Mummies And Other Human Remains Held In UK Museums Raise Serious Ethical Questions, Warn Scholars The Art Newspaper International Art News And Events

(MENAFN- USA Art News) UK Museums Hold at Least 263,000 Human Remains, Scholars Say, as Calls Grow for Funding and New Rules

A new accounting of human remains held across UK museums has sharpened a long-simmering question: what does ethical care look like when collections include ancestors taken through colonial-era networks of excavation, trade, and display?

An investigation by The Guardian, based on freedom of information requests sent to institutions nationwide, identified around 263,000 human remains in museum holdings. Researchers involved in compiling the figures cautioned that the true total is likely higher, citing incomplete records and the complexity of cataloguing systems, as well as uncertainty about how many individuals are represented.

The scale of the holdings has prompted renewed criticism from MPs and archaeologists, who argue that retaining and exhibiting human remains raises serious ethical issues for museums and requires clearer government action.

Dan Hicks, curator and professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford, told The Art Newspaper that the findings should serve as“a wake-up call for the government to take action.”

For museum professionals working on repatriation and culturally appropriate care, the numbers are not merely administrative. They are, as some describe it, a measure of unresolved histories.

“The significant number of ancestors held in UK museums is extremely distressing and symbolic of the colonial origins of these collections,” said Backhouse, who is involved with the Museums and Empire Group (MEG), which acts as an interface between museums and community stakeholders. Backhouse added that the group hopes responses gathered by The Guardian will be shared with relevant communities“to support them in bringing their ancestors home.”

Backhouse said MEG members include curators and other museum staff who want to prioritize returns and ensure culturally appropriate care for remains still held in collections. But, she argued, the work requires resources that many institutions do not currently have.“In order to undertake more of this work with the level of care and respect required, the sector urgently needs funding for training, research and physical return,” she said.

The debate is also intensifying around the public display of human remains, including mummies, in galleries and exhibition spaces. In one recent example, Manchester Museum sought visitor feedback on whether it should continue to display the mummified remains of an Egyptian woman, Asru. The museum received around 8,000 individual responses, and the outcome was described as“pretty evenly split” between those in favor of continued display and those opposed.

Heba Abd El Gawad, an Egyptian-born senior curator of anthropology at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in south London, told The Art Newspaper that decisions about Egyptian mummified remains should not be made by public poll.

“The Egyptian community of descent continues to be excluded from decisions about how our ancestors are treated, while museums instead survey the public about whether they would like to see them on display,” she said.

Abd El Gawad emphasized that ancient Egyptian beliefs about the body after death are well documented.“The wishes of the dead in ancient Egypt are not unknown or speculative,” she said, pointing to funerary texts, tomb inscriptions, and burial practices that treat the mummified body as sacred and intended to remain intact, protected, and undisturbed.

She described the removal of Egyptian mummified ancestral remains as among the largest and most violent displacements of human remains in history.“Tens of thousands of our ancestors were removed from their tombs, traded, studied and displayed as curiosities in museums,” she said. For many Egyptians today, she added, these remains remain sacred, and display that disregards the known wishes of the dead“robs both the ancestors and their descendants of dignity.”

Manchester Museum has framed its consultation as one part of a broader review. Georgina Young, the museum's head of exhibitions and collections, said the visitor survey sits alongside consultation with Egyptian diaspora communities in Manchester and people in Egypt.

“As a university museum, it's part of our purpose to create space for thinking in public,” Young told The Art Newspaper. She said understanding public sentiment can help the museum communicate policy changes and shifts in practice, and approach them with transparency, including transparency about“the harm it has done in the past.”

With the FOI-based figures now circulating widely, scholars and museum workers are pressing for more than internal policy reviews. Their argument is that ethical stewardship requires infrastructure: training, research time, and the practical costs of return. The question facing government, they say, is whether the UK will treat these holdings as a legacy to be managed quietly, or as a responsibility that demands clearer rules and sustained support.

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