UK MPs urge ban on Egyptian mummy displays in British museums

For centuries, ancient Egyptian mummies have been the most reliable crowd-pleasers in museums across Britain.

London's British Museum alone holds over 100 mummies - bodies wrapped in linen and placed in coffins, some over 4,000 years ago.

The UK's popular obsession with mummies dates back centuries, and many medieval Europeans ate body parts of Egyptian mummies, believing they could cure diseases. 

Most mummies still on display in Britain today were brought over during the 19th and early 20th centuries and have been a staple of museum culture ever since.

But a group of British parliamentarians is calling for this to end.

A new report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Afrikan Reparations, titled "Laying Ancestors to Rest", calls for an end to the public display of Egyptian mummies and other human remains.

The report condemns the practice of displaying mummies and body parts of Africans brought to Britain during the colonial era as "dehumanising".

It calls for human remains, including skeletons, skin and hair, to be repatriated to their countries of origin wherever possible.

Body parts on display

The report cites the extraordinary case of Zaki el-Salahi, who was horrified to see the body parts of his ancestors on display during a visit to the Anatomical Museum at the University of Edinburgh.

The remains had been taken by the British after the Battle of Omdurman in modern-day Sudan in 1898.

"I found myself in a mix of freeze and fight immediately upon seeing my ancestors' body parts," he said. "To see that their graves had been robbed and that their heads were brought back as trophies and then the trophies were used for race science... it was so overwhelming."

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It is possible to buy and sell human body parts in the UK as long as they are not acquired illegally or used for transplants.

The APPG has proposed that the sale of human remains should be criminalised altogether, pointing to examples in Britain where the spine of a six-year-old was used as a handbag and foetuses were made into earrings.

"It’s shocking that institutions continue to display African ancestral remains or that a market still exists for them in prestigious auction houses," said Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the APPG.

"Internally driven institutional reforms have been slow and inconsistent. It’s time for the government to lead, establishing robust legal frameworks to ensure the dignified treatment and rightful return of these remains."

It is likely that the report will be taken seriously and widely debated in Britain's heritage sector.

In recent years, there have been lively debates on the issue, with some museums removing human remains from exhibitions.

In 2020, the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford removed its Egyptian mummies from display, along with its collection of shrunken heads of the Shuar from the rainforests of Peru and Ecuador.

'I found myself in a mix of freeze and fight immediately upon seeing my ancestors' body parts'

 - Zaki el-Salahi, museum visitor

Other museums have adapted their exhibits.

Members of staff at the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle upon Tyne were shocked when they realised that many visitors did not understand that one exhibit - Irtyru, a mummy who dates to around 664 BCE - was a real person. 

As a result, the museum joined the National Museums Scotland in changing the term "mummy" to "mummified person" in 2023, a term some see as less dehumanising.

The APPG has proposed that museums, universities and other institutions be required to have a licence to store ancestral remains and can only display them "if appropriate consent is obtained or for religious or funerary purposes".

"The continued presence of these remains in British institutions causes profound distress to diaspora communities and countries of origin, particularly when they are displayed or sold at auction."