posted
The Discovery Channel is hosting Egypt Week, with the main event being the live excavation of a massive graveyard.
Why is it considered OK to despoil graveyards? I doubt many of us would be happy if our parents or grandparents were dug up so people could examine their burial site.
posted
Well, we generally have the sense not to bury the wealth of nations and the greatest artistic acheivements of our time with the mouldering corpses of our ded.
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Not really. But I'm willing to let it go considering that they are pretty much dead, so they don't mind. Furthermore they were buried thousands of years ago, so absolutely nobody currently living on the planet has a personal emotional attatchment to the people who used to live in those corpses.
Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think most of us have organ donor cards; I'd hope that would mean we wouldn't mind our body being respectfully examined in the interests of science (some aspects of which may very well save lives).
Also, as nearly everywhere humans were there are dead people, for purely practical reasons a ban on digging up dead people would stop nearly all archaeology (of human civilizations and such). Current archaeology best practice demands that anywhere there is a clear close relationship (such as with many Native American sites), human remains be turned over to the decisions of those related (usually by tribe).
posted
I should put this in perspective. The way I see it, corpses don't really deserve any specil consideration, considering that they are no longer inhabited by the people who died. In fact, I think organ donation should be something you have to actively opt out of.
(edit)
Mind, I'm not saying that people whose religions specifically command certain burial rights be disregarded. You should be able to opt out of organ donation for any reason at all, even squeamishness. Still, it should be the exception, and not the rule.
posted
Frankly, it's pretty sick that folks even care what happens to dead bodies other than sanitary disposal.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
And I hereby give consent that people 6,000 years from now are more than welcome to dig me up and examine every particle of what is left of my being if it helps know my time better.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I also give such consent. Heck, I give such consent for people to use my body for scientific purposes immediately after I die (well, I'd prefer to be verified dead first).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Ok, there are issues in some religions, I believe Judaism is one of them about the corpse being treated a certain way. Granted the religions of ancient egypt really don't exist in the same ways. And there are orthodox Jewish archeologists so maybe the bodies just have to be treated respectfully. Rivka?
posted
To be perfectly honest, if someone wanted to dig up my parents (provided, of course, they were dead), I wouldn't mind. They'd be dead - and they wouldn't know what was happening to them. Be it for purposes of burglary or study, it wouldn't matter to me.
And yes, I also give my consent to be dug up in 6000 years.
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Frankly, it's pretty sick that folks even care what happens to dead bodies other than sanitary disposal.
Why? What's "sick" about giving respect to the dead by treating their bodies with dignity?
I have nothing against organ donation, although I think the default should NOT be the taking of organs. But the respect due a person does not end at their death, nor is that respect solely due to the possible feelings of survivors.
posted
I think, as has been mentioned, the attitudes on this vary from culture to culture. It sounds like maybe modern Egyptians don't object to this.
In the U.S., native American tribes have finally succeeded in becoming forces that archeologists have to reckon with - and many of them do NOT want the remains of their ancestors disturbed, let alone studied.
I remember an article in which a tribal representative was giving an example of the cultural gap. He said he'd sit down at the table with the archeologists and ask how they'd feel if he dug up their ancestors, examined the gravesite, and used the remains as specimens to be studied. The archeologists were all pretty cool with the concept. The point was lost, because it didn't connect at all with the values of the archeologists.
So I guess I'm interested in how this sits with the Egyptian public.
Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I mean, the problem Native Americans have with it has to do with their beliefs, right? Well, the Ancient Egyptians apparently believed that if your body is preserved, you have it in the afterlife, just as if your possessions (or symbolic representation thereof) are buried with you, you'd have it in the afterlife. I don't think they would like the idea of someone doing research on a dead body.
