Mum and Mummies
Since I don't have anything to add on politics at the moment, here's an ethical quandary worthy of Ricochet's keen minds.
Archeology has provided so many insights into human history in the past couple centuries, but much of that knowledge is based on a practice which seems morally dubious at best. Why is it acceptable to dig up graves when knowledge is the purpose? Why is it acceptable to put long-dead persons on display and take their possessions?
Would you care if, a thousand years from now, someone dug up your mom and took the family heirloom she was buried with? Would it matter that the "professional" only did so to learn more about our then-extinct society?
The end doesn't justify the means. But is there any other way to defend this practice?
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Comments:
Jul '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
What's the difference between an archaeologist and a grave robber? Is it the difference between the age of the grave? 1000 years as opposed to 1? 999 years as opposed to 2? 998 years as opposed to 3?.... Is it just a degree in archeaology?
May '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
Also, how important do the potential insights have to be to justify it? Most archeological digs are grab-bags — the diggers have little idea what to expect.
Feb '11
Re: Mum and Mummies
I've never liked mummies especially because of this very thing.
Every time I am in a museum with mummies I say a prayer for the dead. It is totally disrespectful. It reminds me of this monstrosity.
Jun '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
In Greece, charnel houses are still used. It is not at all unusual for graves to be opened and the remains moved to another site. It's been explained to me that this is partly practical, in that the rocky terrain means that there is limited space for "permanent" burial. This is also partly religious, such as when the reposed is believed to be a saint. In that case, there is great ceremony at the grave opening. So, this practice would seem to be cultural, influenced by both religion and geology, but in no way unethical. If the number of services and prayers are any indication, the Greek Orthodox Church respects their dead more than any other Christian body.
Feb '11
Re: Mum and Mummies
Sister: In Greece, charnel houses are still used. It is not at all unusual for graves to be opened and the remains moved to another site. [snip]
So, this practice would seem to be cultural, influenced by both religion and geology, but in no way unethical. If the number of services and prayers are any indication, the Greek Orthodox Church respects their dead more than any other Christian body. · Dec 1 at 11:28am
Treating the dead with respect is possible. Even to the point of studying the remains of the dead. Autopsies, dissections, etc. As a Christian I venerate relics of holy men and women. The early Roman Christians prayed with the remains of their dead in the Catacombs, and altars contain relics. But they should be cared for respectfully, with acknowledgement that they are human remains and therefore contain an element of the divine, not just neat stuff from the old days like an old piece of jewelry or clay pot.
Mar '11
Re: Mum and Mummies
I care not one whit about my coporate remains. Dead tissue. My soul will be well taken care of, I'm sure. To quote my wife's grandmother: "Stick a carrot up my butt and let the bunnies drag me away."
Dec '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
Dead people don't have rights. Dead societies even less so. I see no moral issue with using the dead and their stuff however we see fit if there is no one alive with any legal claim to them.
Aug '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
Very intriguing post Aaron. I just viewed what is allegedly a tooth of Mary Madaglene in the Met in NYC. I have visited the museum in Guanajuato numerous times, the catacombs in Rome. Seen the mess that is the Cairo museum. Worked to reinter anasazi mummies before NAGPRA , to discover that there are over 20,000 sets of remains in universities and museums across America.
Guess what, the world throughout history has very little regard for remains, and all the above were continuously ransacked before anybody with a notepad and a degree ever showed up. The only people that appear to care are the undertaking industry that lobby to make sure you have to have a casket and a vault and a plot when you die. You even have to buy a type of casket before cremation.
It comes down to faith. With enough you tend to withhold money from the funeral director unless you're erecting monuments to yourself. Be careful Ozymandias.
Aug '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
The Bodies Exhibit... I saw it. Perhaps I'm strange for not even finding it disturbing, but just... fascinating. Not fascinating in a gruesome way, but fascinating because it was able to show so many of the wonderful intricacies of our bodies.
As for mummies... they inspire awe, wonder at how the person lived... sadness, sometimes. But not disrespect. At least, not in me.
But then, I was raised from the cradle to think archaeology a Good Thing (I went through an "I want to be an archaeologist when I grow up" phase that lasted a fairly long time) by elders who had little desire to have their earthly remains treated in a traditional way after death. (I've thought about leaving my own body to science, but have been simply too lazy to fill out the paperwork so far.)
I absolutely hate horror films. So maybe I'm just not as titillated as many others seem to be by death, blood, and gore, and I don't find seeing "the real thing" that disrespectful. Or perhaps I'm just titillated by it in another, more abstract, way?
Feb '11
Re: Mum and Mummies
The Bodies exhibit and others like it use bodies from executed Chinese prisoners and were sold to the exhibit creators. I think that is disgusting and that is why I call the show a monstrosity. As a conservative, the idea of communist China, a system that does not follow the rule of law as we understand it, profiting off the bodies of those it has killed, makes me outraged. As a Christian, I believe in the obligation to bury the dead.
