Mummies are getting rebranded. Via Hyperallergic:
According to a recent CNN report, three British museums have adopted the terms “mummified remains” and “mummified persons,” and several institutions in the United States told Hyperallergic that they are also updating their language in order to command more respect for the individuals that they display to the public.
This rebranding campaign is an ongoing business and by no means final, yet. The Hyperallergic again:
A spokesperson for the British Museum did point out that there is no intention of phasing out the word “mummy” across the institution.
and
Professor Salima Ikram, the unit head of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, has used the word “mummy” across multiple books, articles, and publications, and told Hyperallergic that she actually finds the term “mummified remains” to be “insulting and dehumanizing,” and that several of her colleagues share her opinion.
Sup? —> The initiative intents to mend past wrongs – defilement, wild objectification - related to colonialism and western beliefs. The change of terms is expected to accentuate that each “mummy” used to be a living human being, not a “curiosity”. 20th century popular media aggravated the damage, with the “curse of the mummy” and so on, so the wording deliberations seem bound to extend beyond museum showcases, to the scientific discourse and the layman communications. This “re-humanization” effort is met with intellectual resistance and at the very least has stirred some discussion on the public’s perceptions.
I stand here —> While I can acknowledge a noble end, I too, kind of echoing the professor above, feel somewhat meh on such interventions. I sense that a presupposed, ex cathedra, lack of practical wisdom on behalf of us laymen is at play here. I mean, we all have priors, and it is established that our brains tend to fill in missing details1, but claiming that a word incites just negative, or at any rate twisted, connotations in the minds of the uninitiated seems a bit rich.2
What if? —> “Mummy” (an almost 500-yr old word that comes from Latin) is slick; “mummified person”, “mummified remains”3 and the like are clangers. That’s not bad per se, generally. But it can become awkward if “mummy” is ditched totally and becomes an “m-word”, and you have to come up with a title for yet another film/ game with, uh, mummies, or if you are Cleo Graves from Netflix Super Monsters.
Let’s stretch this —> Assume that, because of distorted perceptions, everything “mummy” indeed falls into the fantasy/ horror popular imagination. Even this does not seem outright disrespectful, in my view. Right there in the undead department one can find skeletons, vampires, revenants, ghosts and other figures of folklore. They all were humans once, and play to our collective fascination with death4 and the stories we traditionally weave around it. I see no real need for “re-humanization” here.
But, mummies and other undead creatures5 feature exactly as dehumanized minions in entertainment, one might insist. Well, here the discussion unravels (pun intended) and overextends. Stereotyping and mindlessness are what they are.
To wrap this loose end up —> It’s not only the mummies, but a whole host of undead in the line. A firebrand rebranding to more accurate and sensitive terms, even at times justifiable, will spell trouble not only for fantasy afficionados (here be one) and cosplayers (they have my scorn and will get what they deserve), but also burn some wealth out of our tradition.
The example here is “just think of a plate of pasta” – each of us forms a mental picture, but rarely the pasta (I did not say which variety of pasta, penne rigate, fusilli, farfalle, did I?) is plain: sauce, meatballs, pesto, you name it (Dan Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, 2006).
Not that we think of mummies everyday (some as well might, and that’s ok).
On the professor’s “remains” objection, in Greek you can slink around it, since it uses a solemn, respectful word.
A Greek folk poem (The Dead Brother’s Song), that was (and may still be) part of the school curriculum, speaks of a lad who returns from the grave to fulfil an oath to his family.
Cunning marketing tests on 6-yr olds confirmed skeletons as the favorite baddies.