Invention Playlist 4: The Museum

Where do museums come from? Explore their history in this episode...

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Episode Transcript

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(01:26):
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
be uh and uh, and not just our own personal history,
but history across generations, across decades, across centuries, millennia. Even

(01:51):
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 few. Sure, 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

(02:13):
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 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

(02:34):
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 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

(02:55):
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, but also a
complicating aspect of it. And then their additional concerns we're

(03:16):
going to get into now 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, there
are the artifacts of the past. Uh, there are the

(03:37):
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. 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,

(03:59):
You never seen images of the pyramids, never seen the
ancient figurines or the sarcopha 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 at
our disposal to say, understand ancient Egypt of one thing,

(04:20):
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
computer imagery, we have just a whole host of of
inventions that have made it, first of all, made it

(04:43):
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
their contemplation of the even more ancient Egyptians. Uh. And

(05:05):
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. 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,

(05:26):
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
and historians that if we only form our picture of

(05:49):
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 there's sort of this joke about like, you know,

(06:10):
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. 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.

(06:32):
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 survive that we have to piece together, uh

(06:54):
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. By the elements. Oh yeah, Like I think
of the like the really great museums I've been to,

(07:14):
and i' 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 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

(07:37):
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 like a spatial journey you do walk through time
you get to uh you know, go through these exhibits

(07:59):
and get kind of you know, a walk through of
geologic history and uh. And I think that's important. Likewise
with with fossils and uh and reproductions or even uh
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

(08:22):
that you don't necessarily get from a book or 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
museum culture, like the the tendency to want to preserve

(08:46):
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
recreation of slave ship and you like walk through the

(09:06):
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 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

(09:27):
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 Civil Rights Museum here in Atlanta also does a

(09:47):
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, uh,
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

(10:10):
you've used wisely, you know, can just really enhance what
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.

(10:32):
It's a work of art or an artifact found through
archaeology or something, or 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 other of history, right and and
or so, or even celebrate it, you know, such as

(10:54):
you know, when I think of some of our better,
you know, science and technology museums, it's like a a
space where 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

(11:14):
individuals who you know who needs something more you know, substantive.
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 of a place where you could you could go
to interact with educational materials like this, Right. And I

(11:38):
think an important thing that we're we're kind of skipping
over and all of 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, this university has a storeroom of artifacts,
or this uh, this institution or this family has some

(12:00):
wonderful pieces set aside. Uh. You you'd love it if
you could see it. No, 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, just the king's treasure
room of like artifacts collected from the you know, from

(12:20):
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 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

(12:41):
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 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 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

(13:04):
a private collection, and 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 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

(13:26):
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 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

(13:49):
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 and you
kept get 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

(14:11):
the good things about a museum is 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 of treasures

(14:35):
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
of these not quite museum examples we're gonna 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

(14:57):
of the Ark of the Covenant involved it's uh, it's
captured by 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

(15:17):
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

(15:39):
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 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

(15:59):
a yeah, there's like a raid 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 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 the shadow of that is cast

(16:21):
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 case
that when when groups of people go to war with
each other, um treasures, artifacts, items of historical or cultural

(16:42):
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 takes
from one culture and brings back home. People also create
ms full of artifacts from their own culture. I mean
a common way you find this is in tombs in

(17:05):
the ancient world exactly, Yeah, I mean, unstuffitable 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 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

(17:26):
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
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 into. Generally, it's it's looked
down upon. It's not designed to serve an educational purpose,

(17:49):
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 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

(18:10):
artifacts may well be displayed for lots of people, if
not everybody, then at least for a key demographic to
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.

(18:32):
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, and then yeah, so
we kind of have like a dash of the tomb
there as well. 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

(18:54):
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, 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.

(19:17):
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 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

(19:37):
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 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

(19:59):
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 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

(20:19):
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 ce 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

(20:40):
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 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, well that was a museum.
Well it's like no, one, no, it was a treasure hoard.
It was really more of a temple so indeed, museums

(21:03):
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, 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,

(21:24):
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 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

(21:47):
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. 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

(22:08):
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, 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

(22:30):
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 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

(22:51):
ziggurat today, it might be hard to imagine that this
was once like a really thriving, lush, fertile settlement in
the ancient world. 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

(23:14):
miles from the coast of the Persian Gulf. And I've
read in some sources that in ancient times Or was
considered more like 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

(23:34):
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 that it was founded sometime in like
the fourth millennium BC, 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

(23:56):
capital of southern Mesopotamia, and this would have been around
the twenty fifth century BC. So to do a history
exercise that we've send sometimes done on stuff to blow
your 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

(24:19):
Julius Caesar, the old Kingdom of Egypt, which was liked,
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

(24:41):
is significantly more recent to us than those ancient civilizations
were to the ancient Romans. 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

(25:03):
and going, it's hard not to realize that the people
who are ancient from our 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

(25:26):
Babylonian king who lived in the city of or so
that this was a man 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.

