The Ethical Practice of Displaying Human Remains in Egyptian Museums

Abstract

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) issued a code of ethics for the museums in 2004, several parts of which addressed to how to deal with human remains. This code covers all ethical considerations concerning dealing with human remains. The most interesting part is the one that dealt with need to remove the human remains from public display upon request from the originating communities. Recently, museum professionals have started to investigate this issue from another perspective, raising the dilemma of ethical practice when displaying human remains to the public. They started to think about what the deceased would say if they were asked for their approval for their remains to be displayed to the public after death. Individual museums varied in their opinions, with some approving and others opposing the idea. Some museums have started to set their own ethical codes no how to display remains. Others reached the conclusion that all humans remains should be removed from display. Since this topic has started to be discussed in museums worldwide, I wanted to investigate the opinions of Egyptian museums regarding displaying human remains by means of interviews with museum specialists. Are they concerned about this dilemma? Do they follow ethical procedures in displaying human remains? What are the ethical challenges for museums in relation to the display of human remains, and what changes have there been? A survey was also conducted among members of the Egyptian public to learn how they feel about the display of human remains.

Keywords

• ethics
• mummies
• human remains
• egyptian museums
• display of human remains
• exhibitions