British Museum: No, we didn’t ban the word mummy

Mummy or mummified? A debate erupted after a heated article — and a headline that went on the lap for a long time. We go through the rounds.

The British Daily Mail recently reported that many museums in Great Britain ban the word mummy. This has since been widely reported, as well as in the Swedish media.

This is what it says, for example, in the SVT article on the web:

Many museums in Great Britain, such as the British Museum in London, have stopped using the term “mummy”, which is considered inhumane. Instead, the remains are presented as a “mummified person”.

From the SVT article from Feb 1

Described in the Daily Mail as “I wake upHowever, they objected to the submission of the paper, though they would have banned the word mummy.

several Fact checker They contacted the museums and got the following:

The British Museum in London

Yes, the mummy concept survives in the various museum exhibits. to Reuters news agency A British Museum spokesperson tells that the word “mummy” and the phrase “mummified person” are used in the museum’s current exhibitions. There are also no plans to phase out the word mummy. “The museum has not outlawed the term ‘mummy’ and it is still used in our galleries,” a museum spokesperson wrote to Reuters in an email.

Danish fact-checkers at Tjekdet been in contact with Two other museums mentioned in media reports.

The Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh

The British Museum has been erroneously attributed in various media to statements from the Daily Mail article. One, that the word inhuman mummy, actually comes from a spokesperson for the National Gallery of Scotland – and this is what he said:

When we know the name of an individual we use it, otherwise we use “man, woman, boy, girl, or mummified person” because we refer to people, not things. The word “mummy” is not correct, but it is dehumanizing, unlike the expression “mummified person” that encourages our visitors to see the individual.

From the Daily Mail article

In Swedish publications – For example on the Bulletin website – Is this confusion happened. The leaflet reads: “According to a spokesperson for the British Museum, the word is ‘an attack on the ancient Egyptians and dehumanizing the dead.’ Nor does the aggressive expression come from a spokesperson for the British Museum. In the Daily Mail article, it is not related to any statement from my manager. Museum at all, it is a word added by the newspaper itself.

Världens Historia did the same and also has confusion as to who said what in its title: The British Museum now considers the word ‘mummy’ offensive..

But back to the National Museum of Scotland, which was actually expressed as inhumane. They answer the fact-checker I find that the word mummy is used, but to describe things, for example a mummy’s coffin and a mummy’s bandage.

The museum has also responded American CNN channel They are constantly making changes to their stands and signage.

“We’re thinking about how we can present imperial and colonial history to our audience,” a CNN spokesperson said.

Museum of the Great North: Hancock in Newcastle

Museum director He says to Tckdit that his museum had not banned the word mummy and described the Daily Mail article as “very bad journalism”. Museum representatives previously raised the use of the word mummy as problematic In a blog post from 2021.

Written by Joe Anderson, Vice President of Archaeological Collections at Great North Museum: Hancock. In the blog post, the careless handling of mummified corpses is reviewed, with particular focus on the story behind one of the museum’s mummies, which for many years was believed to be a woman named Erteru. Please read the exciting story here – But we continue with our case, that is, what museums have already done in Great Britain.

What happened?

According to its own statement, the British Museum has not stopped using the word mummy, but advocates the need to express yourself so that visitors have seen the person as the mummy before.

The Daily Mail has changed the headline so that it is no longer readable “British Museum bans ancient expression out of ‘respect’ for 3,000-year-old dead”But on the other hand without notifying the readers that the article has been corrected.

The Daily Mail also added the British Museum’s objections.

What has happened is that when asked about mummies, museums always answer that there are too many problems in dealing with mummies’ remains and the public image of mummies. So did Egyptologist Sophia Hagmann in the SVT feature.

Mummies are treated as if they were not human. They were displayed in cabinets as curiosities, emptied as entertainment, and Egyptian corpses were taken to medicine. Paint and paper were made. She told SVT: Ancient Egyptian corpses were used in the most bizarre and disrespectful way.

Hägglund welcomes the discussion but says she hopes the discussion will evolve.

– This is something that needs to be raised. But perhaps not the term in the first place, but the whole view of humanity and the view of history that we represent.

It’s good to think about it

Go to the original source: The Daily Mail hasn’t gotten much traction for its own article, it has a few thousand interactions on Facebook and has been shared fewer times on Twitter, but the claims it made have reached a few outlets. Not all of this makes it clear where the information is coming from—and in some cases, citations and details have become garbled.

Read about the source: You should try to find your way back to the original source and be a little concerned with the type of source. The Daily Mail is one of Britain’s most prolific tabloids and has received so much skepticism that Wikipedia has begun to regard it as Unreliable source 2017. Anyone wanting to put a Daily Mail article as a source on Wikipedia has been asked to find the same information elsewhere. This does not mean that the information from the Daily Mail is automatically wrong, but it might be a good idea to check the claims and see where to read.

neutral language: When it comes to the media, one must watch out for non-neutral language and expressions that belong more to opinion journalism. In this case, the article has attracted politically charged expressions, such as “wake up” museum directors and “signs of goodness,” and has also been widely disseminated in contexts in which people like to engage in this kind of discussion.

What really happened? As far as we can tell, there’s been a missing event lately. It’s not like the museums have come out together and announced some kind of change, and that makes you suspect the Daily Mail is some kind of click-hunt. The position, the museums agreed, they had for a long time – and what seems to have happened is that the newspaper found out about it and decided to put out a very scathing article about it.

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