Glasgow Mummies Removed: Who Were Nekht and Lady Shep-en-Hor?

Ancient WorldSun 25 Oct 2026, 17:00 AST

The Glasgow mummies story is about two very different people who died more than a thousand years apart. This week Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum took the coffin and remains of Nekht, a Middle Kingdom priest, off display because he never gave consent, and the University of Glasgow's Hunterian covered the body of Lady Shep-en-Hor, a woman from Thebes, with a specially made textile. Neither museum has destroyed or sent anything away. Below we explain who these two Egyptians were, how they reached Scotland, and why the rules on showing human remains are changing. For another look at how international rules are made, see our piece on how the United Nations was born on 24 October 1945.

Era: Nekht: 12th Dynasty, about 1985 to 1797 BC. Shep-en-Hor: Late Period, about 600 BC
Date: Changes reported 22 to 23 October 2026
Place: Beni Hasan and Western Thebes in Egypt; Glasgow, Scotland, today

Key facts at a glance

Kelvingrove (run by Glasgow Life) removed Nekht's painted coffin and remains, plus a mummified head, hand and foot from the Valley of the Kings, citing the lack of consent.
The Hunterian kept Lady Shep-en-Hor's coffin on view but covered her body after advice from Egyptologists. It has been displayed almost continuously since 1820.
This is not a national ban: National Museums Scotland is not changing its displays, and the British Museum says it has no plans to remove its mummies.

What happened to the Glasgow mummies this week

The change at Kelvingrove came to wider attention after a visitor posted about a new sign on social media. The sign says the human remains were removed "as a mark of respect". According to BBC News, Glasgow Life acted "in absence of consent from the deceased individual or their descendants". Alongside Nekht, the museum took out three body parts from the Valley of the Kings near Luxor: a man's head, a right hand and a right foot. The Telegraph reported that remains at the city's St Mungo Museum are expected to follow.

The Hunterian, Scotland's oldest public museum, took a different route. It left Lady Shep-en-Hor where she has always been but placed a specially designed cloth over her body. The museum told the BBC she "deserved privacy in death". Her decorated coffin, which it describes as fine Late Period funerary art, is still on show.

Both museums said they would consider a request to return the remains if one is made. So far, no such request has been reported.

Who was Nekht, the priest from Beni Hasan?

Nekht (spelled Nakht in the Glasgow Museums catalogue) lived in the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, a time of strong central rule when provincial officials built fine tombs. He was buried at Beni Hasan, a cliff cemetery on the east bank of the Nile in Middle Egypt. Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities says the site has 39 rock-cut tombs in its upper cemetery and around 800 tombs in its lower one, mostly for officials of the 16th Upper Egyptian province, known as the Oryx nome.

A small coffin with a big message

The catalogue describes his coffin as a small rectangular wooden box painted to look like the front of a palace, with recesses and buttresses. A pair of eyes is painted on the left side so the dead man could "see" the sunrise. A leopard skin on the lid shows that Nekht was a sem-priest, one of the priests who performed the Opening of the Mouth ritual, which Egyptians believed let the dead eat, breathe and speak in the afterlife. The remains inside are a skeleton rather than a wrapped body.

How he reached Glasgow

The British archaeologist John Garstang of the University of Liverpool dug at Beni Hasan from 1902 to 1904, and finds from those seasons were shared among museums. Nekht's coffin came from tomb 130 and was given to Glasgow in 1923 by the Glasgow branch of the Egyptian Research Students' Association. That group grew out of the work of Janet May Buchanan, who put together Glasgow's first Egyptian exhibition in 1912 and died only weeks after it opened. Glasgow Museums now hold more than 4,300 Egyptian objects.

Who was Lady Shep-en-Hor?

Shep-en-Hor was buried in the great cemetery of Western Thebes, opposite modern Luxor, around 600 BC. A 1979 study in the Glasgow Archaeological Journal dated her coffin to no earlier than about 700 BC and noted that the names on it fit the 26th Dynasty. The coffin is made from two pieces of sycamore wood, coated with gesso (a plaster layer) and painted. Its texts ask for a good burial, and an Apis bull carrying a mummy is painted on the foot.

