Where is the dignity in the display of this corpse?

November 07, 2007

It’s the headline of an interesting opinion article in the Irish Independent.

The subject: King Tut, of course.

In his review of Tutankhamun’s new display, Philip Henser writes:

To me, this looks like a sad and an unattractive object. The body of the 19-year-old boy is blackened into charcoal, his teeth peeping through the mouth. I find it difficult to reconcile any kind of notion of the dignity of death with the idea of putting a dead body, however old, in a glass case for people to pay to stare at. The trappings of Tutankhamun's tomb - the sublime funerary mask and the extraordinary beds and caskets - are one thing. They are the trappings of a civilisation, and don't represent a human being, but rather the nobility of his status. But Tutankhamun's corpse is another matter. That, really, is just a human being.

Taking care of mummies is not easy. I’ve asked Eduard Egarter, the official caretaker of Ötzi the Iceman at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, what it is like to take care of the world’s oldest and best-preserved mummy.

Here are his thoughts.