don’t be
so P.C as to miss the awesome privilege of seeing an ancient civilisation far
more historically important than our own’
One blogger described it as a ‘respectful and sensitive display’
Another thought Te Papa could be more radical in its philosophy: ‘Te Papa
has been, and is, a world leader in many respects. As part of that we have an
obligation to lead thinking around museums. Perhaps it's time to overturn
the perception that 'all good museums have mummies'. Do they? Should
they? Museums are not static, and neither is museological thinking. Let's
keep continuing to lead the way and encourage people, includng our staff
and our visitors to ask challenging questions about what museums are, and
who they serve’
Interestingly, a couple of comments were from Maori visitors, and whilst they
were in favour of the respectful dispay of mummies, and found this
exhibition respectful and informative without being sensationalist, they were
both aware that they would not say the same of Maori, ie their own, remains,
due to the close relationship they would feel to the body.
If HR are to be displayed, I would suggest three guiding ideas for the display
of HR - Respect, Context, Humanity – to avoid sensationalism and morbid
curiosity.
sue giles
Curator of Ethnography & Foreign Archaeology
Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives