Shouldn't we be making mummies of the dead?
Asked by
josie (
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March 3rd, 2011
Most people seem to be intrigued by Egyptian mummies.
I am sure that there are all sorts of reasons for this.
But generally speaking, the big reason is that it gives us a bit of knowledge about our very ancient civilized ancestors.
Which in turn stretches our present into our past, in an intimate fashion that can not be totally matched by the written record.
Which in turn puts us in our place as runners in a great relay race.
Which in turn (one would hope) would help maintain a certain humility and a certain (if not objectively proveable) connection if not obligation to the future.
But in our time, we burn “our” remains, or put them into porous boxes.
And we bury those boxes in some field somewhere.
Rest assured, in three thousand years, nobody will know much about us other than we had bones, and that is assuming that the bones have not already dissolved.
Don’t we sort of owe it to the distant future to make mummies of ourselves when we die?
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10 Answers
I think that’s an interesting way to think of it. I don’t know if I necessarily think that there is an obligation, per se, but I do think it would perhaps add to future knowledge about the time period we currently live in, possibly. On somewhat of a side note, when I was in elementary school, I wanted to be mummified after learning about Egypt. I thought it sounded so cool. So, I guess, why not do it?
@josie I think all those Pyramids would create open space issues after a while as we have over crowding in cemeteries as it is.
No, because it just makes it that much easier for the mummies and zombies to rise up against us.
Given that it’s unlikely that there will be any people in the distant future, I believe that it would be better to feed our dead to the hungry.
I’m not sure what the benefits of this will be. What could people from a few millennia in the future learn about us from our remains that they wouldn’t know from our records, assuming they survive?
Oh but we do, they even make tv shows starring mummified objects. Just look at Sex & the City for example.
Where would we put 6 billion pyramids?
And don’t say you don’t need pyramids, that’s the best bit! All that stony, pointy fun.
Egyptians were only mummified if they were high royalty or very wealthy. There’s only a few thousand mummies out there to begin with (and thats including a bunch from China), out of possibly billions of people who lived in the thousands of years time frame where people were mummified. Your average Egyptian was probably buried or cremated via pyre (I don’t honestly know if those were common methods) or something similar.
Today SOME people are mummified… most notably famous Communist leaders (see Lenin, Stalin until like the 70’s, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Mihn…
@josie I agree with you the ceremony inherent is that would be spectacular. However, with the information would could record with modern technology, documenting through any other method would be impractical. Plus, consider these scenarios;
1) Well preserved bodies means greater numbers of zombies in the case of an “Walking Dead” scenario, which generally means a smaller chance for survival.
2) What happens when the novelty of mummies wears off because there’s now hundreds of thousands of them taking up space on the planet?
@Foolaholic Before the 19th century, when their historical value was recognized, mummies had been ground up into powder, or boiled down to extract fats and oils which were then use for medicinal purposes. In the 4th Dynasty, Egyptians were making about 70 000 mummies per year. So were other ancient civilizations. So in case of a future glut of mummies, they could similarly used.
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