Collecting Ethics
Egyptian Mummy at the Sheldon Museum
In October 1886, soon after the opening of his Museum to the public, Henry L. Sheldon acquired an Egyptian mummy of a child for $10. Such objects were fashionable among many 19th century collectors. Sheldon purchased it from a New York coin and stamp dealer, Edward Frossard. The mummy, referred to by Henry in his diary as “his mummy girl,” was never displayed during his lifetime because, to his great disappointment, it arrived in poor condition. After Henry’s death, it was moved to the Museum’s attic, where storage conditions caused it to deteriorate even further. In 1945, the mummy was cremated and reburied in a family plot in Middlebury’s West Cemetery by then Museum President George Mead.
According to scribblings found on boards that accompanied the mummy, the body was that of Egyptian Prince Amun Her Kepeshef, whose father, Sen Woset, was known as the greatest ruler of Egypt’s 12th dynasty. The little prince died almost 4,000 years ago, roughly between the ages of two and five, and his sarcophagus was placed in the family pyramid at Dashur, where it lay until it was plundered in the mid-19th century. Grave robbers took Amun to Cairo and sold his mummified remains to Spanish traders, who sold it to dealers in Paris, where Frossard bought at an auction.
This unusual story of the little Egyptian prince resting in a Christian cemetery in a small town in Vermont fascinated many and was often written about by the local press and beyond – the Ford Times (1950), the Worcester Sunday Telegraph (1952), the Times Union (1967) and the Washington Post (1982). Most of the news stories repeated the same sentimental and wishful thinking of a little boy of noble ancestry brutally ripped out of his resting place and now, in his incinerated void of a body, resting among New England Yankees.
Contemporary Egyptologists differ in their opinion about the Sheldon mummy provenance, given the sketchy record of its origin. Some say that it is quite possible that he was a son of Set Woset, while others say that child mummies were not known during the period of Set Woset’s life. We may never know the full story, but we do know that a mummy was included on Henry L. Sheldon’s checklist of objects “every museum” should have. From our present perspective we can only question whether it was such a good thing to buy a mummy for display at his museum.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s Relics
Henry collected images of notable men, such as American presidents, congressmen, clergy, governors, and worldly literary and political figures. But Napoleon Bonaparte (1759-1821) seems to have held particular meaning to him. The Sheldon collection includes a framed photo of Napoleon I’s statue with Henry’s handwritten caption: “Last Days of Napoleon I, from the marble statue by Vincento Vela 1871 in Corcoran Art Gallery.” Several other items relating to Bonaparte augment his Napoleon collection.
According to Henry’s acquisition book, in 1896 J.K. Seaver, a native Vermonter, “loaned” him a lock of Napoleon I’s hair taken from his body after he died on St. Helena. Seaver obtained it from the widow of Capt. Lot Chamberlain of Lake Champlain. Chamberlain, a colorful and adventurous character, acquired it on one of his many sea voyages. The “loaned” vial of hair was never returned to Seaver, and became a permanent item in the Museum collection.
Clearly Napoleon Bonaparte held significance to Henry. He noted in one of his diaries that he had read his biography and acquired a parchment document with Napoleon I’s original signature. Perhaps this interest stems from the fact that both men, Napoleon I and Henry, shared the year 1821—for the former, the year of his death, and for the latter, the year of his birth. It is difficult to say whether the hair sample is genuine, but it is clear that the question of its authenticity was subordinate to Henry’s interest in collecting a piece of Napoleon.
This year, France is celebrating the bicentennial of Napoleon Bonaparte, marked by plenty of controversy surrounding the commemoration. Many scholars and activists are revisiting and scrutinizing his legacy. We wonder, what would Henry think about Napoleon now, were he alive?
“Petrified Indian Boy”
According to The Petrified Indian Boy pamphlet authored by George A. Parsons and published in Middlebury in 1871, the “Petrified Indian Boy” was discovered by his hunting party in January 1871 near Turner Falls, Massachusetts. Apparently his “geologist” dog began to dig into the icy rocks where the “petrified” body of a small boy was found four feet deep into “the bird track strata.” Shortly after, the finding was pronounced “the most perfect human petrification in the world”!
Without delay, the “fossil” was identified as a specimen of an extinct Indian race, as the “basilar region of the head, as well as the general contour of the brain affords strong indication of his Indian origin.” This theory was supported by Vermont Governor John W. Stewart of Middlebury, who stated that the boy has “all the prominent marks of genuine Indian extraction.” Shortly thereafter, the “very learned professor” of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Rev. George Nelson Webber of Middlebury College, confirmed the Governor’s assessment.
The discovery became an instant sensation and money-maker. The “Petrified Indian Boy” was put on public display in Greenfield, MA, where a certain Abner Woodward purchased it for 100 barrels of whiskey. He exhibited the relic in a showroom at 104 Washington Street in Boston until further analysis revealed it to be a fraud. Woodward then moved it to Canada, where it did a good business for a time until the news followed that it was a hoax. In 1884, the “fossil” relic arrived at the Sheldon Museum and became part of the collection.
However, before the “Petrified Indian Boy“ was found to be made of clay and not of human tissue, the viewers believed that they were seeing a genuine fossilized Indian, which was the main part of its attraction. But is displaying human remains or even faux fossilized bodies ethical?
Curiously, this practice has continued to today. Eugene, the Mummy Man, an African American found dead in Sabina, Ohio in 1929, was on public display until his burial in 1964. Sylvester, the Mummy, a Caucasian outlaw, discovered in Arizona in 1895, travelled as a sideshow throughout the U.S. during the 20th century. One can still view his remains in a shop in Seattle. Just recently, bones of Black children who died in the 1985 bombing by Philadelphia police in a confrontation with the Move organization, a Black liberation group, were used in an online forensic anthropology course.
Many museums still hold and exhibit human remains as part of their collections. But the ethics of such practices is vigorously debated, since the majority of these bodies belong to non-white groups with long histories of exploitation and debasement. Today the descendants of these people are asking that they be repatriated to their homelands.