Memorial Day: Respecting The Grave
Today is Memorial Day in the United States, an event usually commemorated with barbecues, high gas prices, and the first family vacation of the summer. The holiday, however, hails back to the Civil War as a day of remembrance of fallen soldiers, observed by cleaning and decorating their graves. In my mother’s family, and many others, the grave service isn’t limited to veterans, but to all relatives, and the day is used as a good reason to visit the final resting places of loved ones. It might seem to be a decidedly morbid event, somewhat lost to the times when death wasn’t as isolated an event as it is today. Despite an aversion to gravesites, as a society, we still hold graves and cemeteries as sacred places, so even though most families cringe at the idea of a family vacation to see the place where Grandpa is buried, people are almost universally horrified at the idea of someone stealing from a grave.
My daughter (a graveyard lover herself) and I visited the Science Museum of Minnesota in Saint Paul on Saturday, and we saw a mummy. The mummy wasn’t the best example of one, and appeared to have 
experienced neglect, but its description explains that a bit. The sign above the mummy explained that the mummy had been bought as a souvenir by a Minnesota family who had visited Egypt in the early 20th century. During the Victorian times, despite Egypt banning mummy exports in the 1835, it was not difficult for the affluent to acquire the preserved bones of an ancient Egyptian for their own amusements, often simply for display, but also for the experience of unwrapping the mummy as a party game. As noted, death was not as avoided a topic as it is today, so the thought of playing with a corspe wasn’t as creepy an idea as it is today, and these mummies were seen more as objects and posessions than as a body stolen from a grave. Western interest in exotic Egyptology resulted in a lot of poorly-handled excavations and grave robbing during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but often the archaeologists would find an empty hole where a grave should be, as the grave had already been hit by robbers in previous centuries.
Nations around the world have slowly tightened the loopholes and opportunities abused by those who would steal from graves for keepsakes and profit, but there is still a large gray area in which objects float, unsure of their status as a legal possession. Proving that a bit of first-century jewelry was acquired from a non-grave source can be particularly difficult if the jewelry has been in the hands of collectors for over a century, but a conscientious collector should ensure that items of antiquity in their possession were 
acquired through legal and ethical means. This will most likely be more difficult, and probably more expensive, than an undocumented item of similar caliber, but it can certainly be done. Nations have been demanding return of illegally-owned items, and collectors need to be aware that they are at risk if they possess something removed from a grave by unscrupulous dealers. Sellers may claim to have a Certificate of Authenticity for their items, but COAs aren’t always to be trusted unless they come from an independent, knowledgeable source, and if the item was discovered in recent years documentation on the item’s export should be included as proof of its legality. The more that collectors expect or demand provenance and documentation, the more dealers will provide the information; if the price is higher for well-documented items, it is because that info make the item more valuable, and a more worthy addition to a collection.
One major reason, as described in Who Owns Antiquity?, for nations to desire control over the export and dispersement of their artifacts and grave items is to compile and collect objects which form the core of their nation’s identity. Even if the original nation is long gone, or a people disappeared, the attachment to a region’s ancestors is used as a foundation for a community’s identity. This is the same reason for Memorial Day: to connect with ancestors, show them the respect due to them as a decendent, and reflect on where we came from, as families and societies. A garden cemetery or an old church yard holds much appeal to a collector of antiquities interested in connecting with the past – just make sure to leave behind anything you might find during your visit.