(25:46):
He wanted to revive elements of past civilizations from Mesopotamia.
One of the things we were reading for this episode
was an article by 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,

(26:06):
Nabanitas is often referred to as sort of like an
ancient archaeologist king. He's sort of like, you know, one
of the first archaeologists, sort of an ancient Indiana Jones
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

(26:31):
retrieve lost written records from past civilizations of the area.
Uh 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 there
pictures of this zigarat. Uh and and what we're seeing
is a restoration of Nabanitas's restoration of the zigarat. So

(26:55):
it's been through several it's got a few different coats
of 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 ziggarade? 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

(27:16):
in our way of understanding the past? Yeah, yeah, it's
a weird question 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?

(27:38):
And maybe it's some degree, uh, to some degree, undermines
the concept of originality, 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 Ziggurat door he and he was also he was
a religious revivalist, bringing back cult traditions that had long

(27:59):
fall by the wayside. Specifically, he revived the cult of
the moon god scene also known and that spelled like
sin like s i n is Brount 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

(28:21):
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 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

(28:42):
is the ancient Sumerian poet, princess and high priestess in Headuana. Yeah,
in Headuana lived in Or long before Innabnitas. 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

(29:03):
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, and then of
course later became seen. So technically her title is in
e n which is a position of religious and political significance.

(29:24):
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 Exultation of
in Anna the Goddess, which is this amazing poem to
look up. You should especially look up a translation translation
of the Exultation of an Anna if you're ever trying
to like work up a real sense of defiance and

(29:46):
righteous anger is the best stuff. Uh, Robert, would you
indulge me to read a few lines, okay, from the
Exaltation of Anana. This is from the translation and 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

(30:09):
the mountain, Supreme One, Who are the Anana of heaven
and Earth, who reign flaming fire over 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 Anunna, the great gods fled before you like
fluttering bats, could not stand before your awesome face, could

(30:34):
not approach your awesome forehead. Who can soothe your angry heart?
These hymns are amazing and they are definitely 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

(30:55):
Neo Babylonian king Nabontas ruling over Or, who's looking back
into the path past. And 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

(31:18):
what this Moon priestess role would be, like, what the
duties would be, what the 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 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? While her name is in

(31:40):
a galdy Nana also known as Belle shalty Nana, And
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

(32:00):
an educator. She was more than just a princess, more
than just the high priestess of the Moon. 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

(32:21):
know why it was created, what purpose it served the
ruler of the day. Yeah, exactly. So maybe we should
take a break and then when we come back we
can have a look at this museum. Today's episode is
brought to you by Slack. Before there was podcast, there

(32:42):
was radio. Before that, the stage and before that. You
get the idea. Things evolve, technology changes and we do too.
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(33:06):
and Slack is where the future works. This is Roxanne Gay,
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you might ask what. It's a podcast where I'm going
to speak my mind about what's on my mind and
that could be anything. Every week I will be in

(33:29):
conversation with an interesting person who has something to say.
We're going to talk about feminism, race, writing in books,
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music or a comedy set, something that I really want

(33:50):
you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well.
Listen to the Luminary original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda,
The Bad Feminist podcast Us of Your Dreams every Tuesday
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(34:11):
Joe McCormick, and we're the hosts of the science podcast
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where every week we get
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(34:36):
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(34:57):
Mind podcast. New episodes publish every two day and Thursday,
with bonus episodes on Saturdays. Listen to Stuff to Blow
Your Mind on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

(35:18):
be the earliest example of something that we can reasonably
call a museum. Yeah, and 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,

(35:41):
He's got preservation and interpretation. You've got objects or artifacts
that are preserved and kept on the display. This is
the 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.

