Antiquity ownership
Dec. 21st, 2007 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
narcasseLying in bed this morning attempting to get some use out of the Web’n’Walk function on my phone before the cancellation date occurs next month, since I forgot to cancel the service earlier, I came across this article via one of the RSS feeds I subscribe to: Egyptians in Egyptology Al-Ahram Online (Issue 876)
It’s a review of the sort of book I might peruse in passing but does highlight that same issue that keeps reinventing itself again and again. Not just with Egyptian antiquities but with plenty of others. The Elgin Marbles being one of the most publicised cases: Acropolis now Guardian Unlimited
But while larger pieces might be highly fought over and publicised what it really made me think of was one particular trip to the British Museum and more specifically room 33 containing collections from China, India, South Asia and Southeast Asia. The collections on display are likely to have changed since my odd visit some time ago. Odd because Great Russell Street was a little out of my way back in the day and the National Gallery was usually my preference. I suppose I might have been idling around Farringdon at the time or possibly even the Barbican, though it probably wasn’t the latter because I ended up at the British Museum on my own and my trip to Guildhall was in company and involved our stopping for lunch. My odd journeys round the city aside what I recall of that casual wander was that several key items on display were being lent by private collections. Mr this and Mrs that and so on were all the owners which didn’t surprise me really since the section I was loitering in was probably quite full with things colonials had brought back from their military service and such. And it’s not as if places like Burma don’t have gold-leafed Buddhas to spare; ask the right monk in the UK and he’ll know how to put gold-leaf on the last one you brought back anyway. Which is to say that it wasn’t surprising to see so many things belonging to private collections because they were the result of things people had simply brought back and at the end of the day they weren’t things that would be terribly missed. People give prayer beads and statues to their friends as gifts after all. But that rather is the point; such things might easily be given as gifts and if you go visit a pagoda or even a reasonably sized home you might easily see larger items that were given or purchased because Oxford could do with more Buddha statues or someone’s aunt needed a side table.
Which leads into the difference with other such items, ones that were simply taken.
Nobody gave the Elgin Marbles away; they were simply hacked out of the rock and taken. Plenty of Egyptian antiquities that sit nicely in vacuumed sealed spaces were taken by archaeologists in the golden age of Egyptology or perhaps I ought to say Egyptologists since there really is quite a difference. I remember one museum outing with my grandmother, perhaps almost two decades ago, who pointed out that as fascinating as it all was; these were still the bodies of the dead who had been disinterred for public viewing. It was a point that regularly came up when it came to discussing the idea of excavating with her because there would always be the issue of humanity’s quest for knowledge about its past and the necessity of respecting said past at the same time. And even as a child, while I was still dreaming of becoming an Egyptologist not quite recognising that the golden age of foreign expeditions and funding was probably quite over; the question of appropriate respect still troubled me. It was, in the end why I finally gave up on that childhood idea because as far as I could see it there really was no way to resolve the matter for me and though being engaged in forensic analysis would have been fascinating there really wasn’t actually any way to get round the fact that it involved prodding at the disinterred dead for the sake of academic knowledge. Granted, as long as the soul had weighed the right amount against an ibis feather I’m not sure they’d have had any problem with it but still, somehow in the back of my hindbrain, wedged under the portion that will always automatically respond that the advancement of science is good; there’s still another part that suggests that I couldn’t really do that and not just because I’d be worried about Setesh smacking me across the back of the head with a trowel for not observing correct protocol at all times. Though I’m pretty sure that I’d have to do something particularly heinous to warrant that sort of direct attention.
But what it comes back to, rambling aside, is that there are things that were taken when they shouldn’t have been and while the rules of appropriation may work if nobody asks for whatever it is back; the fact of the matter is that places like Greece and Egypt have been asking. And the argument that these places do not have the means to preserve their own history properly is really beginning to wear thin. In a certain age those arguments may have held water and considering that the golden age of Egyptology was a time of high adventure and private funding such attitudes may presumably have made sense. But now, in this latter age to use those arguments again smacks of Imperialistic arrogance. And yet, despite that I can’t help but want easy access to such things, here; in the UK. Not just for myself but for everybody else too. So I’m again caught between what I’d like to have happen and what should most likely be done. It’s not even an intellectual reasoning to not want such treasures to slip out of British hands; it’s an instinctive gut reaction that tells me that as long as those treasures are here I could go see them, I could easily spend a day marvelling at them in wonder. Which is explanation enough that it’s a selfish desire. To use the Elgin Marbles as an example; they’re out of place in this country and they were never something freely given. It’s not as if Greece intends to hide them away from the world but rather display them in all their grandeur so really, with a place prepared for them; they, like many other antiquities should be sent home.
