British museums shift ‘mummy’ language to ‘mummified persons’ to honor dead

Misty Severi

January 25, 02:08 PM January 25, 02:08 PM

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Multiple British museums are changing their language when referring to mummies, referring to them as “mummified persons,” or the name of the historical figure, to pay more respect to the dead.

The British Museum and the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle, England, are changing the way they address ancient Egyptian human remains in order to emphasize that the remains once belonged to a real person. It also helps visitors stop thinking of mummies as a supernatural monster.

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Adam Goldwater, the museum manager at the Great North Museum, explained that visitors often did not view the museum’s mummified woman Irtyru as a person, according to visitor research.

“[By] displaying her more sensitively, we hope our visitors will see her remains for what they really are — not an object of curiosity, but a real human who was once alive and had a very specific belief about how her body should be treated after death,” Goldwater told CNN.

At the British Museum, the word “mummy” has not been banned as previously suggested and is still used in signs and across the galleries. But the new exhibits reflect the new term of “mummified remains” and the person’s name, if known. At the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, the word “mummy” is used as an adjective for objects, such as a “mummy mask.”

“Where we know the name of an individual we use that, otherwise we use ‘mummified man, woman, boy, girl or person’ because we are referring to people, not objects,” a spokeswoman for the National Museum told the Daily Mail. “The word ‘mummy’ is not incorrect, but it is dehumanizing. Whereas using the term ‘mummified person’ encourages our visitors to think of the individual.”

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Although mummies originate in Egypt and are of Egyptian people, many mummies were transported to Great Britain during its imperial age, according to the Daily Mail. However, the British Museum’s collection predates that, having acquired 150 items from a private collection in its inception in 1753, according to its website.