Manchester Museum asks visitors if Egyptian woman’s body should be taken off display | Museums

One of the leading museums in Europe asks visitors whether an old Egyptian woman will continue to exhibit the body of an old Egyptian woman 200 years after being brought to England by cotton merchants, because she is “dismantling”.

The Manchester Museum, called the 2025 European Museum of the Year in May, is conducting a counseling about the future of Asru, a woman who lives in Thebes, the ancient city of Modern Luxor, 2,700 years ago.

A plaque in the museum asks: “Should we continue to show Asru’s body?” He invites visitors to send answers to a mailbox underneath.

“Asru’s mummified organ was opened in April 1825 in Manchester Natural History Association. Since then, it has been exhibited regularly for two centuries.

The story of Asru’s body is one of the few people showing how the development of the United Kingdom Museum sector, the morality of exhibiting human bodies and spoils from imperial expansion, and how it benefits from colonialism and transatlantic slavery.

A report made by MPs in March All Party Parliament Group for African Compensation He called for prohibitions to sell the remains of the ancestors and exhibit the public without consent.

Asru’s fine decorated wooden coffin reveals several biographical details. A wealthy woman, who was about 60 years old when she died, was called her father, called Pa-Kush, that is, a black man from Modern Sudan, “Kushite .. Pa-Kush worked as a writer, a high-status role when Egypt was the Kushite Pharaohs of Egypt. Asru’s name means “his arm is against them”.

In the 19th century, the sarcophagi of Asru was investigated by Campbell Price, one of the curators of the museum who followed him to the cotton industry by Robert and William Garnett, the sons of a former merchant in the enslaved African people. Garnetts donated the body of Asru to the Manchester History Association, which pioneered the Manchester Museum.

In addition to Asru Consultation, he started the museum colony! Trail, the name of the art and culture attempt used to challenge the cliché perspectives related to empire and colonialism.

The trace connections, the display of goods from Africa and Asia upset the traditional “Eurocentric” narratives about them through newly displayed artwork.

“Is the desire for knowledge to invalidate the desires of old cultures?” And “What is climate justice?”.

In addition to the African spear heads – the elements of the booklet as “reinforced reinforced and wrong ideas about the African people” – a LGBTQ+ comic book of Congo artist Edher Numbi.

A wall painting of British artists examines the connection between the Singh Gemini in the South Asian gallery of the museum between enslavement and the colonization of India. William Joynson-Hicks, the British Interior Minister at the time, said the following from India as a great export market for Lancashire Cotton Cotton ”from India.

Chloe Cousins, the Social Justice Manager of the Manchester Museum, who created Trail, said: “The trail is new, but the concept of colonization is not new for the Manchester Museum. The more accurate and nuanced explanations, items, stories and history of the collections are one of the ways we can attach importance to people and communities.”