Manchester Museum has taken the mummified remains of a 2,700-year-old woman named Asru off public display after more than 200 years, saying the move reflects her presumed wishes and evolving attitudes towards displaying human remains. Curators consulted Egyptian colleagues, members of the Egyptian diaspora and museum visitors before concluding that removal "aligns most closely with what we understand about her own wishes", since elite Egyptians of her era expected their mummified bodies to stay hidden inside their coffins rather than be viewed by the living.

Asru, believed to have been a temple musician who died around 650BC aged about 60, was excavated in Luxor before her body was donated to the Manchester Natural History Society in 1825 and later unwrapped for display. She was the last mummy shown at the museum, and her coffin and remains are now in storage while officials consider whether to return them to Egypt. The decision follows a wider debate about the ethics of exhibiting human remains, echoing the Pitt Rivers Museum's 2020 removal of mummies and shrunken heads, and calls from the Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations for British institutions to repatriate looted remains.