Invention Classic: The Museum

We all love a good museum, but how long have we had them? In this episode of Invention, Robert and Joe discuss just what a museum actually is and when the concept seems to have entered human civilization. (7/1/2019)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick, and today we are bringing you a
classic episode of Invention. This was the one we recorded
about the museum. It originally published July one, nineteen. Yeah,
this is this is a fun one because it's not
something you might even think about as being an invention,
as being something that for which there had to be

(00:27):
a first. Uh. So let's just dive right in and
discover the history of the museum. Welcome to Invention, a
production of I Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Invention.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. You know,
humans are aware of history. That's that's one of our

(00:51):
our key attributes. Not always though, well to varying degrees,
we're aware of history, or we have awareness of of
of what we think history to be uh and uh
and not just our own personal history, but history across generations,
across decades, across centuries, millennia. Even we're aware of what
came before via oral traditions and the evidence of the

(01:11):
world around us, even as we continually change in anticipation
of the future. And then of course we have recorded
history as well, and we have a concept of history
that goes beyond concern for literal accuracy about what happened
in the past. I think about everything from ancient mythologies
in which people tried to construct a you know, not

(01:31):
not literally existent version of their past, but something to
sort of explain the present, all the way to the
kinds of mythical histories that people still like to engage
in today, you know, ancient aliens and all, you know,
half the stuff on the history shows on TV. Oh yeah,
Inevitably history ends up melding with myth and you really

(01:52):
don't have to go too far back in history for
that to take place, for for the historical to become
the legendary. At least, one thing that makes clear, I think,
is that we have a kind of craving for something
that we think of as history that is not always
exactly the same thing as knowing what's actually true about
what happened X number of years ago, right right, So

(02:15):
establishing just from the get go that the human contemplation
of history is in and of itself kind of a
complex thing. Uh, narrative becomes an essential part of it,
but also a complicating aspect of it. Yeah, and then
their additional concerns we're going to get into now when
we when we think about history, I mean, one of

(02:36):
the things about human use of history is that we're
able to pass information on in a way that doesn't
depend on our genetics. So a big part of it is,
of course just recorded histories literature about the past. But
then uh, there are the artifacts of the past. Uh,
there are the artifacts of the distant past, the the
the relatively recent past, um artifacts of the present, and

(03:00):
all of these things find their way into museums. Yeah.
I mean, to think about what you're feeling about ancient
Egypt would be if you could only have read about
it and you never could have seen any of its artifacts,
any of its artwork. You've never seen images of the pyramids,
never seen the ancient figurines or the sarcopha guy or

(03:22):
anything like that. There would be a necessary texture that
would be lacking to your understanding of what ancient Egypt was. Yeah,
And of course to today, we have so many tools
at our disposal to say understand ancient Egypt of one thing,
we just we have a better understanding than ever before.
There's still a lot of things we don't know, but
we but you know, we're at the bleeding edge of

(03:44):
our understanding, um and uh. And on top of that,
we have photography, we have the motion picture, we have
computer imagery, we have just a whole host of of
inventions that have made it, first of all, made it
easier for us to understand what agent Egypt was like.
And it's made it easier for people all around the

(04:05):
world to get a grasp of it. Like you no
longer have to travel to ancient Egypt, as certainly even
the Romans did the ancient Romans uh consider in their
contemplation of the even more ancient Egyptians. Uh. And then
likewise you don't even have to be able to travel
to a museum that has artifacts that have been transported

(04:27):
from Egypt. Obviously, you can go to websites, you can
go to uh two books, to films, etcetera. But the
museum is still important. Yeah, that's exactly right, And it's
important in multiple ways. I mean, I think about the
two main ways it's important. Number one, of course, is
just the preservation and display of artifacts to show you
what they looked like, you know, to give you the

(04:49):
physical representation. But then I think Equally as important is
the contextualizing literature of a museum, the interpretive material, because
you know, this is and pointed out by archaeologists and
historians that if we only form our picture of a
past civilization by looking at its physical artifacts, there is
a necessary sort of uh, filtering mechanism there. That's time.

(05:14):
You don't see all the aspects of the civilization that
are prone to that are biodegradable, or that are prone
to erosion breaking down over time. Uh So, I mean
there's sort of this joke about like, you know, if
you only look at the artifacts and you don't read
about the other things or see sort of artists representations
of what the other things surrounding these artifacts might have been,

(05:36):
you could assume that everyone in ancient Egypt like walked
around in stone clothes. Yeah yeah, Or you know that
that all the the art, all the sculpture and ancient
Rome was unpainted and you know stoic and gray. I mean,
it's it's essentially in this sense, the archaeological and the
anthropological are very much like palaeontology. Uh you know, it's

(05:56):
it's one thing to look at the even the reassembled
and uh, you know, the resembled fossils of a prehistoric creature.
But then there are all the things that did not
survive that we have to piece together, uh to get
a full understanding of what this creature was or might
have been. Yeah, the skin across time. Uh, that can

(06:17):
all be represented in the interpretive materials of a museum.
So those are I think equally as important as just
like having an artifact and preserving it from being destroyed
by the elements. Oh yeah, Like I think of the
like the really great museums I've been to, and I'm
and I've been fortunate enough to get to go to
you know a number of the more fortunate enough to
live in a city that have some very nice museums
as well. Um. But but there's a you know, there's

(06:39):
a journey you go on. There's there's a story that
you involve yourself in when you're when you when you're
in a really good museum or a really good exhibit. Uh.
And I think you know part of that too is
like it appeals to spatial learning. UM. For instance, free
plug for the Firm Bank Museum here in Atlanta. Uh,
you know, they have a section called the like the

(07:00):
Georgia Walk through time and uh, it's something that you know,
kids that grew up in the Atlanta area have been
going to for a long time and they probably end
up taking it for granted. But you know, there's this
it's like a spatial journey you do walk through time.
You get to uh, you know, go through these exhibits
and get kind of a you know, a walk through
of geologic history and uh. And I think that's important.

