The University of Glasgow has quietly removed the mummified remains of an ancient Egyptian woman from public display, citing growing concerns about the ethics of exhibiting human remains.
Lady Shep-En-Hor, whose wrapped remains have been one of the most popular and recognisable exhibits at the Hunterian Museum for generations, has now been taken off show as the institution carries out a wider review of how it handles and presents human remains in its collection.
The Hunterian, which sits within the university and is one of Scotland’s oldest public museums, confirmed the removal as part of an ongoing ethical assessment. The mummy had drawn visitors for years, with many Glaswegians remembering her as a fixture of school trips and family days out.
The decision reflects a broader shift happening across museums in the UK and beyond, where institutions are being pushed to reconsider whether displaying the bodies of real people, regardless of how long ago they lived, is something that can still be justified in the modern age.
Shep-En-Hor is believed to have lived during ancient Egypt’s Late Period, somewhere around 700 to 300 BC. Her remains, along with her decorated coffin, have been studied by researchers and admired by the public for a long time. But attitudes toward that kind of display have shifted considerably in recent years.
Museums across Britain have faced increasing pressure from ethicists, academics and descendant communities to think more carefully about who they are putting on show and why. The argument is straightforward enough. These were real people, with families and lives, and the fact that they died thousands of years ago does not automatically make it acceptable to display their bodies behind glass for strangers to file past.
For Egyptian remains specifically, there has been growing discussion about what communities in Egypt and the wider diaspora actually want for their ancestors, rather than simply what Western museums have historically decided is appropriate.
The Hunterian has not said the mummy will never return to display, but the removal signals a serious pause for thought. The museum is understood to be looking at its entire collection of human remains and working through questions about consent, cultural sensitivity and the purpose that display actually serves.
Some will argue that exhibits like Shep-En-Hor play a genuine educational role, bringing ancient history to life in a way that books and replicas simply cannot match. Seeing the actual physical remains of someone who lived thousands of years ago is, for many visitors, a powerful and memorable experience that sparks real curiosity about the ancient world.
But others would counter that education does not require putting a real person’s body on permanent public display, and that there are plenty of ways to tell the story of ancient Egypt without doing so.
The Hunterian is one of Scotland’s most significant cultural institutions, holding vast collections covering art, science, medicine and natural history. It reopened in 2022 after a major refurbishment and has been working through how to present its collections in ways that reflect current values while still serving researchers and the public.
The removal of Lady Shep-En-Hor is likely to spark debate among museum professionals, historians and the public about where the line should be drawn. It is a question with no easy answer, and Glasgow is far from the only institution wrestling with it.
What is clear is that the days of simply putting ancient human remains on show without serious ethical scrutiny are coming to an end, and institutions like the Hunterian are having to think hard about what responsible custodianship of these collections actually looks like going forward.