(36:01):
And I think 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,

(36:21):
like a 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

(36:43):
the same thing. Right, it is it is it is
using artifacts are 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,

(37:04):
I guess still if the goal of it is 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 a particularly you know, things from a

(37:26):
cultural but even a historical standpoint to to you know,
to to either you know, keep up with the with
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

(37:47):
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

(38:08):
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 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,

(38:28):
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 which is a
wonderful museum, but it has a it has a definite agenda,

(38:51):
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 this belief, 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 maybe on display that is uh you know, that

(39:12):
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 Inegaldi Nana.
Throughout the nineteen twenties and thirties, there was a British
archaeologist named Sir Charles Leonard Woolley who worked on the

(39:36):
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 different geographical locations in different periods of ancient history,

(39:59):
all neat 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 Headuana they went back to about b c uh
And again, I was trying to find a point of

(40:20):
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 the middle of the fifth century CE. That's
the the approximate time difference. So what was among this

(40:42):
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 first century b C. And
you might remember Shulgi came up in our episode about walls.
That because Shulgi is credited with creating one of the

(41:03):
first known defensive boundary walls in history. The wall he
built was known as the Wall of the Land, or
the Amorite Wall or the Keeper at Bay of the Nomads.
It's a little on the nose, it was. It was
designed to defend sumer against 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

(41:25):
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 this thing they used to actually catch birds.
And so in this poem the speaker is lamenting. How

(41:47):
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 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

(42:10):
or Charles Leonard Willy 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 been carefully trimmed so as to make it
look neat and preserve the writing. So there appears to

(42:31):
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 now kudaru or stone boundary markers used

(42:51):
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 dear house, noting
how you got the land and which notaries witnessed the
sale of the property, and also possibly containing carvings of
God's celestial objects and monsters, and definitely curses. It's going

(43:13):
to be full of curses. The kudaru in in a
galdy Nana's museum is from around four b c E.
And will 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 a kudaru excavated from tell Abu Habba, So

(43:33):
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 anyone at all, who shall rise
up and in respect of that field, shall make a claim,

(43:55):
or cause a claim to be made, or she'll say
this field was not scented, 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 a stone,
or because of these curses shall fear, and she'll cause
a fool, or a deaf man, or a blind man
to take it up and set it in a place

(44:17):
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
the record of who owns this field. You can't throw
it in the water, you can't throw it in the fire.

(44:37):
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, or this had been a loophole that
was employed 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

(45:01):
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 off. But after that it
gets going. May Nergal in his destruction, not spare his offspring.

(45:21):
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, nor his
seed endure days of drought, years of famine. May they

(45:42):
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,
a from these two we just explained. Quote, then came

(46:03):
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. What were we to think here? We're
half a dozen diverse objects found lying on an unbroken

(46:25):
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 these different artifacts would have ended up
arranged together like this by accident. And he he notes

(46:46):
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
which were four columns of writing. The first three columns

(47:07):
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 fourth column was in late Semitic speech.
These it said, our copies of bricks found in the

(47:28):
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 will
He notes that the scribe who wrote this inscription overestimated
the accuracy of the copies of these bricks, but nevertheless

(47:49):
will He recognized the significance of this find quote. The
room was a museum of local antiquities, maintained by the
Princess bell Shaltin and Are, which remember is another name
for in Agaldy nanna Um, who took after her father,
a Keen archaeologist. And in the collection was this clay drum,

(48:09):
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 that were That's incredible,
you know, to to just you know, imagine these you know,
truly ancient people. Uh, you know, someone walking into this
room seeing a curious old object and then potentially reading

(48:33):
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 museums today have
not necessarily or an original artifact, but a reproduction or

(48:53):
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. And I
think that's an interesting thing, you know that we we
feel like we need to make this distinction. Of course,

(49:14):
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?
And I want to break myself of this thinking. By
the end of the episode, Yeah, because I mean, because

(49:35):
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
is kind of a silly thing to to think or

(49:57):
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 stuffable,
you mind about the Parthenon um. Like, the Parthenon is

(50:18):
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 if we
do restore to a former glory, which former glory you know,

(50:40):
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
and also there's just simply the effort in preserving right,

(51:03):
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 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

(51:24):
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 reproduction feels less powerful to

(51:47):
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 as 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 standing around ready to intervene. If you

(52:10):
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. So concerning in a Galdy Nana's museum,

(52:30):
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 what makes these artifacts in in a galdy Nana's

(52:50):
Museum really seem like exhibits in a museum, is is
what Woollie notes. That they were accompanied by carvings that
bore interpretive data at 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 idea that this building was a museum that was

