A number of social media users have found fault with the recent operation to unearth a 2,500-year-old mummy from its tomb in Egypt’s vast Saqqara necropolis, calling out “the white people” behind the historic dig.
As the tomb was opened in front of reporters to reveal the mummy inside, with a video of the move having since gone viral on Twitter, netizens rushed to denounce the archaeological effort.
“We’re trained very early on to think that mummies and tombs need unearthing, but its kind of sad that even in death POC can’t escape the prying and opportunistic advances of white people”, wrote one commenter in a Twitter thread, garnering almost 150,000 likes and thousands of retweets and comments. “Idk if Im talking out my a** but something about this feels evil. When I die, keep white people away from me”, the Twitterian urged.
Another Twitter user agreed, claiming it is nothing but showing disrespect for the dead:
“It’s super disrespectful because the entire reason they were buried in these was so they could be guided to the afterlife and we were kinda just like haha no”.
Another disgruntled user went still further, suggesting that the digging two thousand years after the time and effort-consuming mummification is “worse” than just disrespect towards a buried person; rather, it is “the equivalent of ripping someone out of heaven”.
"Imagine your card gets declined in the afterlife and white people come and dig you up", someone attempted to quip.
However, the angry mob apparently failed to take into account that the archaeological team behind the discovery was actually made up entirely of Egyptians. They started to dig in the area of the 11 pyramids of Saqqara, the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian capital Memphis, in 2018.
Previous discoveries included a cache of mummified animals, such as lions, cats, and crocodiles.
The coffins, dating back to the Pharaonic Late Period (664-525 B.C.), were found perfectly preserved thanks to a protective seal that kept them intact over the centuries, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, shared with Reuters.
Archaeologists are set to continue opening the previously found coffins and study their contents before their eventual display at the Grand Egyptian Museum, expected to open next year and draw crowds of tourists, Waziri said.