The shouting began at once, as it does. Murdo Fraser, who speaks on the arts for the opposition in the Scottish parliament, called it ridiculous madness, and said museums should show history, not hide it. Chris McGovern, who chairs a campaign for proper education, said permission cannot be sought from those dead thousands of years, and held up the example of the Egyptian museums, which, on the advice of religious authorities, are said to display mummies with reverence. What guidance Glasgow Life followed, where it has put the remains, whether scholars may see them, whether it consulted the Egyptians: the reports are silent. A prudent magistrate would ask these things first. I ask something else.

They seek consent from a dead man. Whom are they asking? Nekht does not answer, not because he will not, but because there is no longer anyone there to will or not to will. Consent belongs to the living: it needs two who feel, who pledge, who can repent. The dead man wants nothing, fears nothing, complains of nothing. What then? They make him a litigant, and give him a sort of advocate to sue for injury on behalf of the absent party. It is ridiculous, Lucilius, but the ridiculous does not arise without a cause. Whoever treats the dead as living has not understood death.

I grant that honour is owed to the dead. Our ancestors held tombs sacred, made offerings to the shades, and punished the violator of a grave; but all this was done for the gods and for the living, not because the dead man had permitted or forbidden it. Nor does honour consist in hiding. Nekht himself, if the Daily Mail reports the Egyptians rightly, wished his body kept whole, because he believed it needed for the life to come. He feared dissolution; he paid the price, in ointments, bandages, a painted coffin. And see: the body has lasted, and he is no less dead. More things frighten us, Lucilius, than crush us, and we suffer more often in opinion than in fact. That very head was teaching this, and now they have taken it away.

The true cause, as I see it, is this: it is not the dead we stand in awe of, but death. We hide the dying in hospitals, we cover corpses with sheets, and now even a mummy with a sign. That girl had come to learn about the Egyptians; she might have learned about herself. There was no truer philosopher in that whole building than that dry head, which said nothing and persuaded of everything. When Crito asked Socrates how he should bury him, Socrates laughed and said he might bury him if he could catch him: he knew the body is not the man. I, for my part, will confess my weakness: I have gardens, villas, costly tables, and I dread death no less than anyone. That is why I have provided in my will that my body be burned without any pomp, not because I am wise, but to cut off the road to my heirs' vanity, and my own.

The remedy is not to be sought from the council, nor from the museum. If the people of Glasgow have hidden their mummy, look at your own hand: it is a hand from the Valley of the Kings, only to be embalmed a little later. Every day something is taken from us, and no one consults us. Count each day a separate life, and at night, before you sleep, say to yourself: 'I have lived.' Nekht gave no consent to be displayed; we shall give none to die. Farewell.