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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
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 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

(00:25):
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 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

(00:45):
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 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

(01:07):
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 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. But one thing that
makes clear, I think, is that we have a kind

(01:28):
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 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,

(01:53):
but also a complicating aspect of it. Yeah, and then
their additional concerns we're going to get into, know when
we when we think about history. I mean, one of
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,

(02:16):
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 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

(02:37):
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 sarcophag guy or
anything like that, there would be a necessary texture that
would be lacking. Do your understanding of what ancient Egypt was. Yeah,
and of course to today, we have so many tools

(02:58):
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
our understanding. Um and uh. And on top of that,
we have photography, we have the motion picture, we have

(03:19):
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
world to get a grasp of it. Like you, you
no longer have to travel to ancient Egypt as certainly
even the Romans, did the ancient Romans uh consider in

(03:43):
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 from Egypt. Obviously you can go to websites, you
can go to uh two books, to films, etcetera. Of
the museum is still important. Yeah, that's exactly right, and
it's important in multiple ways. I mean, I think about

(04:05):
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 physical representation. But then I think equally as important
is the contextualizing literature of a museum, the interpretive material.
Because you know, this is often pointed out by archaeologists

(04:27):
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.
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

(04:50):
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 thing surrounding these artifacts might have been.
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

(05:11):
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 paleontology. Uh, you know, It's
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

(05:32):
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
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

(05:52):
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 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 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

(06:15):
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 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

(06:37):
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 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

(07:01):
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, you know,
a virtual reality simulation. Yeah, that's right. And so later
in the episode we are going to discuss some of
the potential drawbacks and other considerations to have about museum culture.
But there is certainly a thing that is great about

(07:23):
museum culture, like the tendency to want to preserve history
and explain it right and 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

(07:46):
recreation of slave ship and you like walk through the
hold of it and it's, uh, you know, it's just
a really emotional experience. It just 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 have this positive emotional manipulation to a certain extent
by the by the museum, you know, to give you

(08:07):
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 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

(08:28):
Civil Rights Museum here in Atlanta also does a tremendous
job through you know, all sorts of like multimedia of uh,
you know, being able to like there's one 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,

(08:48):
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 the museum is
able to do from you know, an education an old 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

(09:09):
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 a you know, it's natural history. Maybe 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 a sort of just like
place you can go to engage with some form or

(09:32):
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 space where where science
is celebrated, and there will be various uh activities going
on to aid in that celebration, from say a science
themed playroom for very small children, to say a lecture

(09:54):
series for uh, for for older individuals who you know
who needs something more, you know, so stances. So I
guess the question is how did humans start 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

(10:14):
of a 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, um is that a museum
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,

(10:35):
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
the people and the and and and everyone is allowed
to venture in and engage with the materials there. Right. So,

(10:56):
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
you're not invited, because it sounds like like a dangerous
place to venture into. Uh. You know, when I started

(11:18):
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 if everyone else does his exercise as well, I
think you'll know 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

(11:38):
I've visited, and even the British Natural History Museum is
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 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 useum of some sort.

(12:01):
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,
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

(12:21):
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.
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

(12:41):
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
that lots of great museums around the world today do
represent a kind of colonial under Yeah. I mean there
there are cases whereas there are objects, you know, in

(13:04):
British museums that are of great historical significance, but that
you know, we're taken from other peoples around the world
by colonial invaders from Great Britain exactly. So yeah, the
King's Horde 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

(13:25):
touch on. You know, it's 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 on
stuff to blow your mind. We had a couple of
episodes about the 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

(13:48):
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 drives home that like this is this
is the sort of thing people did. Uh. They were
to crush or defeat an enemy, sacked their cities where
they would take their their treasured items back with them.

(14:11):
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 enemies were marched through the city as
a spectacle. Uh and you know, along with captives, some
to be executed or displayed. Further so sort of a
you know, an even more intense example of sort of

(14:32):
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.
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

(14:54):
of you know, it's read rather uncomfortable to contemplate um,
and so we we don't want that to be our
music ms. But then again, like the shadow of that
is cast over even our modern museums, and of course
in 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

(15:15):
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 artifacts are not only created when, say, you know,
a conquering power or colonial power or something goes and

(15:37):
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 of ancient China, uh, and these are you know,
these are examples where generally it has to do with

(15:59):
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,
all the material possessions or some form of them need

(16:19):
to be preserved there as well. So it's kind of
like a museum, but for the most part you are
not invited to enter into 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, and
I might put a crossbow trap in there just in

(16:39):
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 view and admire.
And many cases the works are instructional in nature, you know,

(17:03):
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 ways that many Catholic basilicas
will say, preserve the remains of a sainted person. Yeah yeah,

(17:25):
and then yeah, so we kind of have like a
dash of the tomb there as well. Right, But there's
something kind of museum e about that. Here's 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 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,

(17:46):
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 good example of this as well.
Right now, speaking of shrine, this actually brings us to

(18:08):
the word museum itself. So museum derives from the Latin
what is it tom in, which means precisely this a
shrine to the muses um the muses of course with
the Greek goddesses of creativity and inspiration. Yeah, so, so
we've got a shrine to the muses as the museon

(18:28):
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 founded by Ptolemy,
the first Soter and noted for being who is noted

(18:51):
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 learned ing 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 third century. See um.

