"Human Remains" isn't specific enough

[Woodenwonder]

Last weekend had an impromptu wander around the world museum in Liverpool. (Fantastic and free). Anyway in the Egypt section it states that the next exhibit features human remains or words to that effect. I'm thinking a sarcophagus with a mummy inside. And yes that was there, a couple of examples of wrapped up mummies, tastefully and respectfully displayed. Turn the corner and there are 3+ corpses. Not wrapped up and obviously somewhat dessicated.

I'm not squeamish but I find looking at a collection of led out bodies (albeit 1000s of years old) a bit disrespectful for want of a better word. It made me feel really weird.

Yes these souls are long gone but I was not prepared to see them laid out in that way. I don't think I was even expecting full bodies.

Aibu to think the sign could have been a touch more descriptive before entering the room?

The museum is a fantastic place but I just felt a little rattled.

I wonder why there 🤔 is so much arrested development histrionics going on nowadays?

that's the nub of the question...

It's a bloody ruddy quandary

So, you went to look at dead bodies and were shocked to see dead bodies? 🤔

A bit of advice, don't go to the zoo if you don't want to see animals in cages.

Yes I am. I'm also aware that the words "human remains" means dead people. I assume you knew that?

To be fair, enlightened zoos do not have cages these days... Not that I'm advocating zoos per se, but some "facilities " do amazing rescue or conservation work. They shouldn't need to, but you can't roll back time and change history. I'm personally a huge supporter of Monkey World...

Oops, I digress....

Meant to post on this thread this morning so sorry if this has already been said.

The phrase "human remains" is used because it has a precise meaning in the guidance (possibly legislation?) that museums work to. This was after a campaign by groups such as Honouring the Ancient Dead.

I learnt about this on an Open University course once.

As a side note, I think the curators would be pleased their exhibition and signage made you think, OP!

There is a great thriller called Talking God about this issue by the late American writer Tony Hillerman.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-for-the-care-of-human-remains-in-museums

It's guidance not legislation. Here it is.

Write wnd tell the museum. Perhaps mummified human corpses would cover it better.

Great input, thanks 👍

It's a museum for goodness sake! You must have led a sheltered life.

OMG! This is a joke, isn’t it? Those mummies have been in the museum since I was a child, and we didn’t have ‘warning’ signs back then and you do know that the mummy cases and wrapped mummies often contain human remains. As a Liverpool teacher, I have taken many classes of children and not one has ever made a comment like this. The children were and are absolutely fascinated. Yes, they were people but their spirits/souls have long since gone and digging up and examining bones is what archaeologists do. Archaeologists today tend not to unwrap the mummies so as to preserve what remains. They also treat the bodies with respect unlike the Victorians who unwrapped them.

Sometimes it's good to feel uncomfortable and come face to face with things that might be unexpected and discombobulating.

It helps grow resilience.

You never know what life is going to throw at you,. We've already seen a global pandemic recently, look at how the people of Ukraine's lives have been turned upside down by war. Toughness, bravery and resilience are all deeply undervalued in the UK today.

You've seen something disturbing, but you're okay. Rather than finger point at the museum who had given fair warning, try and see the positive in the experience.

We can't always shield ourselves from the darkness.

I don’t feel it’s respectful for bodies to be displayed like this. What’s the purpose of it?

YEP

For their kids, and their grandkids.

Every single post death ritual we do is for the deceased's descendants. Not for the dead, they're dead, they literally don't care.

2000 year old mummy's don't have a lot of descendants that know that's who they are. Who is it causing an issue to if they're in a museum instead of a grave?

Plus we are all in denial about the fact that we will (eventually) be forgotten after death. Death rituals are primarily about reassuring the living that their lives matter.

"No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away - until the clock he wound winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life…is only the core of their actual existence."

A Terry Pratchett quote that I used at my Mum's funeral.

We matter after we die, but most of us only matter to the people that cared for us. Yes, you get the occasional Isaac Newton or Robin Williams or Elvis, who will matter for some for centuries after their death. But for most of us, the ripples will vanish once our grandkids die, maybe our great grandkids.

Once that happens, we don't matter. At best, like the Mummys, we are still matter.

@Woodenwonder

Just wondering 🤔 if an image of the Grim Reaper like those dark comedy horror films Scream ect 😱

that kind of picture signage for the Snokeflakes generation, be better fit to prep you for anything that's out of your bubble 🫧 wrapped comfort zone,
instead of the word " human remains"..?

what do you think?

Ummm.. probably descendants

YABVU. One of the silliest posts I've read on Mumsnet.

Not exactly to the point but someone I used to work with accidentally called our HR department Human Remains.
It stuck, of course!

Many indigenous peoples don’t have such a narrow view of what constitutes descendants, though, and the human remains from First Nations, colonised peoples etc were often obtained by violent colonial ‘trading’, looting or desecration of burial sites, which turned people into exotic ‘objects’ for display in the museums of colonisers or other dominant groups. That’s not even going into the way these bodies and body parts were used to ‘prove’ forms of scientific racism, via skull measurements etc used to argue for the intellectual inferiority of ‘savage’ races.

It doesn’t even require the thefts to take place geographically distantly — look up the skulls of Inisbofin (a 19thc Cambridge anthropologist based in what is now part of Trinity College Dublin looted graves on Inisbofin in 1890 as part of a trip down the west of Ireland measuring islanders’ skulls to research their resemblance to ‘inferior races’.)

This is a good round up of current scholarship:

https://daily.jstor.org/human-remains-and-museums-a-reading-list/

This is the policy on the retention, display, deaccession etc of human remains from the National Museum of Ireland — I imagine it’s fairly standard for European museums, as it cites EU legislation, as well as UNESCO.

https://www.museum.ie/getmedia/80bd1b97-7ffb-4bac-adf9-c45f71041611/NMI-Human-Remains-Policy-2019-2023-FINAL.pdf

Let me ruminate...🤔

Well that takes some doing, I graciously accept that withering accolade , means a lot coming from a randomer on the internet 😀

@Acer

I wonder in America 🇺🇸 how much of the quite recent concern in regards of cultral deceased relics in museums being hidden away cause of sensitivities,

is to a certain extent just virtue 🤔 signaling?
especially in regards of historic connection to colonisation ect

My thinking for this is that America's track record for race relations is problematic at times,

for example similar to the Middle East making a a big show about " look we now allow our women the option of driving whithout a male charperone, usauly a member of familiy,
to keep on eye 👁 on you,
"Look how progressive we are," as a society nowadays,
"look how far we have come" in our society ect
that type of facade,

the reality as we all know, especially in certain parts of Middle East when it comes to womens human rights is very problematic ..