English museum asks visitors if it should display 2,700-year-old Egyptian mummy

Manchester exhibit invites public input on whether ancient human remains should stay in gallery or be removed

The mummified body of Asru, a 2,700-year-old woman from ancient Thebes, on display at Manchester Museum. Photo: Manchester Museum / The University of Manchester

The Manchester Museum in northern England is asking visitors whether it should withdraw an ancient Egyptian mummy from its displayed collections, 200 years after it was first shown.

The mummified body of a woman called Asru, who lived in ancient Thebes 2,700 years ago, has been on regular display at the museum since she was unwrapped from her wooden sarcophagi in 1825.

Now, a small plaque has been placed next to her body, asking visitors to decide whether or not to keep displaying the artefact.

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“Asru’s mummified body was unwrapped at the Manchester Natural History Society in April 1825. She has regularly been on display for two centuries since.

“In that time, we have also changed as a museum and are thinking more about how we care for people.

“To mark 200 years since her unwrapping, we would like to start a conversation about her future.”

Visitors are invited to share their thoughts online or through a small postal box next to the display.

It is part of a wider conversation that museums in the UK are having about their colonial histories behind their collections.

Ancient artefacts were often taken by European archaeologists and explorers from their sites and displayed back home, in acts which today would be considered art theft and looting.

The Manchester Museum says that “decolonising” is an “integral part” or its mission.

“Decolonising is a long-term process that starts with acknowledging the true, violent history of colonialism and how it shapes our world and this museum,” it says on its website.

British cotton merchants Robert and William Garnett acquired the coffins with the mummy in the ruins of Thebes in Egypt in the early 1800s and later donated it to the museum. Their father John Garnett was a known slave trader.

Curator Dr Campbell Price described the sacred rituals through which Asru was first buried.

“When she died, transformative rituals of mummification were performed on her body, which was carefully wrapped in layers of linen cloth,” he said, in a video about the work.

Hieroglyphs on the coffins, one inside the other, give the names of her mother, Tadiamun and her father an “important official” Ta-Kush.

The decision to unwrap her in 1825 was typical of the period’s fascination with artefacts, the body and pseudosciences that were popular at the time.

“Such a decision was not uncommon as a form of investigation and entertainment, in 19th century learned societies” Dr Price writes in a blog post about Asru.

Subsequent biomedical investigation has estimated Asru to have died at about the age of 60.