The British auction House, The Saleroom is said to have a large collection of Egyptian antiques for sale. While this is hardly news, what has piqued the interest of the general public is the fact that 18 of these relics are old Egyptian human skulls, as exhibited on the auction house’s official website. This begs the question of the morality of selling human parts.
According to Sputnik, the skulls are from the collections of Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, a 19th-century British commander who amassed an array of antiquities, including weaponry, ceremonial objects, jewelry, and human remains.
The human skulls which consist of ten male skulls, 5 female, and 3 unknown, are going for £200-£300, or about $250-$380.
Some of the skulls are said to date back to 1550-1292 BC, from the region of Thebes 3000 years ago.
Naturally, the revelation has sparked conversations about the morality of selling remaining human parts, with experts questioning the laws that have allowed for this sort of sale to be legal.
Dan Hicks, a British museum specialist, told the US media that seeing the skulls for sale was “quite a shocker.” “Every generation or so, surely we need to check in on our ethical compass on these questions and just ask, is this really right?” he said.
Laura Van Broekhoven, director of the Pitt Rivers Museum, allegedly stated that she is “really surprised that auction houses are still doing this.”
“I would hope that we would stop selling and commodifying human remains of communities that really have tried to have dignified ways of, and usually ritual ways, of dealing with their ancestors,” she said.
Last week it was reported by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, that a 3400-year-old Egyptian relic taken away from the North African country, a few decades ago has been returned.
The 3,400-year-old statue of Ramesses II, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh, was recently recovered from Switzerland after it had been stolen over 3 decades ago. Ramesses II was the third pharaoh of Ancient Egypt’s nineteenth dynasty.
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