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April 16, 2024, 5:33 pm UTC    
January 29, 2023 12:10PM
I've read that and agree with much of it. The issue here for me though is that saying mummifed person and not just mummy is pedantic and ridiculous. This was why in my previous post I said that if they really wanted to respect the dead, then they should not use the word mummy or mummified at all, as it is just an Anglicised version of the Arabic mumiya, their word for bitumen, used, as I'm sure you know, for late period mummies and beyond that were covered in bitumen.

The word bitumen as a description for mummies has nothing to do with the AE or their beliefs as they called the embalmed, now there is a more correct word, body that has been wrapped and coffined a sah, the dead body before all the treatment being a khat. To me it's just ridiculous, ignorant, sloppy and virtue signalling to call an embalmed Egyptian corpse a "bitumized person", which is what they are doing.

The real technical descriptions for an unwrapped mummy should be khat, and a wrapped and coffined body is a sah. A wrapped but uncoffined body would be seen by the AE as a fractured, an uncompleted, part of your mortal remains for which they had no word, but our word abomination might fit.

Now I'm not saying we should use these technical words as the general public will continue to say mummy and will not know the AE technical terms, so if these museums want to try to change language they should either go the whole way and use the technical terms the AE did, to properly respect the AE, or do nothing, the optimum course I think.
Subject Author Posted

Mummy's not the word ...

Hermione January 27, 2023 12:21PM

Re: Mummy's not the word ...

Hermione January 27, 2023 12:25PM

Re: Mummy's not the word ...

Corvidius January 28, 2023 03:45AM

Re: Mummy's not the word ...

Hermione January 28, 2023 05:39AM

Re: Mummy's not the word ...

Byrd January 28, 2023 12:57PM

Re: Mummy's not the word ...

Hans_lune January 28, 2023 02:24PM

Re: Mummy's not the word ...

Hermione January 29, 2023 09:37AM

Re: Mummy's not the word ...

Corvidius January 29, 2023 12:10PM

Re: Mummy's not the word ...

Pistol January 29, 2023 12:30PM



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