However, we wouldn't really know this if no one had ever opened the tombs. And even in ancient Egypt, there were grave robbers. So, I don't know what to make of it, really.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I wonder how much an influence the prevalence of secularism within a culture would have on this issue. I'm thinking that the more secular, the less this matters. The more religious, and in particular religious about ancestory, the more it would matter. I wonder how the Japanese feel about this.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm fine with it. Current and recent graveyards should be left alone, but anything over, say, a thousand years is part of history and time. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, all is vanity - all of that. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
IIRC, in Japan human remains only remain in one place for a few years, then it's disposed of.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
But their intention was that by preserving these bodies and building tombs, they would not be destroyed or disturbed. Should we disregard that intention?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Should a person's intention be honored *forever*?
Personally, I think that's taking things a bit far. They're dead. As long as you're respectful of their remains, I don't see honoring a modern interpretation of a 4,000 years dead person's original intentions.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
But for what purpose? It's one thing to begin a major project, uncover a grave site you didn't know was there, and reinter the bodies in a respectful manner.
quote:But they took steps - very successful steps - to break the ashes to ashes, dust to dust cycle.
So did Ozymandius.
This isn't a couple of kids poking around the haunted house. It's a study of humanity, and it's a source of knowledge that we would be without otherwise.
These people are dead, their children are dead, the next fifty generations are dead, and they don't care anymore. I wouldn't advocate having a stepping contest on the site, but if every piece of ground that has ever had a dead body in it is off limits, the we just tied up the whole earth. Let the earth move on.
It isn't the final resting place, anyway. There is no final resting place. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
But they're not trying to free up a piece of ground to be productive, nor am I advocating keeping every square foot of ground where bodies have been off limits.
In this case, these people are intentionally going into a tomb and removing carefully preserved bodies, for no reason other than to lear something about a long dead civilization. This is not crucial knowledge. This is one step better than voyeurism.
posted
I mean, if we were just studying the writing on the walls, or even looking at the scrolls and stuff with them, it might be one thing. Do we really need to submit the bodies to CAT scans, biopsies, and everything else, just to learn how a particular king or priest died?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Porter, can you respect the *living* without fulfilling their every desire? My answer: Absolutely. I respect my father, but I rarely do what he wants me to do. Fortunately he's not dead yet so he has plenty of suggestions in him I'm not going to take.
When he dies, I will try to honor his wishes. But I won't make a religion of it.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
What constitutes crucial knowledge? AFAIK, most every time we examine a mummy closely we learn something new and fascinating. Are we only allowed to excavate when we think in advance we're going to come out with something "fascinating"?
Not to mention, that as far as I can tell they're not doing this excavation because of Egypt Week, they're video taping this excavation because of Egypt Week (and probably contributing some funding, of course). The excavation seems to be a pretty standard academic one.
I mean, we found most of the known fragments of sappho being reused as mummy wrappings!
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
This reminds me of the story from the Frasier pilot - about the actress who just wanted to be remembered. She planned an elegant suicide a la Marilyn Monroe, with perfect makeup and a bearskin rug, but she made herself sick with the alcohol and drugs and died drowning in the toilet instead.
But she was remembered.
No one turned themselves into a mummy with all the expense in order to be forgotten.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:What constitutes crucial knowledge? AFAIK, most every time we examine a mummy closely we learn something new and fascinating. Are we only allowed to excavate when we think in advance we're going to come out with something "fascinating"?
Actually, I'm not at all convinced that any discovery is enough to justify it.
quote:Not to mention, that as far as I can tell they're not doing this excavation because of Egypt Week, they're video taping this excavation because of Egypt Week (and probably contributing some funding, of course). The excavation seems to be a pretty standard academic one.
I know that. It doesn't change the analysis one bit. Academic graverobbing doesn't strike me as preferable to profit-motivated graberobbing.
quote:I mean, we found most of the known fragments of sappho being reused as mummy wrappings!
quote: They preserved themselves and their goods in order to be remembered.
Actually, they preserved themselves and their goods in order to have them with them in the afterlife. They believed that you could literally take it with you. They also believed that removing or disturbing these things would deny the person whose tomb it was these things in the afterlife. Now, just because we don't believe it, is it right to disregard their belief?
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Dagonee -- if my wishes are that no ground for one hundred miles around my burial site be disturbed, should that wish be respected?
As for Sappho, her works are considered some of the most influential poetry of all time. That's "so?"