(07:21):
Likewise with with fossils and and reproductions or even u
taxidermy um animals, there is something about being in the
physical presence of either this creature or representation of this
creature that that just gives you an understanding of it
that you don't necessarily get from a book or a
description or a film or even some sort of uh,

(07:43):
you know, a virtual reality simulation. Yeah, that's right. And
so later in the episode we are going to discuss
some of the the potential drawbacks and other considerations to
have about museum culture. But there is certainly a thing
that is great about museum culture, like the the tendency
to want to preserve history and explain it right and

(08:04):
to and also can can forge an emotional connection like
I believe it was the Field Museum. I believe we
we we were there together because we had a work
thing up there, and uh, they had an exhibit about
where they had an artistic recreation of slaveship, and you
like walk through the hold of it, and it's, uh,
you know, it's just a really emotional experience. It just

(08:27):
brings you know, I remember, you know, it brought tears
to my eyes, you know, and it was like that's
an example where you know, you you have this positive
emotional manipulation to a certain extent by the by the museum,
you know, to give you this emotional connection with the topic.
And I think that's easy to overlook when we think
of museums because you can think of them as as

(08:47):
just like a stoic presentation of artifacts that are perhaps
lacking in context, or acquire a great deal of reading
a fine print. But they could also help you feel
the pain and passion of people who have been long dead. Right. Um.
The Civil Rights Museum here in Atlanta also does a
tremendous job through you know, all sorts of like multimedia
of of you know, being able to like there's one

(09:10):
exhibit where you you sit at a lunch counter and
you wear headphones to give you the experience of of
being a protester during the Civil rights movement in America.
And you know, it's little things like that often with
with you know, some technological bells and whistles which you've
you've used wisely, you know, can just really enhance what

(09:31):
the museum is able to do from you know, an
educational perspective. That's exactly right, And that's that's a good
point about how you know, museums today are much more
than just uh, the storage and display of physical artifacts.
I mean, that's the sort of classic museum tradition is
like you have an object of some kind of significance.
It's a work of art or an artifact found through
archaeology or something, or you know, it's natural history. Maybe

(09:54):
it's a mineral or a bone or something like that,
um and and that's on display. But yeah, museums are
bigger than that now. They're there in many ways is
sort of just like place you can go to engage
with some form or other of history, right and and
or so, or even celebrate it, you know, such as
you know, when I think of some of our better
you know, science and technology museums It's like a a

(10:15):
space where where science is celebrated, and there will be
various activities going on to aid in that celebration, from
say a science themed playroom for very small children, to
say a lecture series for uh, for for older individuals
who you know, who needs something more you know, substantive.
So I guess the question is how did humans start

(10:37):
doing this? Like when did the museum tradition begin? When
when did we first get the idea that you would, uh,
that you would put objects on display or have some
kind of place where you could you could go to
interact with educational materials like this, right. And I think
an important thing that we're we're kind of skipping over
and all this is that is that a music hum

(11:00):
ideally and um and generally the better examples that we
tend to focus on are going to be open for everyone.
So it's it's not just a matter of oh, well,
this university has a storeroom of artifacts, or this uh,
this institution or this family has some wonderful pieces set aside.
Uh you you'd love it if you could see it. Now,
A museum is ideally a place that is open to

(11:22):
the people and the and and and everyone is allowed
to venture in and engage with the materials there. Right,
So just the king's treasure room of like artifacts collected
from the you know, from the cities he has conquered,
is not necessarily a museum because that's just his treasure room, right.
And you're probably not invited, And it's probably better if

(11:44):
you're not invited, because it sounds like like a dangerous
place to venture into. Uh. You know, when I started
thinking just sort of, you know, casually at first, you know,
about the history museums, I started thinking, okay, well, what
are you know, what are some of the museums that
I've been to and how old are they? And if
everyone else does his exercise as well, I think you'll

(12:04):
note that, you know, most of the museums that come
to mind our products of fairly recent history. UM. And
obviously this holds true for the various American museums I've visited,
and even the British Natural History Museum as a product
of colonial expansion and wasn't found into the nineteenth century,
UM spun off from a private collection. And uh, and
we still see that that kind of movement going on

(12:25):
to this day. You know, we'll have large private collections
that are either um continued that you're donated to a
museum or spun off into a museum of some sort.
But the oldest museum in the UK, for instance, the
Royal Armories in the Tower of London, only goes back
to fifteen two, with public access emerging in sixteen sixty.
Now generally at this point in the podcast, you know,

(12:47):
we talked about what came before the invention, what was
the world leading up to that? And I think probably
the best exercise here is to is to and not
to try and think of like a world without museums,
but think of the various things in history that are
sort of like a museum but not quite. Okay, So
first of all, we already mentioned like the King's treasure room. Right,

(13:07):
you know, you have conquered many cities and many great lands,
and maybe you you took artifacts that were sacred to them,
and then you brought it back to your treasure room
and you kept it locked up for yourself. Right. Yeah,
it's it's it's it's certainly kind of like a museum,
but not a museum. And we should note I mean
that many museums, I mean one of the sort of
like counterpoints to the good things about a museum is

(13:28):
that lots of great museums around the world today do
represent a kind of colonial plunder. I mean there there
are cases whereas there are objects, you know, in British
museums that are of great historical significance, but that you know,
we're taken from other people's around the world by colonial
invaders from Great Britain exactly. So yeah, the King's Horde

(13:50):
of Treasures is uh, it's it's not a museum, but
at the same time it does have a lot in
common and I think that's going to be the case
with all these not quite museum examples we're gonna touch on.
You know, also worth pointing out that, you know, it's
been long fashionable in human culture to steal treasures and
art from a defeated adversary um and stuff to blow
your mind. We had a couple of episodes about the

(14:11):
Ark of the Covenant, and of course the stories of
the Ark of the Covenant involved it's uh, it's captured
by the Philistines and later it's captured and possible destruction
by the Babylonians, and the Philistines were said to have
displayed the captured arc in their own temple of Dagon.
Uh though of course, uh, you know this we don't
know to what extent this you know, there's reality behind this,
or if it's just a myth, etcetera. But still it

(14:33):
drives home that, like this is this is the sort
of thing people did. Uh. They they were to crush
or defeat an enemy, sacked their cities where they would
take their their treasured items back with them. Right now.
Another case from from history that that kind of lines
up with with a lot of this are the Roman triumphs,
in which the treasures, art, wealth, and armies of defeated

(14:55):
enemies were marched through the city as a spectacle. Uh,
and you know, along with captive of some to be
executed or displayed. Further so, sort of a you know,
an even more intense example of sort of the more
brutal aspects of museum like enterprises. Seem to recall, there's
a scene of this Entitus Andronicus, I think, where there's
like a yeah, there's like a parade of the enemies.

