I’m not getting the link between “Two and a Half Inches of Fun” and Egyptian culture. I had rather a different idea of what it referred to . . . 
The church-and-state angle is interesting, but is there actually anyone who believes in the ancient Egyptian religion anymore? And do they even have the principle of separation in Egypt?
Using that rationale we can simply close down all the museums and make historical sites inaccessible to the general population because we have photographs and we can read published reports.
Imagine that some of us are truly interested in viewing first hand what we might not otherwise be able to see. If you’re so interested in respecting the dead then why not advocate that we leave them alone and not study them at all? Disrespect is disrespect after all. Imagine if someone dug up your child. Would you be ok with them publishing photos or the results of the disinterment?
Marc
Whoosh?
Two and a Half Inches of Fun, where you aware that at one time, it was illegal for doctors to procure cadavers, to the point where they had to resort to grave robbing, in order to study anatomy and diseases?
What about the fact that mortuary photos used to be quite common-people taking pictures of the dead in their coffins at funeral layouts?
The OP has a point, but this isn’t exactly a new thing is it? Its kind of like pitting the settlers for taking the Indians land- a bit late.
[puffpuff*] Can it wait [puff] just [puff] ten minutes?
Oh please. Like you need more than 6 minutes!
I suggest we need new legislation! These travesties and shenanigans won’t stop until we pass A corpses’ bill of rights!
Can you demonstrate lasting societal harm in “disrespecting” corpses? Whats the worst that can happen? Other than learning from them… because that would be horrible.
I think the OP is a little bit blind to some cultural differences here, frankly.
When I was living in Sicily, I visited the catacombs of Palermo. Does this count as disrespect to the dead? After all, I was looking at centuries-old dead people.
Frankly, if it was disrespectful, I doubt the monks who ran the place would have let us in.
I once read the story of a 19th-Century British physician who was setting up a medical school in China to teach Western scientific medicine to the Chinese. He asked a government official if the school could have some cadavers for dissection. The official was horrified! Desecration of corpses is barbaric! However, he assured the doctor the school could have an unlimited supply of live criminals.
Is this an obscure (but cool) Sex Pistols reference? Wow.
No, but with foreigners it’s no big deal.
It’s unfortunate if you believe that history is only for scholars, but you’re wrong.
Unless you believe in the Curse of Tutakhamen, or at least think The Mummy was a documentary, I’m confused by your use of “has to.”
Hey, everyone who was in any way involved in disinterring King Tut is now dead! :eek:
How do you feel about the display of the famous Lucy skeleton? It was brought to Houston for display recently.
It’s a self-correcting problem; if you desecrate the wrong mummy, he’ll desecrate you right back. Saw it in a movie.
I think this is a bit misleading. The royals took the measures themselves (in a manner of speaking), and they believed they were doing it for their own benefit in the afterlife. I’m no Egyptologist, but that was about veneration of the pharoahs, not about respect for the dead.
Not pharoahs alone. I’ve seen a whole lot of non-royal mummies in the British Museum.
I think it’s fair to say that the Ancient Egyptians (which would cover the Old and Middle Kingdoms for sure, and the New Kingdom up until the Ptolemeic era) were simply *obsessed *with death and dying and the afterlife. I don’t think any reputable scholar would argue that they would have approved of showing the bodies of dead people - for them, the dead were to be protected and revered and taken care of in terms of offerings, but not to be looked at.
In the Old Kingdom it was primarily rich folks who could expect a cushy grave and afterlife, but by the time of the Middle Kingdom, all people expected their souls to continue on after death - as long as their bodies remained intact. If the body decayed, the spirit would be destroyed, as well. So mummification existed so that people would continue to exist in the afterlife. That’s why tomb raiding was so abhorrent - not the theft of material goods, but breaking the seal and the disruption of the remains, which meant they might start to decay, and Grandpa would really cease to exist.
By the New Kingdom, preservation and mummification was so refined and perfected as to be the equivalent of a Costco coffin: affordable to all but the very poorest. Then things started to decline a bit, and the actual preservation took second place to ostentatious decoration. It was the Wal-Martization of mummification, really. Cheap and pretty, but not built to last.
It’s a moot point. The real controversy will come from the fact that when the grave is opened it will be found to have been empty for years.
</lips are sealed>
Yeah, I’m not going to patronize that one. China seems to come up with a suspiciously convenient number of “unclaimed bodies.” Nor do I think a pose of a guy holding his own brain serves any particularly useful educational purpose.
Isn’t it better that these bodies are used for education than being left to rot in some grave?
Bullshit. So we shut education and things we find “gross” or “disturbing” up where no one can see?