You're okay with people being moved for "productive" purposes with respectful reburial, but there are many peoples where any disturbance is a sacrilege. Why does that its "productive" in nature make it okay?
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Dagonee -- if my wishes are that no ground for one hundred miles around my burial site be disturbed, should that wish be respected?
If you happen to own those 30,000+ square miles then sure. But in this case, it's the looting of the bodies thats at issue.
quote:As for Sappho, her works are considered some of the most influential poetry of all time. That's "so?"
Not everything needs to be preserved. Clearly you don't think any means would be OK to procure those lost verses. This is one of the means I consider too much.
quote:You're okay with people being moved for "productive" purposes with respectful reburial, but there are many peoples where any disturbance is a sacrilege. Why does that its "productive" in nature make it okay?
Actually, I was clear that inadvertance was important in that equation, and treating the bodies with respect afterwards - i.e., reburying them somewhere - us important.
posted
Strangely enough, I find myself agreeing with Dagonee. While I, personally, would prefer to have my remains return to the ecosystem as efficiently as possible, and my possessions given to my loved ones or anyone who could put them to good use, I respect other people's wishes in regards to their remains and their possessions.
It seems clear the the ancient Egyptians wanted their remains preserved for as long as possible and their possessions with them. I don't think we can use the fact that there were ancient Egyptian graverobbers are justification, as they obviously weren't respecting the wishes of the dead, either.
I don't believe they should have eternal possesion of the land they were buried on... if someone owns it now and wishes to build on it, they should be able to. But I would prefer the remains and possessions be respectfully moved and reburied. If this is land out in the middle of the desert that isn't being used, that we're just looking for tombs to excavate for further study, I'd rather we didn't do that.
I can see some merit to saying the people of modern Egypt have a right to their heritage, to the artwork/pottery type stuff that is recovered... but entirely too much of that stuff is out of the country for that to really work for me.
Oh, and while I'd like my body to be used as can benefit mankind and then respectfully composted, I would not be at all happy with the idea of it or any of my ancestor's remains ending up in a museum. That's squiky.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes, but then the desire wouldn't be known any more, and we'd be back to inadvertent intrusion.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: I mean, if we were just studying the writing on the walls, or even looking at the scrolls and stuff with them, it might be one thing. Do we really need to submit the bodies to CAT scans, biopsies, and everything else, just to learn how a particular king or priest died?
Actually yes we do. We can learn hugely significant things about history this way. For example I saw add for a show on teh discovery channel about one of the sons of... was it Ramses? Apparently in the bible it says he was killed by god, but they may be able to prove using his skeleton that a) it is Ramses first born son, and b) he was murdered by a human and did not die in the way the bible claims. (this is all picked up from the add as a rough example, please forgive any inaccuracies). But the point is a lot can be learned about our history by examining dead bodies. And learning about our history is very, very important becuase "those who ignore history are doomed ot repeat it". Sides once you're dead you're dead. You've decomposed, you're gone.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Given that we don't have really good reasons to believe certain dinosaur species were not sentient, much less what their wishes would have been, we must clearly stop the excavation of new species.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm not going to speculate on the Egyptian remains, but burial in a grave to be there for your posterity isn't something that happens worldwide.
When I lived in Switzerland, I discovered that people have three options when they die. #1- buy a permanent final resting space. The cost is substantial- one friend compared the cost to buying a home. #2- be cremated and have your name engraved on a wall #3- rent a spot for 20 years. After 20 years (give or take three) they dig everything up and put the remains in a "vault" (read: a cement building where everything is dumped together)
The people that I talked about it with said that option 3 is the most popular since it's the most affordable.
Posts: 862 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Having thought about it, I conclude that I believe that after a thousand years, the knowledge to be gained is more important that the wishes belonging to a person whose core of being, family, culture, and civilization have vanished. The person isn't actually there anymore, and having your remains be studied and learnt from is a form of honor. For these people, the era of living in a forgotten little corner of humanity is over; time to rejoin the human endevour in the only way a dead body can.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