(15:17):
Yeah they defeated some Germanic tribe or something, right, and
yeah they're they're the famous accounts of that, you know,
and it's kind of like this awful Roman circus of
of you know that it's read rather uncomfortable to contemplate um,
and so we we don't want that to be our museums.
But then again, like there, the shadow of that is
cast over even our modern museums. And of course in

(15:41):
the even in just in the last century, we've we've
seen museums raided, looted, or destroyed due to military action. So,
you know, it's sad like continues to be the case
that when when groups of people go to war with
each other, um treasures, artifacts, items of historical or cultural
importance are often targeted. Now the like rooms full of

(16:05):
artifacts are not only created when say, you know, a
conquering power or colonial power or something goes and takes
from one culture and brings back home. People also create
rooms full of artifacts from their own culture. I mean
a common way you find this is in tombs in
the ancient world exactly, yeah, I mean unstuffable in your mind.
Especially we've discussed the tombs of ancient Egypt, the tombs

(16:27):
of ancient China, uh, and these are you know, these
are examples where generally it has to do with some
contemplation of the afterlife, or the at least the idea
that if if there is not a world for the
ruler to pass into and presumably take their things, then
there is still some continuation of identity in the body
that is preserved, and therefore the the items, the wealth,

(16:50):
all the material possessions or some form of them need
to be preserved there as well. Yeah, so it's kind
of like a museum, but for the most part you
are not invited to enter too generally, it's it's looked
down upon. It's not designed to serve an educational purpose,
and it doesn't have interpretive materials. These are these are
just I'm taking all my lute to the next world, right,

(17:10):
and I might put a crossbow trap in there just
in case you try and enter. Now another we we
touched a little bit on this already bringing up Dagon,
But uh Temple is another example of something that's kind
of like a museum, a place where valuable and important
artifacts may well be displayed for lots of people, if
not everybody, then at least for a key demographic to

(17:32):
view and admire. And in many cases the works are
instructional in nature, you know, a means of seeing the
form of a god or goddesses, or visually contemplating complex
theological concepts like one sees so particularly in Tibetan art.
I mean, I think about the relics and uh, the

(17:52):
ways that many Catholic basilicas will say preserve the remains
of a sainted person. Yeah yeah, and then yeah, so
we kind of have a dash of the tomb there
as well. But there's something kind of museum e about
that here is an object from the past, it's on
display for people to come look at. Yeah. Yeah. And
then there's also the shrine, which you know, can be

(18:13):
something like a tomb and something like a temple. But
of course there are secular versions of this as well
throughout the world. I mean, you go to Washington, d c.
And you have all the you go to these monuments,
these essentially shrines, and these you know, often are about
celebrating something that is tied to cultural or national heritage.
Large scale statues as well, public statues are generally a

(18:36):
good example of this as well. Right now, speaking of shrine,
this actually brings us to the word museum itself. So
museum derives from the Latin what is it tomson, which
means precisely. This a shrine to the muses. Um, the
muses of course, with the Greek goddesses of creativity and inspiration. Yeah.

(18:58):
So so we've got to trying to the muses as
the muse on and then that becomes the idea of
the museum. I guess that that word is coined probably
much later, to refer to what we think of this museums. Right.
For instance, if we go back to the third century
b C. We have the Museum of Alexandria to consider,
which included the famed Library of Alexandria, and it was

(19:20):
founded by Ptolemy the first Soter and noted for being
who is noted for being the traveling companion and chronicler
of Alexander the Great. However, the museum in this case
was was not a display of collected art, but a
center of learning that ultimately has more in common with
a university. Uh, you know that we might think of today.
Um and uh, this was seemingly destroyed in the late

(19:43):
third century see um. But yeah, more more like a university,
a place of learning, a place where learned individuals would
gather and celebrate knowledge. So you've got a lot of
stuff kind of like this in the ancient world, but
nothing that is quite like we think of a modern museum, right, Yeah,
I mean you can you can make a case that

(20:05):
specific museums or museums in general reflect these general attitudes
to this day. But yeah, none of these. You can't
look at any of these and go like, oh, that
was a museum, and it's like no, one, no, it
was a treasure hoard. It was really more of a temple.
So indeed, museums are would seem to be more of
a modern venture, right, largely rooted in the private wonder
rooms or cabinets of curiosities, uh, that individuals and families had,

(20:30):
and then the more modern museums tend to emerge out
of these traditions. In fact, you know, if you look
around for some of the example, the oldest examples of
things that are museums, uh you know, a few that
often pop Two that often pop up are the Capital
line museums. The oldest public collections. The oldest public collection
of art in the world. This is in Rome dates

(20:50):
back to fourteen seventy one and Pope six to the
fourth donation of art to the people of Rome. You
have the Vatican museums have their origin a public in
public display in fifteen oh six under Pope Julius the Second.
But uh, and we might be tempted to stop there,
right and say, oh, well, okay, well there you go.

(21:11):
This is these are some of the earliest examples, but uh,
there is a much older example we're gonna get to
in this episode that certainly predates anything that happened with
the Catholic Church. Yeah, and this one, also, I guess,
is a matter of interpretation, because what you define as
a museum is going to be a matter of interpretation.
But this is going to be, uh, the earliest known museum,

(21:34):
according to the great British archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley. So
we don't know for sure when the first museum was created,
but I think there's a really reasonable chance that the
earliest museum we know about was actually the first one
in history. So let's take a journey to ancient Mesopotamia.
Oh yes, let's do all right. So we're going to

(21:54):
go to the city of or, Or was once one
of the great powers and is of ancient Mesopotamia. And
if you see photos of the sand covered ruins of
the city and it's partially restored great Ziggurat. Today, it
might be hard to imagine that this was once like
a really thriving, lush, fertile settlement in the ancient world.

(22:16):
Today it's situated in the desert of southern Iraq, about
sixteen kilometers or about ten miles from the Euphrates River
and uh and this is a rough measurement that I
calculated through Google Maps. It's about two hundred and fifty
kilometers or about a hundred and fifty miles from the
coast of the Persian Gulf. And I've read in some
sources that in ancient times or was considered more like

(22:37):
a coastal city. That I guess the Persian Gulf stretched
farther up into where you would now have southern Mesopotamia.
But in ancient times, the Euphrates River it took a
different course and it ran much closer to the city,
making it this this lush, fertile place that was it
was a great place for a city. And it's a
place to consider the scale of history because as archaeologists

(23:00):
believe that it was founded sometime in like the fourth
millennium b C. So that that's going to be many
thousands of years old to us in the early dynastic
period of the ancient Sumerian kings or became the capital
of southern Mesopotamia, and this would have been around the
twenty five century BC. So to do a history exercise
that we've sent sometimes done on stuff to blow your

(23:21):
mind before, just reminding you, like how much time elapsed
through the part of the world history that we think
of as ancient. Imagine your Julius Caesar and you're living
in the first century b C. To you, as Julius Caesar,
the old Kingdom of Egypt, which was liked b C.

(23:42):
And the ancient dynasties of Mesopotamia, I wish it would
have been roughly the same time. Those time periods were
more ancient to you, as Julius Caesar in the Roman
Republic than the Roman Empire is to us. Ancient Rome
is significantly more recent to us Us than those ancient
civilizations were to the ancient Romans. More time passed between

(24:05):
Sargon of a Cod and Julius Caesar than between Julius
Caesar and US. That's the scale of the history of civilization.
And when you think about all that time, all the
relics and remains of all those thousands of years coming
and going. It's hard not to realize that the people
who are ancient from our point of view, also had

(24:26):
to contend with history and the idea of its memory,
its preservation, and its destruction. And so sometimes history and
even nostalgia can kind of feel like recently invented concepts.
They're absolutely not. And a great example is a neo
Babylonian king who lived in the city of Or. So
that this was a man named Nabonidas, who was the

(24:47):
last real king of Babylon before the City of Or
declined in power in the late sixth century b c.
And was subsequently abandoned over the following decades. So Nabonidas
seemed to have a great sense of historical consciousness. He
wanted to revive elements of past civilizations from Mesopotamia. One

(25:09):
of the things we were reading for this episode was
an article by h professor of Languages and literature of
Ancient Israel from Macquarie University named Louise Prike, and one
thing that she pointed out is that this ancient king, Nabanitas,
is often referred to as sort of like an ancient
archaeologist king he was sort of like, you know, one
of the first archaeologists, sort of an ancient Indiana Jones

(25:32):
type here sort of, except he's a king, so he's
got all this power to command with the the belongs
in a museum mentality. Um so yeah. So so this
ancient sort of archaeologist king. Apparently he conducted excavations to
retrieve lost written records from past civilizations of the area. Uh.