That’s not to say that I won’t wallow in my own misery over the loss of such treasures once they’re gone but in cases like this sometimes what it really comes down to is doing what you think ought to be done, paying your respects as appropriate and hoping that in doing so your heart won’t end up weighing more or less than an ibis feather.
It’s a review of the sort of book I might peruse in passing but does highlight that same issue that keeps reinventing itself again and again. Not just with Egyptian antiquities but with plenty of others. The Elgin Marbles being one of the most publicised cases: Acropolis now Guardian Unlimited
But while larger pieces might be highly fought over and publicised what it really made me think of was one particular trip to the British Museum and more specifically room 33 containing collections from China, India, South Asia and Southeast Asia. The collections on display are likely to have changed since my odd visit some time ago. Odd because Great Russell Street was a little out of my way back in the day and the National Gallery was usually my preference. I suppose I might have been idling around Farringdon at the time or possibly even the Barbican, though it probably wasn’t the latter because I ended up at the British Museum on my own and my trip to Guildhall was in company and involved our stopping for lunch. My odd journeys round the city aside what I recall of that casual wander was that several key items on display were being lent by private collections. Mr this and Mrs that and so on were all the owners which didn’t surprise me really since the section I was loitering in was probably quite full with things colonials had brought back from their military service and such. And it’s not as if places like Burma don’t have gold-leafed Buddhas to spare; ask the right monk in the UK and he’ll know how to put gold-leaf on the last one you brought back anyway. Which is to say that it wasn’t surprising to see so many things belonging to private collections because they were the result of things people had simply brought back and at the end of the day they weren’t things that would be terribly missed. People give prayer beads and statues to their friends as gifts after all. But that rather is the point; such things might easily be given as gifts and if you go visit a pagoda or even a reasonably sized home you might easily see larger items that were given or purchased because Oxford could do with more Buddha statues or someone’s aunt needed a side table.
Which leads into the difference with other such items, ones that were simply taken.
Nobody gave the Elgin Marbles away; they were simply hacked out of the rock and taken. Plenty of Egyptian antiquities that sit nicely in vacuumed sealed spaces were taken by archaeologists in the golden age of Egyptology or perhaps I ought to say Egyptologists since there really is quite a difference. I remember one museum outing with my grandmother, perhaps almost two decades ago, who pointed out that as fascinating as it all was; these were still the bodies of the dead who had been disinterred for public viewing. It was a point that regularly came up when it came to discussing the idea of excavating with her because there would always be the issue of humanity’s quest for knowledge about its past and the necessity of respecting said past at the same time. And even as a child, while I was still dreaming of becoming an Egyptologist not quite recognising that the golden age of foreign expeditions and funding was probably quite over; the question of appropriate respect still troubled me. It was, in the end why I finally gave up on that childhood idea because as far as I could see it there really was no way to resolve the matter for me and though being engaged in forensic analysis would have been fascinating there really wasn’t actually any way to get round the fact that it involved prodding at the disinterred dead for the sake of academic knowledge. Granted, as long as the soul had weighed the right amount against an ibis feather I’m not sure they’d have had any problem with it but still, somehow in the back of my hindbrain, wedged under the portion that will always automatically respond that the advancement of science is good; there’s still another part that suggests that I couldn’t really do that and not just because I’d be worried about Setesh smacking me across the back of the head with a trowel for not observing correct protocol at all times. Though I’m pretty sure that I’d have to do something particularly heinous to warrant that sort of direct attention.
But what it comes back to, rambling aside, is that there are things that were taken when they shouldn’t have been and while the rules of appropriation may work if nobody asks for whatever it is back; the fact of the matter is that places like Greece and Egypt have been asking. And the argument that these places do not have the means to preserve their own history properly is really beginning to wear thin. In a certain age those arguments may have held water and considering that the golden age of Egyptology was a time of high adventure and private funding such attitudes may presumably have made sense. But now, in this latter age to use those arguments again smacks of Imperialistic arrogance. And yet, despite that I can’t help but want easy access to such things, here; in the UK. Not just for myself but for everybody else too. So I’m again caught between what I’d like to have happen and what should most likely be done. It’s not even an intellectual reasoning to not want such treasures to slip out of British hands; it’s an instinctive gut reaction that tells me that as long as those treasures are here I could go see them, I could easily spend a day marvelling at them in wonder. Which is explanation enough that it’s a selfish desire. To use the Elgin Marbles as an example; they’re out of place in this country and they were never something freely given. It’s not as if Greece intends to hide them away from the world but rather display them in all their grandeur so really, with a place prepared for them; they, like many other antiquities should be sent home.
That’s not to say that I won’t wallow in my own misery over the loss of such treasures once they’re gone but in cases like this sometimes what it really comes down to is doing what you think ought to be done, paying your respects as appropriate and hoping that in doing so your heart won’t end up weighing more or less than an ibis feather.
