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The British Museum said it would stop referring to ‘mummies’ and call them ‘mummified persons’ instead, out of respect to their dignity. How did they come to be called mummies in the first place?
– The term has been traced back to 1615, and derived from the Latin Mumia, and the Arabic Mumiya, referring either to an embalmed body or the bituminous substance in which they were embalmed.
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