(25:52):
Later in life, he attempted to restore the ruins of
the Great Sumerian Ziggurat of Or that had decayed significantly
by his time. You may have seen representation their pictures
of the ziggurat. Uh. And and what we're seeing is
a restoration of Nabandas's restoration of the ziggurat. So it's
been through several it's got a few different codes of

(26:13):
paint on it, and that alone, you know, brings up
the question of, you know, the authenticity with artifacts, you know,
like like which one is the real ziggurat? I mean
they're all the real zigaratte but but uh, but but
then you know, you know, we have to take into
account like how much time has passed two and then
when what the extent does that get in our way
of understanding the past. Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird question

(26:36):
to think about. If something was restored in the ancient
world after having decayed for hundreds of years, is that
just as original to us basically? I mean, I don't know,
it's it's it makes you question the concept of what
an original artifact is, what is archaeological authenticity? And maybe
it's some degree, uh, to some degree undermines the concept

(26:59):
of original, which might be a good thing. We'll talk
about that later again. Um. But yeah, so he he
attempted to restore the ruins of the Great Sumerian Zigguratador
and he was also he was a religious revivalist, bringing
back cult traditions that had long fallen by the wayside. Specifically,
he revived the cult of the moon god Scene also

(27:22):
known and that spelled like sin like s I N
s grount scene, also known to the ancient Sumerians as
the god Nana. Now, the city of Or has a
lot of cool stuff about it over over these you know,
thousands of years, but one of them is that it
has some of the most awesome high priestesses in history.
I know, she's come up on stuff to blow your

(27:43):
mind before, but one of my favorite ancient Mesopotamian figures.
Is the earliest known named author of a work of poetry,
so not necessarily the first poet ever, but the first
poet in history whose name is recorded and known to us.
And this is the ancient sumere In poet, Princess and
High Priestess in Headuwana. Yeah, in Headuana lived in Or

(28:06):
long before in Abanitas. She lived in Or when it
was an ancient Sumerian city state in the twenty third
century b c e. Under the rule of her father
Sargon of a cod and in Hituana was appointed by Sargon.
Is the high Priestess of the Goddess in Anna and
the moon God Nana. I know that might be kind

(28:27):
of confusing. The goddess is in Anna and the moon
God is just Nana, and then of course later became seen.
So technically her title is in E n which is
a position of religious and political significance. She refers to
herself as the radiant Inn of Nana, and one of
her great works of poetry known to us is known

(28:48):
to us today is the Exaltation of in Anna the Goddess,
which is this amazing poem. To look up. You should
especially look up a trans translation of the Exultation of
in Anna. If you're ever trying to like work up
a real sense of defiance and righteous anger, the best stuff,
uh Robert, would you indulge me to read a few
lines certainly, okay, from the Exaltation of Anana. This is

(29:11):
from the translation in the James Pitcher edition in nineteen
You have filled this land with venom like a dragon.
Vegetation ceases when you thunder like ishkur. You bring down
the flood from the mountain. Supreme One, Who are the
Ananna of heaven and Earth, who reign flaming fire over

(29:33):
the land, Who have been given the me by on
queen who rides the beasts. Okay, I got a one
from later, my Queen. All the Annunna, the great gods
fled before you like fluttering bats, could not stand before
your awesome face, could not approach your awesome forehead. Who
can soothe your angry heart? These hymns are amazing and

(29:57):
they are definitely worth looking up, so you've got in
you want to. She's this fireball hurling poet, the high
priestess of the moon god Nana in or in the
twenty third century BC, and then a little less than
two millennial later, you've got this neo Babylonian king Nabontas
ruling over or who's looking back into the past. And

(30:17):
in looking back into the past, one thing he decides
to do is revive the worship of the moon god Nana,
who they now called Seen and like Sargon, Nabonidus appoints
his daughter the priestess of the moon God, consulting ancient
records to get details about what this moon priestess role
would be, like, what the duties would be, what the

(30:38):
rituals would be. Uh, this is a point that that
Prike makes in her article. Is this like looking back
into the records for what the priestess his role would be,
because he's, you know, in a way, he's sort of
trying to be the next Sargon. So who is the priestess,
the daughter of Nabonidus who gets this role? While her
name is in a Galdy Nana also known as Belle

(30:58):
shalty Nana, and unfortunately we know far too little about
who in a Galdy Nana was, but we do know that,
in addition to her religious role, in a Galdi Nana
is recorded as having been the administrator of a school
for young priestesses. But so in a Galdi Nana was
more than just an educator. She was more than just
a princess, more than just a high priestess of the moon.

(31:21):
It's here that we come to the first museum known
to history, because it appears that in a Galdy Nana
was its curator. And this is this is fascinating to
behold because we have not only you know, you know,
the case for the museum, but for a strong fake
case for you know, why it was created, what purpose
it served U the ruler of the day. Yeah, exactly.

(31:43):
So maybe we should take a break and then when
we come back we can have a look at this museum. Alright,
we're back. We're discussing the history of the museum as
we know and understand it today, and we're looking at
what may well be the earliest example of something that

(32:04):
we can reasonably call a museum. Yeah, and so we
should look again at what would be the criteria there. Right,
how would we know if we'd found the first museum
in history? Because, as we've discussed before, just having a
treasure room of artifacts isn't really a museum, right, Um,
So a museum as understood today has two main parts. Right,

(32:25):
He's got preservation and interpretation. You've got objects or artifacts
that are preserved and kept on the display this preservation aspect,
and those objects are explained and contextualized by educational interpretation materials,
you know, like the little written placards you find next
to objects at a museum exhibit today. And I think

(32:46):
it's also important that it must be clear that this
institution has some sort of public educational purpose. Right. It
can't just be like a private thing that's just for you, Right,
It's about it's about sharing this information with the world.
And we see that in our you know, our our
best examples of museums. You know, it's say, like a

(33:06):
really good science and technology museum is about you know,
sharing the passing on the torch of of of of
scientific inquiry and uh and and celebrating what it can
do for human civilization. And then on the other hand,
you have say a creationist museum, which takes it a
different approach, but is ultimately trying to do the same thing.