Aug '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
Theodore Dalrymple has an interesting take here:
Thing is, I don't have much trouble imagining an artist reproducing a loved one's corpse as an act of filial piety. The frailty of our loved ones' bodies can be quite moving, and faithful artistic reproduction is an act of honor and tenderness. Or it can be. But perhaps I have no sensibility left.
Aug '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
I didn't know. I was under the impression that the bodies used were all voluntary donations. That really changes my point of view. Thanks.
Being raised by lapsed Catholic-to-Lutheran converts, what I was taught growing up is how unnecessary burial in consecrated ground is for the Christian faith, even that insisting on "Christian burial" is disrespectful of God's power to resurrect. And besides, graveyards are a waste of space. Really, I was taught this. When my family talked about death at all, this is what they said.
My family taught me lots of anti-Catholic nonsense. It didn't take me long to suspect it was nonsense, and now I know it was all nonsense. I admire Catholicism now, even wonder if I'll convert. But I guess some of those lessons still guide how I feel around dead bodies, even though my thoughts have changed.
Aug '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
Chinese prisoners meet unsavory ends in more ways than that. Remember the stories about the ambulances driving them to airports so the organs could be removed while the prisoner was still alive and put on ice as they arrived at the airplane to Hong Kong ?
As for the bodies of the recently gutted ? Tossed out on the way back. But the military or one of Andy Stern's new bff made a quick $10k. The kidney, liver, heart....probably sold for five times that in Hong Kong.
As for the precommunist chinese, well here is one of the stranger rituals. Hanging coffins off cliffs.
May '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
Even if we accept that burial is morally unnecessary — or, at the very least, not sacred — then there is the issue of free will / consent.
This statement at least addresses free will. By this standard, you have no moral basis (though perhaps another) to complain if I were to dig up your mother's corpse a year after she died to put the body on public display without your consent or hers. Considering that, do you still stand by what you said?
The Catholic tradition reflects an understanding of human nature as being essentially both body and soul, material and spiritual. A soul is not complete without the body, like a pilot cannot be a pilot without a plane. We were made to be with bodies, so it is only upon reunification with material being after death that we are complete.
And so we honor the unglorified body out of respect for God's great material gift, unique to each.
May '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
Note that the main difference between these and "mass graves' (over which there is much ado) is consent.
I've seen the anatomy exhibit, before realizing the controversy, and the same question applies. Does the end justify the means? Or does consent even matter?
I have also visited a tiny monastery in Rome in which the monks are mummified and bones are put on display. Some of the bones were not merely on display, but made into ornaments. There were even chandeliers which includes baby bones, from I forget where.
There is a wide variety of practices relevant to these questions, involving a wide variety of people. But of two things I am certain:
First, knowledge should never be our highest value. Second, societies which honor the dead of strangers and enemies are more likely to honor the living even among their own kind. Like Edmund Burke, I believe a healthy society lives in contract with past and future generations.
I was able to tie this thread to politics, afterall!
Aug '10
Re: Mum and Mummies
Aaron, Decorative arts using remains-
Am reminded of a walk through the sewers of Paris, where there are hundreds of yards of bone decorations on the walls. A course of arm bones, then turn and it's leg bones. Collected when they tore up some of the old cemeteries doing the Haussmann redesign.
Apr '11
Re: Mum and Mummies
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
But then, I was raised from the cradle to think archaeology a Good Thing (I went through an "I want to be an archaeologist when I grow up" phase that lasted a fairly long time) by elders who had little desire to have their earthly remains treated in a traditional way after death.
Cremation was traditional in some societies - Hindoo, Roman, Norse, AmerIndian; I believe all of those (or large segments thereof) disposed of the dead in fires. Interment seems to be largely a Judeo-Christian practice, although I read that the Japanese bury their dead vertically, to save space.
I am indifferent to burial myself, but if I ever get around to making arrangements, I will look for a cemetary with north-south graves rather than east-west; I'm sure Yeshua will be able to resurrect my body whichever direction the dust lies.
Feb '11
Re: Mum and Mummies
Papa Toad and I would personally like to be popped in the ground at the top of our hill and have a new apple tree planted on the site. Surprisingly it appears that we might be allowed to do so here in New York. Provided, of course, that a licensed funeral home representative is at the gravesite.
Apr '11
Re: Mum and Mummies
Did you read Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death ? When she broached the subject of being buried in a burlap bag to a funeral home director (because mortician sounds so harsh), he claimed it would be illegal. He wasn't willing to sign a statement to that effect, however.
Edited on December 2, 2011 at 7:57amMar '11
Re: Mum and Mummies
When I'm dead I'm dead. Do what you want with the corpse. I trust that Jesus will put the pieces back together when He's ready.