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Regarding consent, I wonder about the ethics in general of "studying" ancient Egypt. It's almost like an arbitrary line in the sand that once it's old enough, i
by gosub100 2y ago
Regarding consent, I wonder about the ethics in general of "studying" ancient Egypt. It's almost like an arbitrary line in the sand that once it's old enough, it's okay to unearth the dead and study their lives. But clearly we would unanimously reject the idea of people digging up our grandparents to study them. Probably the same for 19th century decedents. Probably the same for the bodies of those in the Renaissance period. But somewhere between that and ancient Egypt (and surrounding areas) we deem it okay to pilfer their memorials.
- suoduandao3 2y agoThe line in the sand is generally when someone's recent enough to have living people object, the more loudly they'd object the deeper the line. Funnily enough, a lot of contemporary spiritual groups do claim some memetic ancestry from Egypt, though I don't think that extends to the bodies of people from that era in most instances.
- abeppu 2y agoWhen is consent of the deceased really required in modern contexts? For example, the remains of Salvador Dali were exhumed in 2017 because someone claimed to have been his biological child entitled to some of his estate. Not only did Dali not consent to this, but parties (including a foundation associated with him) pointed out that testing against other parties could have ruled out the possibility of Dali being the biological father. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/21/538534970/salvador-dal-s-remains-exhumed-revealing-a-perfectly-arranged-mustache https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/21/538534970...