10 Comments

This is WILD!!! That invitation for the unwrapping party alone, OMG, not to mention the casual cannibalism 😱 I’ve got to go back and read this again, Sam, brilliant interview!

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And imagine taking a 4,500 year old mummy and THROWING IT AWAY?? Absolutely crazy!

Your comment made me think of another fun fact from Emily that I had to cut due to space constraints: during the Renaissance there was a paint color called “mummy brown,” so named because the pigment was made of ground up mummy flesh 🤯 more here if you’re interested! https://www.artinsociety.com/the-life-and-death-of-mummy-brown.html Thanks for reading, as always 😊

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I know! 🤯 just casually tossing the mummy out! Definitely reading the link, thank you, Sam!

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Wow! I'm going to save this to read again, it's so packed with interesting info, thank you!

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😊 Thanks for reading, Jessica--Emily really knows her stuff!

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Wow, this is eye-opening! It sure raises a lot of questions for the next time I go to a museum. Did Emily mention if there are any museums that are "more ethical" than others? I would love to patronize the museums that do a better job of paying their rent for artifacts, and stay away from the creepy, unethical ones. But it's kind of cool that people are still finding artifacts so easily (right up in the top layer of the soil)! Sounds like we won't run out for a while :)

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This is a fantastic question, Victoria! Emily and I didn’t cover this is in our conversation, so I reached out to her. Her take is that museums housing artifacts that were found locally are likely to be the most ethical, because you can at least be confident nothing was trafficked across borders. She also always tells people that it’s a good idea to patronize museums that have recently repatriated artifacts, and when you do, to leave positive feedback saying you chose to visit because they made an ethical decision—that encourages them (and potentially others) to make similar decisions in the future.

On the flip side, Emily cautions people against visiting the Museum of the Bible, because a good percentage of the items on display were purchased illegally by Hobby Lobby.

Hopefully that answers your question! If you have others, Emily might swing by the comments section later. :)

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Fascinating!

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I was hanging on Emily’s every word!! Thanks for reading, Vicki 😊

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oh. my. god. I mean, not a surprised OMG but a grossed-out, you-cannibalistic/colonialist-pig-how-could-you OMG. Talk about desecration...

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