(33:27):
Right it is it is it is using artifacts or
supposed artifacts. I mean sometimes it's using actual um remnants
of the past, but then using it to push in
a different narrative. I guess that's true. Like even if
we judge the educational purpose of a museum to be
misguided and leading to incorrect conclusions, I mean, I guess

(33:48):
they'll if the goal of it is educational according to
the people who made it. Even if that education is
you know, maybe look make making your king look good
or something, you could consider that a form of a museum, right,
I mean, And certainly even our better museums have had
to evolve with the times, and if I had to,
had to change the way that they present you know,

(34:09):
particularly you know, things from a cultural but even a
historical standpoint to to you know, to to either you know,
keep up with the changing norms, to correct past errors
and then uh um, you know, and also to to
take into account new information about the cultures and the
time periods that are presented. Well, yeah, that's exactly right.

(34:29):
I Mean. One great thing about modern museums is you know,
they can often be a way, uh to see into
other cultures that you might not encounter firsthand. But you know,
a lot of these exhibits, if the museum has been
around a long time, they may have initially been established
with a kind of condescending colonialist attitude or that that
sort of shows other cultures but in a way that

(34:50):
might not be accurate, maybe that looks down on them,
that doesn't regard them as you know, equally valid cultures, right.
I mean, yeah, it's important to know, like the the
basic idea of the museum, uh, you know, it can
be skewed for different purposes. I mean there's a difference
between the Neuter Museum in Philadelphia and say, ah, you know,

(35:10):
a a circus side show. Uh, you know, just like
a display of preserved human remains with either no context
or faulty context regarding what those jars contain. There's a
difference between an actual museum about say human evolution and uh,
the Bigfoot Museum that we have in the North Georgia Mountains,

(35:30):
which which is a wonderful museum, but it has a
it has a definite agenda, definite narrative that it's pushing,
and hopefully a lot of people that go there are
you know, engaging with a sort of tongue in cheek
or people were able to suspend disbelief, you know, and
enjoy it. But but yeah, it's it's a slightly different
expert exercise or any you know, like roadside attraction you

(35:51):
know from decades past where where something maybe on display
that is uh, you know, that is maybe uh, you know,
lacking in terms of it's you know, scientific or historical believability. Right.
So I guess I want to trying to say is
we can often think of a museum as a medium
as opposed to like message. Okay, So to get back

(36:11):
to Inegaldi Nana. Throughout the nineteen twenties and thirties, there
was a British archaeologist named Sir Charles Leonard Woolley who
worked on the excavation of the ancient city of Ur.
And in nineteen five, Willie and his colleagues were excavating
a Babylonian palace within the ancient city, and they began
to uncover a very strange clustering of artifacts. Within this

(36:36):
palace were artifacts from different geographical locations and different periods
of ancient history, all neatly arranged together in this one building.
And it appears that this collection was created sometime around
the year five thirty b C. And now the earliest
artifacts they found went back almost to the time of

(36:57):
Sargon and in Headuana they went back to about b
C e uh. And again I was trying to find
a point of comparison for historical scale. So if these
people living in the sixth century b C had artifacts
from b C, that's like us today having artifacts from
the personal effects of Attila the Hunt who was invading

(37:18):
the Western Roman Empire in the middle of the fifth
century CEE. That's the the approximate time difference. So what
was among this collection of things that Willie discovered here
in this in this ancient site. One thing was the
partially restored remains of a statue of the great king
Shulgi of Or, who ruled in the twenty one century

(37:39):
b C. And you might remember Shulgi came up in
our episode about walls, actually because Shulgi is credited with
creating one of the first known defensive boundary walls in history.
The wall he built was known as the Wall of
the Land, or the Amorright Wall, or the Keeper at
Bay of the Nomads. It's a little on the nose,
it was. It was this sim to defend sumer against

(38:01):
attacks from nomadic people's called the Amorites who lived to
the north of them. And Shulgi's wall is thought to
have been more than a hundred miles long, stretching between
the Tigris and the Euphrates river. Uh And in this
uh this other episode, I quoted from an ancient Sumerian
poem which mentioned it by recalling with nostalgia, how quote
the wall of Unag extended out over the desert like

(38:23):
a bird net, you know, comparing it to this thing
they used to actually catch birds. And so in this
poem the speaker is lamenting, how you know, there were
better days back when their civilization had been more powerful
and more glorious, and it was the time of Shulgi
in this wall. But in reality, of course, these walls
did not accomplish the goal of protecting sumer, which fell

(38:44):
to invasions from the Amorrds and the Elamites. It was
not an effective strategy and uh And in his own
autobiographical writings on the excavation of or Charles Leonard Willie
notes something interesting about the statue of Shulgi. So he
described it quote as a fragment of dear white statue,
a bit of the arm of a human figure on

(39:06):
which was an inscription, and the fragment had been carefully
trimmed so as to make it look neat and preserve
the writing. So there appears to be evidence here of
an ancient preservation work to keep the carvings on the
statue from being damaged and to keep them legible. Also
among the things found here was an ancient Cassite boundary stone,

(39:29):
a type of artifact known as a kudaroo. Now kudaru
or stone boundary marker is used in ancient Mesopotamia. And
these things are pretty cool. It's kind of like if
you could have a stone pillar with a written copy
of the deed der house noting how you got the
land and which notaries witnessed the sale of the property,

(39:49):
and also possibly containing carvings of gods, celestial objects and
monsters and definitely curses. It's going to be full of curses.
The kudaru in in a Aldi Nana's museum is from
around and will He noted that it contained an awesome
curse against anybody who displaced or destroyed the stone. So

(40:10):
what are these curses like? Right? I was looking at
an example of a kudaru excavated from tell Abu Habba,
so it's not the same kudaru. But it's curse. Warning
tells about what you cannot do or else face the curse.
So it says, winsoever in days to come among future men,
an agent or a governor, or a ruler, or anyone

(40:32):
or the son of anyone at all, who shall rise
up and in respect of that field, shall make a
claim or cause a claim to be made, or she'll
say this field was not presented, or shall change that
stone from its place, or she'll cast it into the
water or into the fire, or shall break it with
the stone, or because of these curses shall fear, and

(40:55):
she'll cause a fool or a deaf man, or a
blind man to take it up and set it in
a place where it cannot be seen. That man who
shall take away the field, may Anu the father of
the gods curse him as a foe. This covers so much.
I'm about to get into exactly what the curses in
a second, But I love this. It's like, Okay, you

(41:16):
cannot erase the record of who owns this field. You
can't throw it in the water, you can't throw it
in the fire. You can't get a blind person who
can't read these warnings to pick it up for you
and do it for you. Now, one one wonders if
they were saying if this was simply you know, they
were just thinking of potential loopholes, or this had been
a loophole that was employed, that there was, that there

(41:37):
was a blind individual who was often employed to you know,
muck around with people's property rights. Right, okay, so here's
what So what happens if you violate this this boundary
marker you try to move it or something. Here's a
little bit of the curse play. The first line has
some illusions, so it's it's Maya Dodd, the lord of
the crops, do something. It's been worn. But after that

(42:00):
it gets going. May Nergal, in his destruction, not spare
his offspring. May shook A, Muna and Shuemlia pronounce evil
against him. May all the gods whose names are mentioned
on the stone curse him with a curse that cannot
be loosened. May they command that he not live a
single day. May they not let him, nor his name,

(42:21):
nor his seed endure days of drought, years of famine.
May they assign for his lot before God, King, Lord,
and Prince. May his whining be continuous, and may he
come to an evil end. That's a pretty stiff curse. Yeah, Okay,
may his whining be continuous. So to quote from Charles
Leonard Willy's own account of the other objects they discovered.

