The National Archaeological Museum of Madrid has withdrawn from its exhibition rooms the famous Guanche Mummy dating from the 11th-12th centuries which have been exhibited there since 2015 and transferred it to its reserves. This decision comes following the publication of the “charter of commitment for an ethical treatment of human remains”, written by the Ministry of Culture and which requests to withdraw the human remains present in the 16 national museums, unless their Exhibition is “Durely justified for scientific reasons”. Spanish national museums have nearly 15,000 human remains, the majority of which are in reserves.
The commitment charter is based in part on the code of ethics for museums of the International Museum Council (ICOM), an NGO created in 1946 in the wake of UNESCO, and stipulates that human remains should no longer be considered Like objects but as remains of deceased people who have been separated from their funeral context.
The published charter intends by human remains everything that can be attributed to the Homo sapiens species: complete body or parts of these, unprocessed, transformed or preserved. This includes bones, mummified people, soft tissues, organs, tissue sections, embryos, fetus, hair, nails. Are excluded the moldings of human bodies, the mortuary masks, the sound recordings of human voice and photographs.
The Guanche of Madrid mummy was discovered in 1763-1764 during a mission of the Spanish infantry captain Luis Román in a cave of the Canary Islands in Tenerife, where many mummies were “Wrapped in carefully sewn skin”. According to a study of the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid, the exposed mummy was that of an adult man measuring 1.62 m, who died at the age of 35-40. His hands still had their nails and the mummy had a complete teeth.
The National Archaeological Museum of Madrid said it was its responsibility “To try to create the best possible conditions so that future generations can continue to admire this Guanche heritage, taking into account the respect of the remains of a person who, in distant times, was integrated into this society”.
Although the charter for the ethical treatment of human remains does not apply to Spanish private museums, it remains strongly recommended, which could be problematic for certain institutions: in particular the Museo de Las Mumias in Quinto, whose collection comes down to 15 mummies of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the museum has defended itself by declaring that mummies were exhibited and contextualized in compliance with human dignity.
In France, a law was voted in 2023 on the return of human remains of public collections, of which around 25,000 are at the Museum of Man in Paris. This law is however subject to certain conditions. Restitution requests must be made in the name of a human group which still lives in the country and whose culture is therefore still active. However, this only applies to people who died after the year 1500 and the restitution can only be carried out for funeral purposes.
