I have developed a profound aversion to everything that currently falls under the umbrella term 'woke.' This is because this ideology has cast three excellent human qualities, common sense, a sense of proportion, and a sense of humour, as suspicious traits. Anyone who thinks for themselves risks offending. Anyone who attempts to understand history is accused of justifying it. And anyone who laughs at the inevitable absurdities merely proves how urgently they need re-education.

By Oscar Hammerstein
"Woke" is the peculiar conviction that humanity reached moral maturity only about twenty years ago, and that the preceding four thousand years must now be subjected to rigorous inspection. The past is no longer studied; it is put on trial.

Paintings are given warning labels, statues are removed, books are "corrected," and historical figures are hauled before an imaginary court, forced to answer for the regrettable fact that they lacked the insights of a contemporary, unhinged diversity officer. It is a dictatorship of good intentions, wielded by people so convinced of their own virtue that they see any doubt as moral aggression. And now, even the dead are no longer safe.

At the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, the roughly four-thousand-year-old mummy of the Egyptian priest Nekht has been removed from display. The reason? The deceased never permitted his mortal remains to be shown to the public.

This is not a Monty Python invention or a *Little Britain* sketch; it is an actual decision made by a museum. Four thousand years after his death, Nekht has fallen victim to an administrative oversight: he failed to sign a consent form.

Kelvingrove is managed by Glasgow Life, an organisation tasked with caring for the city’s museum collections and, as it turns out, safeguarding the interests of Egyptians who have been gone for four millennia.

What began as a perfectly sensible recommendation to treat human remains with respect has, following some administrative deliberation, evolved into a requirement that the deceased in question must have personally consented to being put on display. A splendid principle, though with one minor practical drawback: the individual concerned is dead. And not just since yesterday.

Nekht lived around 1900 BC. Over the four millennia that followed, he has conducted himself in an exemplary fashion. He has lodged no complaints, organised no demonstrations, sent no registered letters, and, a remarkable display of self-restraint for an Egyptian priest, has not even retained a lawyer. His silence has been absolute.

One might almost interpret it as consent, were it not for the fact that, these days, consent counts only if it is documented in writing, explicitly, on an informed basis, and preferably in digital form.

A group of solemn-faced museum officials has gathered around a table. On the agenda is a matter of urgent ethical significance: the legal status of an Egyptian priest who traded the temporal for the eternal long before anyone in the British Isles had even coined the term "compliance."

"Did the individual in question provide consent?" "Not to our knowledge." "Did we reach out to him in writing?" "No record of such communication has been found." "Can we consult him now?" An awkward silence ensues. "Given his current state of health, that seems unlikely to be productive." "And his surviving kin?" "We are having some difficulty identifying the correct generation." "In that case, we cannot possibly continue to keep him on display."

And so, the meeting, presumably following a well-earned break for green tea and sustainably sourced biscuits, concludes with the solemn satisfaction of people who have just righted a great moral wrong: they decide to remove the priest from public view.

It is a victory of civilisation over common sense. For four thousand years, Nekht had spent his time in relative peace. Still, even the afterlife offered no sufficient protection against the ethical vigilance of a twenty-first-century Scottish museum committee.

Oscar Wilde, who possessed an extraordinary talent for uncovering the folly lurking behind respectable facades, would likely have enjoyed all of this. Yet even he might have hesitated to include it in a play, not because the scene lacked wit, but because no sensible audience would believe a group of grown adults could have performed it without a shred of irony.

Therein perhaps lies the greatest triumph of the modern "woke" bureaucracy: it has not banned satire; it has rendered it superfluous.

Elsewhere in Glasgow, the university-affiliated Hunterian Museum has made its own contribution to this "leap forward" in civilisation. The 2,600-year-old mummy of Lady Shep-En-Hor, part of the collection since 1820, has been removed from public view. Her sarcophagus remains on display, but the mummy itself has been covered with fabric.

The museum’s explanation is marked by a touching degree of sensitivity: Lady Shep-En-Hor, they argue, deserves privacy even in death. Two and a half millennia after she died, she has finally received the protection she supposedly waited for all this time.

The ancient Egyptians embalmed their dead to preserve them for eternity. They built pyramids, constructed burial chambers, and developed elaborate rituals to guide the soul safely into the afterlife.

The notion that their mortal remains would one day be subjected to the privacy standards of a Scottish museum committee would surely have struck even a civilisation that worshipped falcon-headed gods as utterly preposterous.

But things become even more interesting when one delves into the intellectual climate in which such decisions are made. Glasgow Life maintains an extensive program titled "Legacies of Slavery and Empire," through which its museums examine their collections for connections to colonialism, slavery, racism, and historical power dynamics. While historical research should uncover the unpleasant aspects of the past, the titles of certain publications reveal a particular interest in morally reassessing history.

For instance, in December 2025, *Challenging White Thinking*. More than a Temporary Project? Previously, the organisation published *Degas and the ‘black world’, The Artist’s links to Slavery and Racism*, *Adam Ferguson, Walter Scott and White Supremacy*, and even *Rethinking the Dutch ‘Golden Age’*. Evidently, it is not enough for the Netherlands to subject its own "Golden Age" to constant moral cross-examination; now, Glasgow has also decided to take an interest in our national history.