(42:43):
Apart from these two we just explained, quote, then came
a clay foundation cone of a larsa king about seventeen
hundred b C. Then a few clay tablets of about
the same date, and a large vote of stone mace head,
which was uninscribed, may well have been more ancient by
five hundred years. What were we to think here? We're

(43:05):
half a dozen diverse objects found lying on an unbroken
brick pavement of the sixth century BC. Yet the newest
of them was seven hundred years older than the pavement,
and the earliest perhaps six hundred and so. Wooly writes
that the evidence made it pretty clear that it was
impossible that all these different artifacts would have ended up

(43:26):
arranged together like this by accident. And he he notes
again the trimming of the inscription on the Shulgi statue,
which seems like a deliberate act of preservation. And then
finally came the answer of what they were looking for.
Wooly writes, quote then we found the key. A little
way apart lay a small drum shaped clay object, and

(43:47):
which were four columns of writing. The first three columns
were in the Old Sumerian language, and the contents of
one at least were familiar to us, for we had
founded on bricks of boer Sin, king of Or in
two two two zero BC, and the other two were
fairly similar. The fourth column was in late Semitic speech.

(44:09):
These it said, our copies of bricks found in the
remains of Or, the work of Boor Seen, king of Or,
which while searching for the ground plan of the temple
of the Governor of Or found and I saw and
wrote out for the marvel of the beholders. And Willie
notes that the scribe who wrote this inscription overestimated the

(44:29):
accuracy of the copies of these bricks, but nevertheless will
he recognized the significance of this find quote. The room
was a museum of local antiquities maintained by the Princess
Bell Shalty Nannar, which remembers another name for Inegaldy nana Um,
who took after her father, a Keen archaeologist, and in

(44:51):
the collection was this clay drum. The earliest museum label known,
drawn up a hundred years before and kept presumably together
or with the original bricks, as a record of the
first scientific excavations that were That's incredible, you know, to
to just you know, imagine these you know, truly ancient people. Uh,

(45:11):
you know, someone walking into this room seeing a curious
old object and then potentially reading an inscription to see
what it was and how it factors into their own history. Yeah. Yeah,
it's amazing. Uh. And the fact I think it's interesting
that they've got they've got copies also notes about copies
of things, which would be like the way that many

(45:32):
museums today have not necessarily or an original artifact, but
a reproduction or say a cast of a fossil that
might be the original thing. Uh. Of course, you know.
The funny irony there is that many fossils are not
even the original bones, the stone, the potentially geologic castings
created there by, you know, without the aid of human intervention. Yeah. Um.

(45:53):
And and I think that's an interesting thing, you know
that we we feel like we need to make this distinction.
Of course, it's like, well you could have the real
thing here, you can have a reproduction of it. And
and somehow there's this sense among many people I think,
and I admit that I sometimes feel this. I probably shouldn't,
but I feel like the reproduction is like not as good.
Wouldn't it be better if the real original thing were there?

(46:15):
And I want to break myself of this thinking by
the end of the episode, Yeah, because I mean, because
I've found myself caught myself thinking a similar thing about
restored works before. You know, like, if you see, um,
you know, pictures of what, say, the Sistine Chapel looked
like before and after restoration, one might be tempted to say, well,
it was it looked better before they restored it, which

(46:38):
is kind of a silly thing to to think or
to say, Um, but we get kind of attached to,
like the sort of the historical wear and tear on
a thing. We get attracted to, you know, to the ruins,
and then we have at least mixed feelings about restoration efforts.
I mean, we've we've talked about before. I believe I'm

(46:59):
stuff to believe I about the parthenon Um, Like the
Parthenon is a great example of this, because with the
original Parthenon, you have various waves of destruction um addition,
and then considered reconstruction and their voices on you know,
different sides. You know, should we should restore the actual
Parthenon to its former glory? Uh oh? And then if

(47:20):
we do restore it to a former glory, which former glory?
You know? And then likewise, we have the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee,
which is a restoration and a model essentially a scale
model of the Parthenon that you can walk into and
and look around. I think that's the right model. I don't.
I don't think they need to go messing around with
the ruins of the Parthenon. But I like the idea
of just like building other Parthenons elsewhere. Right. But then

(47:44):
also there's just simply the effort in preserving right, because
also you don't want to just say, you know, if
you have, say the ruined remains of some some old
building that is important, you also don't want it to
continue to erode or should you be open for to
it continuing to a road? I mean it's question, yeah, yeah,
and there's we were talking about this before we came

(48:05):
in on the episode. But you know, I think in
a way there's almost kind of a a a tacit
belief in sympathetic magic that makes us like the idea
of the original artifact, whatever it was. We we like
the idea that, like, you know, the actual artist touched this,
or the actual person in history wore this, and a

(48:28):
reproduction feels less powerful to us because we buy into
some strange form of sympathetic magic. Right, it just doesn't
have that magic spark if it wasn't the real thing
from the time that somebody actually touched. Yeah, like you
want to touch it sometimes you want to lick it,
and uh, and you're not allowed to. But there's a
reason that you have a lot of the suited individuals

(48:50):
standing around ready to intervene. If you start pointing a
little too close to a particular work of art or
posing for yourself, you're just a little bit too close
to it. Um because we we do want to interact
with it, you know, we don't want to always we
want to stand in its presence, but yeah, we also
kind of want to actually physically make contact with it. Yeah,

(49:11):
So concerning in a Galdy Nana's museum, of course, as
we know, you know we've been talking about, this would
not be the only place where powerful people in the
ancient world had collected relics of days past. You know,
many kings of the ancient world would have understood old
relics and artifacts to be a sort of genre of
treasure to collect and display your wealth and power. But

(49:31):
what makes these artifacts in in a Galdy Nana's museum
really seem like exhibits in a museum is is what
Woollie notes That they were accompanied by carvings that bore
interpretive data, explanations of what you were looking at, and
the fact that it was associated with in a Galdy
Nana's school for young priestesses. That sort of cements the