(19:12):
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 specific

(19:32):
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 than individuals and families had.

(19:56):
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

(20:16):
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 as a public
in public display in fifteen o six under Pope Julius
the Second. But uh, and we might be tempted to
stop there, right and say, oh, well, okay, well there

(20:37):
you go. This is these are some of the earliest examples.
But uh, there is a much older example we're going
to 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

(20:59):
earliest known music. I'm 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, all right, So

(21:19):
we're going to go to the city of or. Or
was once one of the great power centers 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.

(21:42):
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

(22:03):
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 archaeologists believe

(22:27):
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
fifth century BC. So to do a history exercise that
we've sent sometimes done on stuff to blow your mind before,

(22:48):
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, and the ancient dynasties

(23:09):
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 than those ancient civilizations were to the ancient Romans.

(23:30):
More time passed between 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

(23:51):
point of view, also had 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

(24:11):
named Nabonidas who was the 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. Uh So, Nabonidas seemed to have a
great sense of historical consciousness. He wanted to revive elements
of past civilizations from Mesopotamia. One of the things we

(24:36):
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, Nabontas is often referred
to as sort of like an ancient archaeologist king. He
was sort of like, you know, one of the first archaeologists,

(24:56):
sort of an ancient Indiana Jones type. Here was word
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 Later in life, he

(25:19):
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 Nabonidas's
restoration of the Ziggarat. So it's been through several it's
got a few different coats of paint on it, and

(25:41):
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 Zigarat.
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 to what the extent
does that get in our way of understanding the past? Yeah, yeah,
it's a weird question to think about. If something was

(26:04):
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 of originality, which might be

(26:26):
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 He 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 known and that

(26:50):
spelled like sin like s i n is brown 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 mind before, but

(27:10):
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 Sumerian poet, Princess and high priestess
in Headuwana. Yeah, in Headuana lived in Or long before

(27:34):
in Abanitas. She lived in Or when it was an
ancient Sumerian city state in the twenty third century b.
C 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 of confusing.
The goddesses in Anna and the Moon God is just Nana,

(27:57):
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 to us today
is the Exaltation of in Anna the Goddess, which is

(28:18):
this amazing poem to look up. You should especially look
up a translation translation of the Exaltation of 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 Ananna. This is from the translation

(28:38):
in the James Pritcher edition in nineteen seventy five. 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 the land,

(29:00):
Who have been given the me by on Queen who
rides the beasts. Okay, I got a one from later,
my Queen. All the Anunna, 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 they are definitely

(29:24):
worth looking up. So you've got in head to Wana.
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 in looking back into

(29:44):
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, Nabanitas 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 rituals would be. Uh,

(30:06):
this is a point that that Prike makes in her article.
Is this like looking back into the records for what
the priestess is 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? Well, her name is in
a galdy Nana, also known as Belle shalty Nana. And

(30:26):
unfortunately we know far too little about who in a
galdy Nana was, but we do know that, in addition
to a religious role, in a galdy Nana is recorded
as having been the administrator of a school for young priestesses.
But so in a Galdy Nana was more than just
an educator. She was more than just a princess, more
than just a high priestess of the moon. It's here

(30:48):
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? Uh, the
ruler of the day, Yeah, exactly. So maybe we should

(31:10):
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 we can

(31:31):
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 had 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,

(31:51):
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

(32:12):
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

(32:32):
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. Right,

(32:54):
it is it is it is using artifacts are supposed artifacts.
I mean sometimes it's using actual uh, 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 thet'll if the

(33:15):
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 particularly you know, things

(33:36):
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. I mean, one great thing about modern

(33:57):
museums is you know, they can often be away, 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 might not be accurate, maybe that looks

(34:18):
down on them, that doesn't regard them as you know,
equally valid cultures. Right. I mean, yeah, it's important to
note that, 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 a you know, a a circus side show, uh,

(34:38):
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, which is a wonderful museum,

(34:58):
but it has 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 know from decades past where where something

(35:20):
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 to in a Galdi Nana throughout
the nineteen twenties and thirties, there was a British archaeologist

(35:43):
named Sir Charles Leonard Woolley who worked on the excavation
of the ancient city of Ur And in nineteen five
Willy 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 palace were artifacts from

(36:03):
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 Sargon, and in

(36:24):
Headuana they went back to about b c 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 the Western Roman Empire in

(36:45):
the middle of the fifth century CE. 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 b c. And you might remember

(37:07):
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 designed to
defend Sumar against attacks from nomadic people's called the Amorites,

(37:31):
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 a bird net, you know, comparing it to

(37:52):
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 Sumir,
which fell to invasions from the Amorrds and the Elamites.