Two centuries in a glass case

Joshua Heywood gave the coffin to the Hunterian in July 1820. The first scholarly study, by the Egyptologist Peter Le Page Renouf, appeared in 1891. She has never been taken out of her coffin, although she has been X-rayed and CT scanned in the last 50 years. In the 1970s, some researchers questioned whether the body is really hers, because 19th-century diggers and dealers sometimes swapped bodies between coffins.

Why museums are rethinking mummies

For most of history, Europeans did not treat mummies as people at all. Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that through the Middle Ages, ground-up mummy was sold in apothecary shops as medicine, a trade that lasted into the 18th century. The word itself comes from the Arabic for bitumen, because people wrongly believed bodies were preserved with it. In the 19th century, mummies were bought, sold and sometimes unwrapped in front of audiences, and they later became stock monsters in horror films, the same genre as the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead.

Modern guidance moved slowly. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Human Tissue Act 2004 and government guidance for museums issued in 2005 set out the rules. Scotland published its own guidelines for human remains in museum collections in 2011. In June 2026, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) adopted a new Code of Ethics in Paris, replacing the version agreed in Seoul in 2004.

Museums should uphold the inherent dignity of human remains and promote respect for their significance.
ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums, 2026, section C.3

Glasgow Life's draft human remains policy goes further than that. It would allow display only where there is documented and informed consent from the person or, in some cases, their descendants. For a body that is about 3,800 years old, that test is almost impossible to pass, which is why Nekht came off display. The draft also cites a 2025 report on reparations by a UK parliamentary group.

The Glasgow mummies timeline

c.1985-1797 BC 12th Dynasty: Nekht works as a sem-priest and is buried at Beni Hasan.
c.600 BC Shep-en-Hor is buried in Western Thebes.
1820 Joshua Heywood gives her coffin to the Hunterian in Glasgow.
1902-1904 John Garstang excavates Beni Hasan.
1912 Janet May Buchanan curates Glasgow's first Egyptian exhibition.
1923 Nekht's coffin is gifted to Glasgow.
2008 Manchester Museum covers three mummies, then partly uncovers them after public feedback.
June 2026 ICOM adopts its new Code of Ethics in Paris.
22-23 Oct 2026 Kelvingrove removes Nekht; the Hunterian covers Shep-en-Hor.

Myth vs fact

Myth Scotland has banned mummies from museums.

Fact These were choices by two Glasgow institutions. National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh is keeping its Egyptian and Peruvian mummies on display.

Myth The new ICOM code orders museums to remove human remains.

Fact Professor Steph Scholten, who sits on ICOM's ethics committee, told the BBC the code is guidance and does not set one fixed outcome or require remains to be taken off display.

Myth Visitors can no longer see anything of Lady Shep-en-Hor.

Fact Her painted coffin, the main work of art, remains on view at the Hunterian. Only her body is covered.

What happens next

Expect the debate to continue. The 2008 experiment at Manchester Museum is a useful guide: it covered three unwrapped mummies during a consultation, faced criticism from Egyptology groups, and within weeks moved to partial covering after visitors said a full cover-up was not the right long-term answer. Glasgow's policy is still a draft, and the British Museum's own policy weighs public benefit against the views of communities with a cultural link to the dead. Any request from Egypt to bring Nekht or Shep-en-Hor home would be judged case by case.

How we checked this

We read the original BBC News and Telegraph reports from 22 and 23 October 2026, then checked the history against primary and academic sources: the Glasgow Museums collection catalogue for Nekht's coffin, the 1979 Glasgow Archaeological Journal article on Shep-en-Hor, National Museums Scotland's survey of Egyptian collections, Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the full 2026 ICOM Code of Ethics. Dates for Egyptian dynasties are approximate.

FAQ

Why were the Glasgow mummies removed?

Glasgow Life says there is no consent from the dead person or their descendants. Its draft policy only allows human remains on display with documented consent.

Can I still see Egyptian artefacts in Glasgow?

Yes. The changes affect human remains, not the wider Egyptian collections, and the Hunterian still displays Lady Shep-en-Hor's painted coffin.

Will the mummies go back to Egypt?

Not for now. Both museums say they would consider repatriation if asked, but no request has been reported.

Is the British Museum removing its mummies too?

No. The British Museum said it has no plans to take its mummies off display.

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