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The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), Mexico’s governing body for archaeological studies on the federal level, is up in arms after the mummified corpse of a body that was buried in the early 1800s lost a limb during renovations to a museum in the city of Guanajuato, according to CBS.
The INAH places the blame squarely in the hands of Guanajuato’s conservative government, which it says lacks the “knowledge about proper protocols and the lack of training of the personnel in charge of carrying out these tasks.”
The mummy was dug up in the 1860s after the families of the deceased were unable to keep up with burial fees. This one and others like it have for years been on display at a museum in Guanajuato; some have traveled internationally for shows, including one staged in the United States in 2009.
The dispute between the INAH and the Guanajuato city government centers on who has jurisdiction over the mummified corpses. The INAH claims authority over the mummies because they are part of the “national patrimony.” The city of Guanajuato and its eponymous state are governed by the conservative National Action Party, staunch rivals of the liberal Morena party, which holds power in Mexico’s federal government.
Earlier this week, the INAH said it will demand information about the permits and procedures followed during the museum renovations.
“These events confirm that the way the museum’s collection was moved is not the correct one, and that, far from applying proper corrective and conservation strategies, the actions carried out resulted in damages, not only to this body,” the institute said in a statement.
Museum workers unaffiliated with the INAH appear to have been in charge of the approximately 100 mummies in the museum’s care. The bodies are under local control because they were unearthed before the INAH was founded in 1939.
The display of mummified remains, and even the descriptor “mummy,” has been called into question in recent years. In early 2023, the British Museum and other institutions in the UK announced they would reconsider using the term “mummy” and instead describe the preserved bodies as the “mummified remains of” or a “mummified person” when referring to Egyptian mummies.