(38:12):
It was not an effective strategy and uh And in
his own autobiographical writings on the excavation of or Charles
Leonard Willey notes something interesting about the statue of Shulgi.
So he describes it quote as a fragment of dear
white statue, a bit of the arm of a human
figure on which was an inscription. And the fragment had

(38:35):
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, a type of artifact known as a kudaroo

(38:58):
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 de your house noting how
you got the land and which notaries witnessed the sale
of the property, and also possibly containing carvings of gods,

(39:18):
celestial objects and monsters and definitely curses. It's going to
be full of curses. The kudaru in in a galdy
Nana's museum is from around four b C. And well,
he noted that it contained an awesome curse against anybody
who displaced or destroyed the stone. So what are these
curses like? Right? I was looking at an example of

(39:40):
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 or the
son of any one at all, who shall rise up

(40:02):
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 she'll change that stone
from its place, or she'll cast it into the water
or into the fire, or shall break it with a stone,
or because of these curses shall fear, and she'll cause

(40:22):
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 cannot erase

(40:43):
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, say,
if this was simply you know, they were just thinking
of potential loopholes. This had been a loophole that was employed,

(41:03):
that there was, that there 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.

(41:25):
It's been worn off. But after that 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

(41:45):
they not let him, nor his name, 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

(42:07):
Willy's own account of the other objects they discovered, apart
from these two we just explained quote, Then came a
clay foundation cone of a larsa king about seventeen hundred BC.
Then a few clay tablets of about the same date,
and a large votive stone mace head which was uninscribed,
but may well have been more ancient by five hundred years.

(42:29):
What were we to think? Here were 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 sixteen hundred and so. Wooly writes that the evidence
made it pretty clear that it was impossible that all

(42:50):
these different artifacts would have ended up 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

(43:11):
a small drum shaped clay object, and 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 Boor Sin king of Or in two two two
zero BC, and the other two were fairly similar. The

(43:32):
fourth column was in late Semitic speech. 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

(43:52):
the scribe who wrote this inscription overestimated the accuracy of
the copies of these bricks, but nevertheless Willy reckon as
the significance of this find quote. The room was a
museum of local antiquities maintained by the Princess Bell Shalty Nannar, which, remember,
is another name for Inegaldy nana Um, who took after

(44:14):
her father, a Keen archaeologist, And in the collection was
this clay drum, the earliest museum label known, drawn up
a hundred years before and kept presumably together with the
original bricks, as a record of the first scientific excavations
at Or. That's incredible, you know, to to just you know,
imagine these you know, truly ancient people. Uh, you know,

(44:37):
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

(44:58):
museums today have not in a silly 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, geologic castings created there by,
you know, without the aid of human intervention. Yeah. Um.

(45:19):
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?

(45:41):
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,

(46:04):
which is kind of a silly thing to 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.

(46:25):
I believe I'm stuff to your mind 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 were should restore the
actual Parthenon to its former glory? Uh oh? And then

(46:46):
if we do restore 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 owned. 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

(47:07):
Parthenons elsewhere. Right. But then 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 it to it continuing to erode?
I mean, it's it's a tough question. Yeah, yeah, And

(47:29):
there's we were talking about this before we came 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

(47:51):
person in history wore this, and a reproduction feels less
powerful to us because we buy into some strange form
of some pathetic 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,

(48:11):
and you're not allowed to. But there's a reason that
you have a lot of the suited individuals standing around
ready to intervene if you start pointing a little too
close to a particular work of art or posing for yourselfie,
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

(48:33):
its presence, but yeah, we also kind of want to
actually physically make contact with it. Yeah. So concerning in
a Galdi Nanas 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

(48:53):
to be a sort of genre of treasure to collect
and display your wealth and power. But what makes these
artifacts in in a Galdy Nana's museum really seem like
exhibits in a museum is is what Woolly notes that
they were accompanied by carvings that bore interpretive data, explanations
of what you were looking at, and the fact that

(49:13):
it was associated with in a galdy Nana's school for
young priestesses. That sort of cements the idea that this
building was a museum that was likely created with an
educational purpose. The 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.

(49:34):
Look at these objects and learn. Just another passage I
came across. So there's another book where Woolly discussed in
a galdy Nana's museum and commented quote that there should
be a collection is altogether in accordance with the antiquarian
piety of the age, and especially of the ruler Nebenidas,
who with whose daughter this building is probably to be associated.

