Is putting mummies in museums not plunder? please explain!?

Question

need answers asap!!!!!!

Answer 1

People often have much confusion today over the role of museums in our society.  The average person thinks of museums as entertainment venues, though that is not their primary purpose.

Historically, museums were founded as educational instiutitons, on par with Universities and Colleges.  The best ones even offered degree programs, though most of these have been gobbled up by Universities as accreditation became more constrained and made it difficult for museums to maintain.

So museums collect things (mummies, archeological remains, dinosaur fossils, mammal skins, fish, etc.), not primarily for display, but for study (scientific, artistic, etc.).  Entertainment, on the other hand, is not about collecting scientific data.  Take those numerous television shows about animals as examples... The folks who have their own shows are **not** scientists.  They don't collect and analyze data, and they generally don't publish the results of their "research."  Instead, they are entertainers who happen to entertain in a pseudo scientific context.

In the US, the distinction between education and entertainment has been diminishing, particularly as pertains to scientific topics.  You can blame TV in part, but also the rise of so-called "science museums."  Most of these newer "science museums" are educational via providing entertaining science-related activities, but very few of them are museums.  Most often they do *no* employ scientists who study... well... anything.  Instead, they employ instructors and docents.  Essentially, they've deleted the part of the traditional museum that gives it its greatest, broadest reaching community value.  ...the people who contribute to the advancement of knowledge.

So that all said, the display of mummies in reputable museums with a strong scientific mission (e.g., The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the American Museum of Natural History, etc.) doesn't really constitute plunder.  The museums may charge a fee, but these fees contribute to the museums' greater mission of research that helps us all understand our own history.  A similar exhibit, however, at a science center is really about bringing in more money to fund the next exhibit.  The local community gains, to be sure, from the educational experience, but our society at large does not gain as nothing new is learned at those institutions (typically).

That all said, those "science museums" strike me as good interim solutions in growing communities.  If a science museum were to gradually grow into a reputable museum, employing scientists to actually study these subjects (as the Children's Museum of Indianapolis appears to be trying to do), then they could cross the line and become a contributor to our society as a whole.  In order to accomplish this, however, they need to see that the community supports them, which means voicing this support to politicians, building alliances with universities, and supporting tax referendums that support your local musuems, zoos, and aquariums.

Answer 2

Are you a disgruntled Egyptian?  Anyways, it may be considered plunder, but lets also think about this logically.  If you put them back into their original tombs it would be much more difficult to protect them and they would wind up being stolen and then sold on the black market.  I think that in this event they would rather be in a museum where they can be enjoyed for their historical value as artifacts.  The other issue is whether they should be in British Museums, or Egyptian Museums.  Probably Egyptian museums in my opinion, although these collections should also be circulated as special collections throughout the worlds major museums with the proceeds going to Egyptian Museums so that they can update the collection's home museum to having better storage facilities, security and laboratories for studying such collections.  Then the British Museums would have no more excuses as to why they are holding onto Egyptian collections if this was done.

Answer 3

the fact that it has been moved from the burial site to a musuem is plunder.

moving from one country to another is plunder.

example - look at the mummies in british musuem - can the egyptians take better care than  that?  maybe in a few decades.  till then let it stay where it is now

Answer 4

It is plunder because those people died, were mummified, and placed in tombs within the pyramids. They believed in life after death...the afterlife...and that there was a whole seprate world awaiting them...the underworld...a world that was free from physical limitations. "They believed that they had to perserve their bodies so they could use them in the afterlife." This transfer of the mummies to museums is messing with the mummies beliefs..i mean just put youself in their postition if you were buried in the cementery and later people decided to dig you up..you believing before you died in the afterlife and wanting your body to die peacefully and kept in its final resting place...would be offended right? i would... The living have no idea about the afterlife...for all you know they're dead and don't feel a thing...but their beliefs before they died is what is being tarnished. According to them "An intact body was an integral part of a person's afterlife. Without a physical body there was no shadow, no name, no ka (spirit or soul), ba (personality) , or akh(immortality). By mummification, the Egyptians believed they were assuring themselves a successful rebirth into the afterlife."

Answer 5

But do mummies have the right to be left alone in a plot of land they dont own?