For the appeal of his spectacular relics and remains is universal, not individual. Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus lies in the Cairo Museum surrounded by his beautiful, fragile tomb treasures. There are rooms full of his dismantled chariots, hunting weapons, elegant chairs, board games, statues and jewels. Then you come to his coffins, his amulets, and masks. Most moving of all is to stand in front of his golden death mask, looking into its timeless eyes. This is not an encounter with wealth, or even with history, but with the human impulse to survive. The dream of immortality has never been given such mesmerising expression. We see our own fear of death and longing to live reflected in Tutankhamun’s frozen eyes.

You don’t have to visit Egypt to feel the fascination of the ancient Egyptian ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. In the British Museum in London many mummies of less famous people lie in painted cases, such as Artemidorus, a young Egyptian from Roman times whose lifelike portrait in the “Fayoum” style is still fixed on to his unwrapped, gilded mummy. Looking into the eyes of Artemidorus is just as moving as gazing on Tutankhamun. The works of art the Egyptians created tell us so much about the people they ennoble.

The British Museum has also shown the way to use modern medical techniques with sensitivity. It recently exhibited some of its mummies along with interactive displays that let visitors virtually “unwrap” them and see internal organs and injuries as revealed by hi-tech hospital scans. The anatomical insights were shown as spectral, spooky, elusive images – not as lurid simulacra. It was moving to learn about the lives and deaths of these ancient people while at the same time seeing their mummy cases and masks.

It is perfectly possible, then, to investigate the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ without insulting them. A bit of delicacy can bring science and art together in a properly engaged and sympathetic revelation of the past.

The bodies of the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, intentionally mummified or accidentally preserved in bogs and ice, are invaluable to archaeology and to anyone who wants to imagine the human story. Seamus Heaney’s poem Strange Fruit about a sacrificial victim preserved in peat bog reveals the lyrical power of such remains. To reduce all that to simulacra that look like characters in a video game is a betrayal of everything archaeology should be about.