Glasgow's Mummies Are Gone — Because the Dead Never Said Yes

For more than a century, visitors to Glasgow's Kelvingrove museum could walk up to the mummified body of an Egyptian priest named Nekht and look at a man who died nearly 4,000 years ago. Last month, the museum took him away — not because anything was wrong with the exhibit, but because, the museum says, Nekht never agreed to be on show. Now Egypt has asked for him back.

It is a small decision about one body in one Scottish museum — and the sharpest test yet of a question museums everywhere must now answer: do the dead get a say in how they are displayed?

What Glasgow actually did

Nekht was a priest who lived between 1985 and 1797 BC. He was excavated at Beni Hasan in Middle Egypt in the early 20th century and donated to the city of Glasgow in 1923. For decades his painted coffin and mummified remains were part of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum's Egyptian hall. In late October, Glasgow Life — the charity that runs the city's museums — removed the coffin and the body from public view, along with a mummified head, a foot and a hand from the Valley of the Kings.

Glasgow's other great museum took a different route to the same conclusion. The Hunterian, at the University of Glasgow, has covered the mummified body of Lady Shep-En-Hor — a woman who died more than 2,500 years ago — with a specially designed conservation textile, first draped over her in August 2025 and now confirmed as permanent. Her ornate sarcophagus, on display almost continuously since 1820, stays where it is. Her body, which has never been taken out of its coffin, can no longer be seen. The Hunterian says Lady Shep-En-Hor "deserves privacy in death."

Why consent is the new test

Both museums say they reassessed their duty of care towards the deceased after the International Council of Museums revised its code of ethics in June 2026, urging institutions to uphold "the inherent dignity of human remains." Glasgow Life has gone further, drafting a policy under which remains are displayed only with documented, informed consent from the deceased person or, where appropriate, their descendants. Without that consent, a spokesperson said, removing ancient Egyptian remains from display is "more respectful to the deceased individuals."

That is a striking standard to apply to someone who died four millennia ago, and the museums know it. The code itself does not order every museum to clear its cases: Steph Scholten, a professor and member of the council's ethics committee, has said the guidelines can be interpreted differently by different institutions. Glasgow has chosen the strictest reading.

Egypt wants Nekht back

The removal did not stay a local museum decision for long. Glasgow Life has confirmed it received a request in the last few days to repatriate Nekht's remains to Egypt, and Egypt's tourism minister, Sherif Fathy, has spoken about the request publicly. As of today, no decision has been announced: Glasgow Life says the request will go through the council's established repatriation process, and no return has been approved.

Egyptologists have welcomed Glasgow's moves. The question Egypt has been asking for years — do the remains of ancient Egyptians belong in museum cases? — now has a major Western museum answering, in practice, that the answer may be no.

The argument on the other side

Not everyone in Glasgow agrees. Stuart Robertson, former director of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, called the consent test "an absurd and impossible standard" — you cannot ask a priest dead for 4,000 years for permission, and his descendants, if any could be traced, would be essentially the whole of modern Egypt. The same logic, critics say, would empty every archaeology gallery in the world, since almost no ancient body on display anywhere was exhibited with the consent of the person inside the wrappings.

That is the honest tension at the heart of the story. Museums exist to show the public things it could never otherwise see — and for a century, Egyptian mummies were the star attraction that taught millions of schoolchildren that ancient Egypt was real. But the people in those cases were never exhibits while they were alive — priests, mothers, workers, with names and beliefs about what should happen to their bodies after death.

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Sources: The Straits Times, Egyptian Gazette