A handful of British museum chiefs have stopped using the word mummy to describe the remains of ancient Egyptians. .Daily Mail reported these museum chiefs are saying mummy is dehumanizing to people who died and an unwelcome throwback to the United Kingdom’s colonial past..The new acceptable terms are mummified person or mummified remains. .The British Museum said it will use mummified person or mummified remains to emphasize to remind people to be courteous. .“Displays and exhibitions have emphasized that mummified remains are of people who once lived,” said a British Museum spokesperson. .The Great North Museum: Hancock said it has adopted the new terms for its mummified woman Irtyru to acknowledge the history of colonial exploitation and to give her the respect she deserves. .“Legends about the mummy's curse and movies portraying supernatural monsters can undermine their humanity,” said Great North Museum assistant keeper of archaeology Jo Anderson. .National Museums Scotland has removed the word mummy from labels on its human remains. .“Where we know the name of an individual we use that, otherwise we use ‘mummified man, woman, boy, girl or person,’” said a National Museums Scotland spokesperson. .'The word ‘mummy’ is not incorrect, but it is dehumanizing, whereas using the term ‘mummified person’ encourages our visitors to think of the individual.” .Museums are concerned the word has become linked to terrifying monsters because of countless horror movies such as The Mummy. .The word mummy has been used in English since at least 1615. Mummy is derived from the Arabic word mummiya, which means bitumen, used as an embalming substance. .Many mummies found their way to the UK in imperial times, especially during the Victorian age, where there was a trend for unwrapping them. .Anderson said this turned human remains into specimens or curiosities. .Imperial Legacies author Jeremy Black criticized the move by saying when museums cut themselves off from popular culture, “they show contempt for how we all understand words, meanings, and history.”.“It would be better to focus on helping create a setting that encourages all to visit them rather than in pandering to a virtue signalling minority,” said Black. .Canadian archaeology student Emma Palladino said in July anthropologists should stop assigning sex to human remains excavated during archaeological digs to be inclusive. .READ MORE: Anthropologists told they must stop assigning sex to human remains in case they misgender them.“Gender + queer archaeologists and scholars have been working for decades to unpack assumptions that archaeologists make about gender and identity, both today and in the past," said Palladino. .“No field is perfect, and there’s absolutely more work to be done, but by and large archaeologists are acutely aware of how culturally and spatially relative the concepts of sex, gender, and identity are.”