(49:57):
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 know about Nabanetas trying to restore
the ziggurats 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

(50:18):
people of their time and place. And I wonder what
what triggers that, you know, what causes a civilization to
suddenly take intense interest in preserving and reconstructing the past
like Nabannitas 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,

(50:40):
you know, to fully comprehend it on an almost animal level. Yeah,
I guess so. I mean part of one thing I
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

(51:01):
decline after the reign of Nebanitas and was abandoned almost completely,
you know, sometime in the following decades or centuries. Uh.
This 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.

(51:23):
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 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

(51:44):
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
line of thinking that a museum is a is a
place of dead things, things that you know, things that
have that are no longer around, that are important only historically.
But we have plenty of museums today that are about uh,

(52:05):
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 you know, we talked
about this and such 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.

(52:28):
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,
Like I mean, 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.

(52:50):
So it was part of a school. It was part
of in egaldingnan as school for priestesses. Um. So yeah,
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

(53:13):
and uh, and some of some current ideas about where
we stand in regards to the museum. Alright, we're back.
So one thing we sort of mentioned 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,

(53:36):
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
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 rep resent. So

(54:01):
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,
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?

(54:24):
Now does it belong to the nation in which the
museum um his house? Like it goes beyond that, I
gets into considerations of like who owns the past 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

(54:46):
some of the key points that Michael makes are really
worth thinking about. Here. It points out that are 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

(55:06):
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
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

(55:27):
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
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

(55:49):
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
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, uh, the met

(56:10):
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,
or the or the the the artistry that is on display.
And we see again various museums make an effort to
change their displays to honor an evolving understanding of the past,

(56:32):
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, they can use
these treasures to push a nationalistic agenda. So Michael Press writes,
quote government's increasingly looked to remains of the distant past

(56:54):
to bolster national identities and a sense of greatness, or
to marginalize this favored groups. Suddam Hussein used the ruins
of Babylon to spread ideas of Iraq's greatness as well
as his own, even portraying himself as a modern Nebuchadnezzer.
China's leadership has used archaeology to project national greatness onto

(57:14):
the distant, semi legendary past. Today, India's Prime Minister Narindramodi's
Hindu nationalist government has worked to use archaeology to prove
that modern Hindus can trace their descent from the earliest
inhabitants of India. So you put this sort of thing
in place, and you know, you, he says, you actually
invite looting, You actually invite that damage because history is

(57:34):
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. And
then on the other side of the equation, you know,
the whole colonial movement was steeped in arguments that these

(57:55):
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,
in practice it's the common heritage of human kind, So
that means will take it to somewhere in Europe or

(58:15):
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
to say that means that they need to be relocated
to uh, to your city, you know, your country or

(58:38):
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
over the world, and and so it's not always as
simple as this cultural group stole this cultural group's belongings,

(59:03):
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
them back to the home price. Absolutely. Another side of
the city points out that I hadn't really thought about
is that in some cases you have designated UNESCO World

(59:24):
Heritage Sites that you know, these are sit places where
the it is, 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 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

(59:46):
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 even more complicated.
It's 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

(01:00:10):
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 scenario the
player happens to be on. He does drive home that
it is it's messy, you know, when you have you know,
all these different factors playing into the past and these

(01:00:32):
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 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

(01:00:54):
second one is to reduce the importance of the original,
which we talked about a little earlier. Yeah, this, this
one is a tricky one to to think about. And well,
one of the reasons 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 since we you know, we have long seen

(01:01:14):
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 it but it it is. You know.
It's as 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

(01:01:35):
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, would it really make it,
you know, any less impressive if it was just a
really fantastic recreation of a particular work or particular carving.

(01:01:57):
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 transport it 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

(01:02:19):
artifacts as well? Especially 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 recreations and uh, you know,
uh casts and you know, all kinds of things that

(01:02:40):
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 about the original piece,
but then you also have this physical creation that you

(01:03:00):
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 challenging way to
think about it, Like it forces us to turn some
of our experiences with museums on their head. But but

(01:03:23):
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 a particular
artifact to the culture it came from because of some
sort of a property issue. Oh, I hadn't even thought

(01:03:45):
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 weigh down the line, stole
it and then left 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,

(01:04:11):
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 you're a person
who frequents museums. Yeah, and really we only will only
scratch the surface here um on this issue, because they're
also additional layers to consider with with the you know,

(01:04:33):
archaeological artifacts, you know, such as what Lynn Mesco calls
negative heritage. What do you do about an historical artifact
that's tied up with you know, a 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

(01:04:55):
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 drives something like
this is still another like complicated area when we we
try to figure out exactly where the museum is headed

(01:05:15):
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 to us. Perhaps we've been to 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,

(01:05:38):
if you want to support the show, the best thing
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difference huge. Thanks as always to our excellent audio producers

(01:05:59):
are here person and to our guest producer today, Maya Cole.
If you would like to get in touch with us
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topic for the future, to let us know about your
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(01:06:20):
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