In the past few decades, the literature in museum anthropology has advocated efforts to be more transparent about its colonial origins, address the historical injustices of imperial collecting, and rethink display narratives in collaboration with source communities. In this paper, however, we question the extent to which the epistemic and political predicaments underlying ethnographic representations are being fundamentally and systematically confronted. As we highlight with the example of ancient Egyptian material, it is apparent that significant parts of museum holdings remain freighted by unquestioned colonial and Eurocentric discourses. We employ a case study of the Egyptian material redisplayed in the “World Cultures” gallery of the Horniman Museum, London, to demonstrate how the ethnographic museum continues to unwittingly produce “silences” around collections. To redress the lacunae we provide examples of the way in which this body of material could be more meaningfully integrated within museological discourses that have informed the rethinking of other aspects of world culture.

中文翻译：

---

博物馆人类学中的盲点：民族志博物馆中的古埃及

在过去的几十年里，博物馆人类学文献提倡努力使其殖民起源更加透明，解决帝国收藏的历史不公正问题，并与来源社区合作重新思考展示叙事。然而，在本文中，我们质疑作为民族志表征背后的认知和政治困境在多大程度上受到了根本性和系统性的影响。正如我们以古埃及材料的例子所强调的那样，很明显，博物馆藏品的重要部分仍然受到毫无疑问的殖民和欧洲中心论的影响。我们对在伦敦霍尼曼博物馆的“世界文化”画廊重新展示的埃及材料进行了案例研究，展示民族志博物馆如何继续在不知情的情况下围绕收藏品制造“沉默”。为了弥补这一缺陷，我们提供了一些例子，说明如何将这些材料更有意义地整合到博物馆学话语中，这些话语为重新思考世界文化的其他方面提供了信息。