(49:53):
idea that this building was a museum that was likely
created with an educational purpose. The st students could go
in and look at this stuff and read about what
it was, yeah, and say like, this is our history,
this is our heritage. Look at these objects and learn
just another passage I came across. So there's another book
where Wooly discussed in a Galding Nana's Museum and commented

(50:17):
quote that there should be a collection is altogether in
accordance with the antiquarian piety of the age, and especially
of the ruler Nebendas, who with whose daughter this building
is probably to be associated. So he's he's saying that
in this age in ancient Mesopotamia, that in the city
of Ur, and this would go along with everything we

(50:39):
know about in Abanetas trying to restore the Zigarattes and
doing archaeological excavations and all this, that there was this
spirit of nostalgia, you know, that they were sort of
unusually obsessed with the past for for people of their
time and place. And I wonder what what triggers that,
you know, what causes a civilization to set only take

(51:00):
intense interest in preserving and reconstructing the past, like Nabendas
and in a Galdy Nana. Well, I wonder if a
lot of it does come down to sort of like
in a spatial understanding of things and a need to
be you know, in the environment of the past, you know,
to fully comprehend it on an almost animal level. Yeah,
I guess so. I mean part of one thing I

(51:20):
think that's attempting historical interpretation is that we know that
the dynasty that created the museum wouldn't last like as
I mentioned, So this museum was created around the year
five thirty BC, and the city of Or went into
decline after the reign of Nebanitas and was abandoned almost completely,
you know, sometime in the following decades or centuries. This

(51:43):
is probably because of local climate change where the Euphrates
River the bed shifted and moved farther away from the city,
and that combined with drought to basically turn this once
fertile power center into this abandoned desert ghost city. And
so it's tempting, I think for us to look at
that and say, oh, you know, this was the end
of a long civilization in this area. Maybe maybe it's

(52:06):
they sensed they were at the end and this is
what made them, you know, so nostalgic for the past
and want to create this first museum like that this
was their greatest hits album, right. But I you know,
I don't know if that really makes sense, because I
don't know if they thought they were living towards the
end of their dynasty, you know, that's right, I mean,
a museum doesn't. It's we can easily fall into the

(52:28):
line of thinking that a museum is a is a
place of dead things, things that you know, things that
have u that are no longer around that are important
only historically, But we have plenty of museums today that
are about, uh, you know, celebrating things that are alive,
celebrating movements that are still happening, and and and are
still unfinished. We have the works of art that we

(52:49):
talked about this and stuff to blow blow your mind
that are that are have been left unfinished, either just
through the accident accidents of human life or intentionally to
make some statement about about the nature of human progress. Uh.
And so I think it's it's reasonable to think that
some of those elements would very much have been in
play in ancient times, you know, to to realize that,

(53:10):
like because we talked about it being used as an
educational space, so it would have been you know, not
even it would have a have a it would have
had a spirit of of renewal to it. I would
imagine an educational place and a place of religious significance.
So it was part of a school. It was part
of in Egaldy Nana's school for priestesses. Um. So yeah,

(53:33):
it makes you wonder about the interplay of the religious
impulse also with the desire to preserve and display elements
of history. Yeah, all right. Well, on that note, we're
going to take a quick ad break, and when we
come back, we will discuss the legacy of the museum
and uh and some of some current ideas about where
we stand in regards to the museum. A. You're back.

(53:58):
So one thing we sort of mentioned and earlier is that,
you know, I love museums. I'm I'm a big fan
of you know, natural history museums and cultural history museums,
and they can do a really wonderful thing um. But also,
you know, there are a lot of drawbacks to museums,
especially some you know, how museums used to be. I
think a lot of museums are doing a lot of
work in recent years to try to like disentangle the

(54:21):
nature of their educational exhibits from say, you know, colonial
legacies and stuff like that, and to you know, do
do what needs to be done to honor say, you know,
living thriving cultures that there are artifacts represent. Yeah. So
there are important questions to ask about what museums represent
today and how, you know, what role they play for
us culturally, and maybe how they could be made better. Yeah,

(54:44):
And a lot of it comes down to questions of
ownership not only who owns a particular item. You know,
does this does this piece of this is painting belong
to a certain family? Or no, does it belong to
this museum? Now does it belong to the nation in
which the museum um his house? Like he goes beyond that,
I gets into considerations of like who owns the past

(55:06):
and who owns the story of the past. So we
were looking at an excellent Dan magazine essay on the
subject titled Who Really Owns the Past? By American archaeologist
Michael Press and um I recommend everyone check this out.
But some of the key points that Michael makes are
really worth thinking about. Here he points out that are

(55:26):
you know, our current way of thinking about heritage began
to take shape in the nineteenth century, both in the
West and in the Middle East. The Westerners were pretty
quick to disregard local emerging laws concerning artifacts, uh, you know,
considering them an attempt by local rulers to lord over
the dead and interfere with what they seemed to, you know,
to see as this sort of natural migration of artifacts

(55:49):
to Europe. This interpretation of uh, you know, so on
one side, you know, the locals might be saying, well,
we need some laws in place to keep these artifacts
from wandering outside of our borders. And then the colonial
impulse was more, oh, no, these belonged to the world.
Where so this this is everybody's heritage. But the world
happens to be in London. The world's back in London,
so we're going to take right back there. And also

(56:11):
antique clause as we know them today. It really emerged
out of the post War War two periods, so international
agreements such as the nineteen fifty four Hay Convention, in
the nineteen seventy nineteen seventy two UNESCO Conventions, uh, it
all placed a new emphasis on national sovereignty and on
national heritage. But still the question remains who owns the
artifacts of the past and who owns the story of

(56:32):
the past, because again you can think of the museum
as as as a medium for a story. You know,
there's and we we often forget this when we really
place a lot of trust and say the met or
the Natural History Museum. You know, I think we generally
trust these institutions for good reason, you know, to present
the best interpretation of the the history or the science,

(56:56):
or the or the the the artistry that is on display,
and we see again various museums make an effort to
change their displaces, to honor an evolving understanding of the past,
or to honor living cultures they depict, etcetera. But Press
points out that when nations and nation when nation states
themselves own the artifacts own the past, uh they can

(57:17):
use these treasures to push a nationalistic agenda. So Michael
Press writes, quote government's increasingly looked to remains of the
distant past to bolster national identities and a sense of greatness,
or to marginalize disfavored groups. Suddam Hussein used the ruins
of Babylon to spread ideas of Iraq's greatness as well

(57:40):
as his own, even portraying himself as a modern Nebuchadnezzer.
China's leadership has used archaeology to project national greatness onto
the distant, semi legendary past. Today, India's Prime Minister Narindra
Emodi's Hindu nationalist government has worked to use archaeology to
prove that modern Hindus can trace their descent from the
earliest and habitants of India. So you put this sort

(58:02):
of thing in place, and you know, you, he says,
you actually invite looting, You actually invite that damage because
history is made to serve the engines of nationalism or
you know, or what have you. You know, eluding becomes
a potential act of resistance, and we've actually seen this.
He points out an example. You know, one example would
be the destruction of monuments in Syria and Iraq by Isis.

