Cognitive and emotional responses to viewing mummies in an Egyptian museum

Introduction: A recent subfield of neuropsychology is the study of people’s reactions to visiting a museum and observing artworks. However, museums do not only contain artworks or archeological finds, and some of them exhibit human remains, such as mummies. A growing debate concerns the ethical issues of such exhibitions, but the psychological and physiological reactions of visitors when viewing mummies have not yet been measured. Methods: In this study, 33 subjects (40.3 ± 14.4 years old) participated in two experiments conducted at the Egyptian Museum of Turin (Italy). In the first experiment, they were asked to observe an empty sarcophagus, an opened sarcophagus with a mummy inside, and an open sarcophagus with the mummy placed between the cover and the coffin of the sarcophagus. Subjects wore an electroencephalographic (EEG) system on their heads, electrodes on their fingers to measure skin conductance levels (SCL) and wore eye-tracking glasses. In the second experiment, they visited the room of the “Three Sisters” with two completely bandaged mummies and one partially unbandaged. The indices extracted from EEG and SCL signals were compared before and after they noticed the partially unbandaged mummy. Results: Cognitive workload was found to increase due to the presence of the mummies in the first experiment, whereas an increase in emotional arousal (SCL) was observed in the second experiment after participants saw that partially unbandaged mummy. Discussion: The presence of mummies increased the emotional engagement, but it was not an effect specific leading to negative emotions.