Even the French impressionist Edgar Degas is not exempt from an investigation into his relationship with slavery and racism. Meanwhile, Sir Walter Scott, whose historical novels have captivated millions of readers, is being linked to ideas regarding racial hierarchies and the later symbolism of the Ku Klux Klan. Who would have imagined that a museum visit would become a permanent moral background check?

One of the curators involved is Nelson Cummins, Curator of Legacies of Slavery and Empire. In November 2024, he described the reconfiguration of the ‘Conflict and Consequences’ gallery at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Among the items removed were a Quran, believed to have been carried by an Indian soldier, a ceremonial chair looted from Ghana, and a standard from the Battle of Omdurman.

Naturally, the provenance of looted objects raises serious legal and historical questions. Yet, this ongoing process of reinterpretation, combined with the new policy regarding mummies, illustrates the extent to which the museum sector is reinventing itself, shifting from a role solely as custodian of the past to one that increasingly acts as its moral arbiter.

Most striking is that, in removing human remains, Glasgow Life cites the revised Code of Ethics of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which calls for respect for the inherent dignity of human remains, a perfectly understandable principle.

However, the code does not mandate the removal of every mummy. In its internal policy, Glasgow Life has adopted a far more radical premise: human remains may be displayed only if there is documented, informed consent from the deceased or, under certain circumstances, their descendants.

In doing so, a standard of decency has been transformed into an administrative requirement that virtually no Egyptian mummy could meet. It is a bureaucratic take on the miracle of resurrection: the dead need not be brought back to life, provided they can still manage to sign a form. Perhaps this is something the European Union should look into.

A European Authority for Posthumous Consent would fit perfectly into the existing institutional landscape. It would have a chair, seven vice-chairs, a scientific advisory board, and an annual budget that would need to increase due to unforeseen circumstances.

A separate protocol could be drafted for Egyptian mummies, with particular attention given to whether hieroglyphs might qualify as a legally valid signature. In the absence of consent, a remedial procedure would follow.

The deceased would be informed of their rights in writing; should they fail to respond within six weeks, the deadline would be extended, out of an abundance of caution, of course. After all, after four thousand years, any sense of urgency would seem rather inappropriate.

Meanwhile, representatives from Egypt have come forward requesting Nekht's return. That is an entirely different matter. The legitimate provenance, ownership, and potential repatriation of human remains are subjects worthy of serious debate. But that debate should not be conflated with the fiction that a Bronze Age priest is still waiting for the opportunity to provide his informed consent.

Moreover, this policy is not limited to the Egyptian dead. Kelvingrove also intends to remove the skeletons of an adult and a child, recovered from a Scottish Bronze Age grave, from its exhibition. Even one’s own ancestors are now being shielded from their descendants' curiosity. Beneath this comedy lies a trend that is considerably less amusing.

The museum was once a temple of knowledge and curiosity, a place where the living could encounter the dead, and where vanished civilisations were given a voice once more. An Egyptian mummy could tell us about religion, medicine, mortality, and the human yearning for immortality.

Today, however, the museum risks becoming an institution where the past is permitted entry only after it has passed a moral safety test. Naturally, human remains should be treated with dignity. Naturally, religious customs and the feelings of the bereaved deserve respect. But exercising care is not the same as intellectual capitulation. Respect ceases to be a virtue when it loses all connection to reality.

The Amsterdam Museum receives €12.7 million annually from the Municipality of Amsterdam, accounting for 88 per cent of its revenue. A significant portion of these public funds is directed toward diversity and decolonisation policies, as well as supporting the "Red Line" (Rode Lijn) protest.

Evidently, the museum views political engagement as part of its cultural mandate. This raises the question of whether an institution largely funded by taxpayers can still maintain a clear distinction between preserving history and engaging in contemporary politics.

History is not a suspect that must answer to a modern-day court of law. Nor is it a job applicant who must first pass through a "Diversity and Inclusion" department before being admitted into our collective memory. We can examine, understand, and evaluate history; we cannot, however, retroactively "educate" it.

The "woke" movement has a peculiar habit of conflating its own moral sensibilities with civilisation itself, as if the entire history of humanity were merely a long, regrettable prelude to the glorious moment when a museum committee in Glasgow finally discovered the "proper" way to treat a four-thousand-year-old Egyptian priest.

Or the moment when the board of the Amsterdam Museum decided it could purge Amsterdam’s history of everything that no longer aligns with its own contemporary moral worldview, starting with the Jews. It is self-aggrandisement disguised as compassion.

History is no longer studied to uncover what actually happened; instead, it is vetted to determine whether the past conforms to the standards of the present. And when the past fails to pass inspection, it is not refuted; it is removed from sight.

The ancient Egyptians believed that, upon death, the heart of the deceased was weighed against the feather of truth. It was a solemn judgment of the life one had led. Today, the soul is no longer weighed before entering the afterlife; instead, it must first be determined whether the deceased signed the consent form.

And anyone who failed to do so four thousand years ago can still expect the harshest punishment our enlightened civilisation has to offer: exclusion for failing to be inclusive.