Museums stop using the word “mummy” out of respect for the remains of ancient Egypt

Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

The The term “mummy” has been distorted for many years and is currently associated with horror characters that are very popular in Halloween, television series and movies, so some British museum representatives have begun calling for the word to stop being used to refer to mummified Egyptian remains.

As reported by the British newspaper Daily Mail, the British Museum and the Great North Museum: Hancock of Newcastle They have begun to stop using the term “mummy” to refer to people who were mummified, arguing that they deserve respect and to recognize that they were people at one time. While the National Museums of Scotlandin Edinburgh, have removed the word “mummy” from the labels of their human remains.

Those responsible for the British Museum affirm that They have banned the term “mummy” out of respect for the Egyptians who died 3,000 years ago.. Instead of “mummy,” the museum considers the term “mummified people” to be more politically correct.

“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 objects”, a spokesperson told the Daily Mail.

to the museums they also worry that the word has been linked to terrifying monstersthanks to countless B-series horror movies such as “The Mummy”, from 1932, or the most recent ones from the early 2000s.

Origin of the word “mummy”

The The word “mummy” has been used in English since at least 1615.but some say that it has a colonial past, since It derives from the Arabic word “mummiya”, which means “bitumen”. and it was used as an embalming substance. Many mummies arrived in Britain in imperial times, especially during the Victorian era, when the fashion for unwrapping them spread.

The word “mummy” is not incorrect. It comes from the Arabic word “mumiya”, which means “wax” or “bitumen”, in reference to the blackish-brown resin used to embalm the dead in ancient Egypt. This embalming process created the characteristic dry and wrinkled appearance of the bodies, which came to be known as “mummies.” The term was later adopted by Europeans in the 16th century to describe similar preserved bodies from other cultures around the world.

You might also be interested in:

Mummified crocodiles emerge from Egyptian tomb, scientists discover their secrets

They discover tunnel under an Egyptian temple that could lead to the tomb of Cleopatra, according to archaeologists