(58:24):
And then on the other side of the equation, you know,
the whole colonial movement was steeped in arguments that these
were items of global heritage. And and this is used
to times to justify removing artifacts from native lands. So
I mean, I like the idea that there are things
that are, you know, the common heritage of humankind for history,
But what does that actually mean in practice? When you say, okay,

(58:44):
in practice it's the common heritage of human kind, So
that means will take it to somewhere in Europe or
the United States? Right? I mean, because yes, when you
when you look at the movements of culture, when you
look at the even the early migrations of human beings,
you can make a case to say, well, the artifacts
of India are part of my culture as well. They're
part of my heritage as well. But it's another thing

(59:06):
to say that means that they need to be relocated
to uh, to your city, you know, your country, or
that you know your nation has can lay a claim
to it. But then again, as he points out in
this article, you know it gets this is still a
very complicated scenario you bring in, uh, you know, the
fact that you have, you know, in our day and age,
you have people from various nations that have spread all

(59:29):
over the world, and and so it's not always as
simple as this cultural group stole this cultural group's belongings,
though sometimes it is, well yeah, I mean it's weird
because it's hard to say who owns the past. But
then again, something definitely feels wrong about just say, a
colonial power taking artifacts from one country and then taking

(59:50):
them back to the home price. Absolutely. Another side of
the City points South that I hadn't really thought about
is that in some cases you have designated UNESCO World
Heritage Sites that you know, sit places where and the
it is a you know, a place of very important
historical significance that needs to be preserved, but then also
ends up being a kind of thing people want to

(01:00:10):
visit and that can actually impact local communities forcing the
removal of people either to you know, to to allow
the study of this location or to make a way
for developments associated with the site's new historical significance. Yeah,
and uh and then then you throw you know, various
other uh, political factors into the mix, and it gets

(01:00:32):
even more complicated. Points out that in the case of Syria,
multiple parties have used heritage as a weapon of war.
Obviously isis, but also it brings up Russia and even
the United States using uh, you know, celebrations of of
archaeological materials as being sort of part of the overall
messaging associated with, you know, whatever side of the political

(01:00:55):
scenario the player happens to be on. He does drive
home that it is it's mess the you know, when
you have you know, all these different factors playing into
the past and these artifacts of the past. But he
points out that cultural heritage experts proposed several ideas for
a better future of museums. So just to to run

(01:01:15):
through them really quickly, the three main points are. Number one,
give more control to local communities, not national interests, those
sort of on the ground with people rather than with
national governments. Right. The second one is to reduce the
importance of the original, which we talked about a little earlier.
You know, yeah, this, this one is a tricky one
to to think about. And well, one of the reasons

(01:01:37):
is that he points out that, you know, and there's
this high Western priority placed on the original item, the
original work of our the original carvings, etcetera. But he says, we,
you know, we have long seen a different approach in
Eastern cultures, which were more about just you know, preserving
and recreating the thing itself, the work itself, like it
was more about the message in the work. Um. But

(01:01:59):
it but it is, you know, it's it's someone who
loves museums. You know, it is hard to get past that.
Like it, there is something really awesome about standing in
the presence of the actual work or the you know,
the actual um remains that have been transported here. Uh.
But then when you take into account all these other
factors we've been discussing, you do have to ask yourself, well,

(01:02:21):
would it really make it, you know, any less impressive
if it was just a really fantastic recreation of a
particular work or a particular carving. I mean, certainly, when
you get into sculptures, it's a it's a lot easy.
I can easily see that being the case, Like, do
I really need the actual let's say it's, uh, you know,
the statue of David. Uh, do I need that transported

(01:02:44):
over here to look at? Or what if it was
just a perfect copy. I think I would be happy
with that. And if I'm happy with that, wouldn't that
apply to various other museum artifacts as well, especially if
the context is really good, if the narrative is really good. Yeah,
I mean, I think that is something that you know,
people who are the audiences for museums should try to
adapt themselves to to be more satisfied with high quality

(01:03:08):
recreations and uh, you know, uh casts, and you know,
all kinds of things that don't necessarily involve having the
physical original there. Yeah, especially now when you can have
all this additional information, you can have pictures of the original,
videos of the original, additional technological interactions with with media

(01:03:29):
about the original piece. But then you also have this
physical recreation that you can enjoy as well. Yeah, exactly.
The third point that he makes, though, is that that
we should rethink the idea of heritage as property at all,
that we should have something along the lines of open
access heritage again in a very interesting but also potentially

(01:03:50):
challenging way to think about it, Like it forces us
to turn some of our experiences with museums on their head.
But but I could I could see that working though,
because certainly some of the trickier parts of all of
this is just the treating heritage as something that is
that is property, and then their property rights tied up
with it. And then say a museum just cannot return

(01:04:12):
a particular artifact to the culture it came from because
of some sort of a property issue. Oh, I hadn't
even thought about that, but yes, I guess sometimes things
are probably on loan to museums from people who supposedly
own them, But like, why does that person own them?
It might be because, you know, somebody way down the

(01:04:33):
line stole it and then left it to them or
gave it to you know, yeah, or they just acquired it.
If not through like like outright and obvious um military
or colonial treachery, then perhaps through you know, economic pressures
that would not have been there had it not been
for the colonial influence to begin with. Yeah, this is
a difficult issue, definitely worth giving thought to, especially if

(01:04:56):
you're a person who frequents museums. Yeah, and really we
only will only cratch the surface here um on this issue,
because they are also additional layers to consider with with
the you know, archaeological artifacts, you know, such as what
Lynn Mescal calls negative heritage. What do you do about
an historical artifact that's tied up with you know, a

(01:05:19):
lot of negative aspects of society, you know, maybe it's
tied to say, you know, racist ideologies or something. Um,
what do you do with those artifacts? How do you
treat them? I think one possible answer there is that
you have you make sure that the context of the
museum that is presenting them, you know, is taking all
that into account. But anyway, as as as as Michael

(01:05:41):
drives like, this is still another like complicated area when
we we try to figure out exactly where the museum
is headed in the future. Yeah, alright, Well, on that note,
we're gonna have a go ahead and close this one out.
But obviously we'd love to hear from everybody. We know
you all have favorite museums you would like to uh
mention and uh to us, So perhaps we've been to

(01:06:02):
them as well, or maybe you'll point out some new,
smaller museum that we've never even heard of, and we'll
be able to put that on our radar for our
future travels. As always, if you want to support the show,
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(01:06:24):
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it's that word of mouth that really makes all the
difference huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer,
to Ari Harrison, and to our guest producer today, my Cole.
If you would like to get in touch with us
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(01:06:46):
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