As I was reading about the Valley of the Kings again, I wonder why that was actually legal.

  • rumschlumpel
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    7 hours ago

    A scientist might think that the historical/scientific value is more important that the personal rights of people who died millenia ago.

    The people who dug up graves in the early 20th century just didn’t see the locals as people, though, which is also why most of those museums were in Europe, not anywhere near where the artifacts were found (if the artifacts were given to museums at all, instead of being sold to private collectors).

    If you ask me personally: A pharaoh is a king, and fuck the king.

    • frank@sopuli.xyz
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      7 hours ago

      Yeah, there’s a weird implied statute of limitations type of thing with remains. Like thousands of years ago, we can learn so much and uncover history by looking at remains. But you don’t learn much and it’s weird and presumably illegal to dig up recent remains.

      I dunno what that time limit is, but to me at least it feels like it exists and intuitively makes enough sense

      • juliebean@lemm.ee
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        2 hours ago

        i think you’ve hit the nail on the head regarding why robbing recent graves is unethical; that is, it’s denying valuable data to the archeologists of 3024 CE.