Brian Rudman: Display of Egyptian mummy a tad hypocritical

Auckland Museum is putting the mummified remains of a long-dead Egyptian back on display by the end of March. Does this mean the scary tattooed Maori heads that were a highlight of my boyhood visits in less politically correct times will return from the storeroom too?

One suspects not. Years of pressure from Maori, Aborigines, American Indians and other indigenous peoples have forced museums around the world to treat human remains of "first peoples" with respect.

Only the poor old Egyptian "first people" seem to get left out of this international protocol. Why remains a mystery.

The contrast was highlighted last week when first came news that Te Papa, the national museum, had finally persuaded Perth Museum in Scotland to return two toi moko (tattooed heads) to New Zealand.

Then a couple of days later came the story that Auckland Museum had persuaded Mercy Hospital to carry out a CT scan on its ancient cadaver to ascertain whether it was a indeed a mummy or a daddy.

The scan follows several years of restoration of the mummy's linen wrapping and its coffin, and was preparatory to returning to display what senior conservator Julia Gresson said, a couple of years ago, was one of the museum's "best loved" objects.

I'm sure it is, but I struggle to understand how displaying a 2500- to 3000-year-old body, stolen from its tomb by 19th-century European adventurers, can be rationalised as acceptable, but displaying more recent human parts, souvenired around the same time, is not.

Indeed, for a leading museum in a "first nation" country that is lobbying to have Maori remains repatriated from more than 120 institutions worldwide, it seems a tad hypocritical.

Auckland acquired its mummy in the 1950s from Canterbury Museum, which had been gifted it in 1888 from Julius von Haast, who'd bought it by mail order for $10. After a century of grave-robbing, sparked off by Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in 1798, Europe was awash with relics of old Egypt. An anonymous, second-class worse-for- wear mummy was obviously going cheap.

The Maori heads were part of the same ghoulish trade in exotica.

Such was the demand for these curios in the early 1800s that once existing Maori shrunken head stock were sold out, entrepreneurial chiefs made up the shortfall by tattooing slaves, often with intricate tapu chiefly patterns, then killing and smoking the unfortunate models to order.

Sydney was so awash with heads at one stage that the New South Wales Governor signed laws outlawing the trade.

Present-day Maori have persuaded the local museum industry the relics of this awful trade should be brought home and stored out of public view. There is, however, debate about whether they should be buried or preserved for specialist study, because of the priceless artistic record etched on each face.

The mummy trade was equally unedifying.

Two or three thousand years before, the upper crust of the Nile Valley had themselves entombed inside replicas of their earthly world in readiness for their trip to the afterlife. Entrances were hidden and burying parties slain to ensure their last resting place remained secret. Just to make doubly sure, curses were laid. The message was clear. They didn't want to be disturbed.

After 3000 years, you might say, what's the harm in a bit of gawping, and prodding and electronic scanning of the genitals? But if 3000 years is okay, then why not 200 or, for that matter, 50?

Defenders of displaying mummies go on about the artistic merits of the relic and write display notes about the wonders of the Nile Valley's advanced embalming techniques. But an equally convincing artistic line can be made for showing the tattooed heads. Indeed, in the New Zealand context, with an expanding interest in Polynesian body arts, a better case can be made for displaying the heads.

But I'm willing to concede to the sensibilities of the tangata whenua, who prefer the body parts remain off stage. But if it's about respect for the dead and their descendants, then surely that respect should apply across cultures and time. Even back to the first nations of the Nile.