Mummy Porn?

November 04, 2007

Where are the crying children, the boy with no name, the tatooed man, and the smoking woman? One was drowned in a bog, one was hanged, one fell, one died from tuberculosis and one passed in a fever.

Embalmed, sunken, dried out — all are mummies now resting in glass cases in the German city of Mannheim.

Running until March 24, 2008 at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums, Mummies - The Dream of Everlasting Life, is the world's biggest-ever exhibition of mummified bodies, featuring more than 70 mummies – adults, children and animals - from around the world.

Described as a stomach-churning show, this is indeed one of the most discussed collection of mummified bodies.

According to Dietrich Wildung, director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, the exhibition is "mummy porn."

"If you can say that sex sells, then you can also say the mummy sells,” he said in an interview to Deutschland Radio.

Remarking that the Berlin Egyptian Museum's mummy collection is not publicly displayed and that there are plans to send the mummies back to Egypt for proper burial, Wildung added that the Mannheim exhibition is an invasion of privacy and violates the rights of the dead to be left to rest in peace.

Resting in hi-tech display cases seems to be the fate of many mummies. King Tutankhamun has just joined the club.

Today, the famed boy pharaoh has been removed from his sarcophagus and placed in a hi tech climate-controlled glass case, where he will rest – his black, leathery face exposed to 5,000 visitors a day.

The move is aimed at preserving the mummy from humidity and heat - much of it generated by the breath of the tomb’s visitors- and raise money to fund other works in the Valley of the Kings.

Indeed, mummy sells.

Comments

[Donna]

I have nothing against researching and exploring the wonderful world of Ancient Egypt. After all, history is there for us to discover, learn from and protect. I am, however, against the fact of Egyptian Mummies on display. I would think that the Ancient Egyptians would have been mortified to learn that their royals and beloveds were on display for the world to see. Not only is disrespectful, it is disrupting to their beliefs.
The ancients didn't go through all the trouble to hide their royals and belongings for nothing. Setting aside the fact of tomb raiders, they wanted their Pharaohs to have a peaceful afterlife. Displaying their bodies for entertainment isn't exactly..peaceful.
I do say entertainment when displaying the mummies bodies because it is. Sadly, not everyone is interested in seeing a bunch of preserved bodies just because they belonged to a certain culture. People go out of curiosity of what the body looks like after the soul has been long gone. It's morbid, sick and wrong.