"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'll take your first sentence "they didn't think they'd be on display" to fortify my reason to feel discomfort looking on them

And your last paragraph as some comfort that they're doing ok wherever they may be ☺️

Especially when millions of mummies were ground up for medicines and amulets for centuries. Others were simply burned or dumped on rubbish heaps because their sarcophagai were good money earners for the illegal trade in antiquities.

I was acknowledging they wouldn’t have thought of a future museum, but I don’t think they would have minded given what happened to 99% of mummies. They are the select and lucky few still surviving imho. Of course, if modern day Egyptians wanted all of them back to re-inter them I would respect that as they are their descendants.

I see your point - you are not being precious or snowflakey for yourself but think it’s possibly disrespectful to those dead people and not how they would have envisaged being, um, dead. It is an interesting question.

YANBU not to want to look at them. That sort of thing fascinates me, personally! I love anything like that. But of course it’s fine to be uncomfortable with it if that’s how you feel.

However, YABVU to think that “Human remains” is too vague. Human remains is what you were warned about and human remains is what you saw. If they hadn’t been visible, there wouldn’t have been a warning.

I don't know it I'd prefer being ground up to being ogled in the afterlife,

I also feel quite uncomfy looking at taxidermy in museums too, so I don't know, maybe this feels like a particularly close to home version of it. I feel sadness that once living, loving beautiful beings are on display as padded out costumes.

If you were ancient Egyptian you’d be horrified at the thought of your body being destroyed and then consumed by other humans. Being kept beautifully preserved in a museum is much preferable. The better mummified you are, the better time your soul has.

Yeh I get that..I was maybe naively expecting maybe some bones or similar.

The full people just laying there prone got me a bit shooketh.

Worrying about what they would have thought about it is such a strange line of thinking. They're not thinking or feeling anything, they're dead

I think that you've always got to consider they've got to use a short description that will work if put into Google translate, or is a universal expression used across countries that speak English.

Why do we show any respect to any dead then if that's the case 🤔

Good point

If that museum and seeing mummies freaked you out, don't visit a ossuary!

There's a church in Hythe, Kent with one, and also the Paris Catacombs are classified as an ossuary too.

I would assume human remains means actual human remains on display.

I definitely won't

Would you assume a number of fully intact bodies laid out? Fair enough if yes, I just didn't.

How is it intrusive if the body isn't wrapped? But fine if it is?

How is it gawping when the body isn't wrapped? But fine when it is.

If you think bodies being on display is disrespectful. Why were you fine if they were wrapped? You would still be looking at a display of someone's body.

Human remains means just that. No one promised only wrapped human remains.

"Was I fine when they were wrapped?"

Not really, no, although I was unsure if those remains were real or models - but then turning the corner confirmed that in that particular glass box ,- yes, they were all very real.

I suppose them being wrapped was how they wanted to be left though, in their resting place. So the fact they were unwrapped (either by wilful disturbance or the elements over time) and on display is what felt a bit weird.

Anyway it's a bloody good museum and exhibition and it sounds like lots of MNrs are into it.

@Woodenwonder that's an interesting question with no single answer I think, but broadly I think veneration of the dead is for the comfort of the living, and it tends to be more prevalent among adherents of religions that incorporate supernatural beliefs (the afterlife, ghosts, consciousness distinct from the body etc). Increasingly modern people don't subscribe to these beliefs, and funerary rituals/concepts like "respect for the dead" are declining accordingly. Lots of people now are quite happy with a direct cremation and no ceremony, which would have been unthinkable just a couple of decades ago when the country was still broadly Christian.

If the modern Egyptians want these remains back, then they should be repatriated. But it is odd to see a 21st century British person getting the heebie jeebies about how an ancient Egyptian might feel about their desiccated corpse being ogled by tourists.

Just call me mega empath I don't know 😆 I feel like it's not for me to be looking at them, away from their families.

I also think they belong in Egypt.

@Woodenwonder fair enough, that's your feeling; I don't share it, but I'm not going to sneer at it either. I also think being confronted by the physical evidence of mortality is a powerful experience whatever you believe.

But you were fine. It was the unwrapped ones that bothered you.

You saw the sign saying human remains and were fine when you and the assumption they would all be wrapped. You were fine up until you saw the unwrapped ones.

Why would the sign say human remains if there was just wrapped models? It would say depictions of human remains or similar.

The wrappings didn't often survive. And re wrapping can cause damage.

If you found it disrespectful to have the bodies not kept in the exact way they were buried you wouldn't go to an Egyptian exhibit in another country. As I am sure not many Egyptians wanted their remains transporting to the UK to be put on display, with or without wrappings. 😂

If there's an afterlife I am sure these people are more bother their bodies arent in Egypt rather than wether the wrappings are still on them or not. But you were fine with it until you saw them unwrapped.

I can understand someone feeling bodies on display is disrespectful. I don't understand someone thinking its fine as long as some of the wrapping is left on.

I think I’d be slightly surprised too op, I’d be expecting a small selection of bones or teeth or something like that!
I’d be fascinated in the whole body though; don’t know why but I just would.
However I take human remains to be parts of a human rather than a whole human.
Just the way I’d have read it I guess.

@DyslexicPoster is it a small (and absolutely fantastic) museum in a town beginning with H?

What do you think human remains are?