(53:12):
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. Look at these objects and learn
just another passage I came across. So there's another book
where Wooly discussed in a galdy Nana's Museum and commented

(53:33):
quote that there should be a collection is altogether in
accordance with the antiquarian piety of the age and especially
of the ruler Nabonidas, 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

(53:55):
know about Nabanetas 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 suddenly take intense interest in

(54:17):
preserving and reconstructing the past, like Nebendas 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 think that's attempting

(54:38):
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 is probably

(54:59):
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 they

(55:22):
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 line

(55:44):
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,
you know, celebrating things that are alive, celebrating movements that
are still how opening and and and are still unfinished.
We have the works of art that you know, we

(56:05):
talked about this and such to 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,

(56:26):
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.
So it was part of a school. It was part
of in Egaldy nan as school for priestesses. Um. So yeah,

(56:49):
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 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. I'm John Gonzalez, the host

(57:16):
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(58:41):
and Families, and the ACT Council. Hey lead the listeners
take here. Last season on Lethal Lit, you might remember
I came to Hollow Falls on a mission clearing my
aunt best name and making sure justice was finally served.
But I hadn't counted on a rash of new murder
or is tearing apart the town. My mission put myself

(59:03):
and my friends in danger, though it wasn't all bad.
I'm going to be real. If you Tig, I like you,
But now all signs point to a new serial killer
in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting, you
better believe I'm gonna win. I'm tig Torres, and this

(59:24):
is Lethal Lit. Catch up on season one of the
hit murder mystery podcast Lethal Lit, a tig Tara's mystery
out now, and then tune in for all new thrills
in season two, dropping weekly starting February nine. Subscribe now
to never miss an episode. Listen to leave the lit
on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever
you get your podcasts. All you're back. So one thing

(59:46):
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, you know,
there are a lot of drawbacks to museum 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

(01:00:08):
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,

(01:00:28):
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?
Now does it belong to the nation in which the museum?
Um is house? Like it goes beyond that, I guess

(01:00:50):
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 I
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

(01:01:11):
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
them an attempt by local rulers to lord over the
dead and interfere with what they seemed to, you know,

(01:01:33):
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
impulse was more, Oh, no, these belonged to the world.
Where so this this is everybody's heritage. But the world

(01:01:53):
happens to be in London. The world's back in London,
so we're going to take right back there. And also
antique laws 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

(01:02:17):
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 the met or
the Natural History Museum, you know, I think we generally
trust these institutions for good reason, you know, to present

(01:02:38):
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 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

(01:03:00):
themselves own the artifacts own the past, uh 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 to bolster national identities and a sense of greatness,
or to marginalize disfavored groups. Suddam Hussein used the ruins

(01:03:23):
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
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

(01:03:46):
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 made to serve the engines of nationalism or you know,
or what have you. You know, looting becomes a potential
act of resistance, and we've actually seen this. He points
out an example. You know, one example would be the

(01:04:07):
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
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,

(01:04:27):
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
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

(01:04:47):
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 to your city, you know, your country or that
you 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

(01:05:08):
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, though
sometimes it is, well, yeah, I mean it's weird because
it's hard to say who owns the past. But then again,

(01:05:30):
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 South that I hadn't really thought about is that
in some cases you have designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites
that you know, these are places where the it is
a you know, a place of very important historical significance

(01:05:54):
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 commun and he's 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

(01:06:16):
other uh, political factors into the mix, and it gets
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 he 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

(01:06:38):
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
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

(01:07:02):
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. Yeah, this,
this one is a tricky one to to think about

(01:07:23):
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 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 but it is,

(01:07:47):
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 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

(01:08:09):
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 over here to look at?

(01:08:32):
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 recreations and uh

(01:08:57):
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 about the original piece,

(01:09:17):
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 challenging way to

(01:09:38):
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 particular their artifact

(01:10:00):
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 line stole it and

(01:10:22):
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

(01:10:42):
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 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,

(01:11:06):
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 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

(01:11:28):
drives something 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 to us, perhaps we've been to them

(01:11:49):
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, the
best thing you can do is rate and review us
wherever you have the power to do so. Make sure
you have subscribed to Invention as well, and just tell
your friends about it. If next time somebody's asking around, hey,
what are some good podcast to listen to, throw our

(01:12:11):
name into the mix. Uh, you know, Ultimately it's that
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, may Cole.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, to let us know about your
favorite museum, or just to say hi, you can email

(01:12:33):
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