Consent & the Afterlife

The cartonnage of Gautseshenu, ca. 945–712 B.C.E. Image by the Brooklyn Museum. In the Egyptian wing of the Brooklyn Museum my young son stands before a beautiful coffin containing the body of woman named Gautseshenu. Her name means “bouquet of lotuses,” though neither of us can pronounce it. After a couple bumbling tries we stop, me out of embarrassment and him because her name is not the point, and the whole idea here is still so very, very strange. How old? he asks again. Almost 3,000 years, I say. And how old am I? He knows. He’s just checking against a void of time he can feel but make no sense of. The numbers, after all, mean nothing. Nor do the dynasties, the stories of the gods, the practical matters of corpse conservation. Some much more fundamental attraction is unfolding, and it’s linked to this: just beyond a few layers of linen, gesso, and paint, is a body. And just beyond that is the world of the dead. I’ve now watched this odd magic work its irresistible charm on both…