October 13, 2023 • 46 mins
Susanne pulls back the curtain on how exhibitions are made. She explains how the topic was chosen, and how that vision is translated into reality. How long does it take, how many people are involved, and just what needs to be done?
2:17 about Back to School
3:27 goals
5:37 what's on show?
7:16 star pieces
10:10 recreating an ancient school
11:05 how to display tablets
17:06 why school and why now?
19:10 return to Nippur and the Nippur Tablet Project
23:51 audience testing
25:50 how long it takes
27:37 what does a curator do?
29:33 the wider team
38:40 workshops for children
41:33 souvenirs for the giftshop
Susanne's university page
Susanne's Academia page
Susanne's ResearchGate page
Back to School in Babylonia exhibition
exhibition catalogue
The Adventures of Inanaka and Tuni: Learning to Write in Ancient Babylonia
Augusta McMahon's talk on excavations at Nippur
This special exhibition has been curated by Susanne Paulus, with Marta Díaz Herrera, Jane Gordon, Danielle Levy, Madeline Ouimet, Colton G. Siegmund, and Ryan D. Winters and with support from Pallas Eible Hargro, C Mikhail, Carter Rote, and Sarah M. Ware.
This exhibition has been organized by the ISAC Museum: Susan Allison, Rob Bain, Denise Browning, Laura D’Alessandro, Anne Flannery, Marc Maillot, Helen McDonald, Kiersten Neumann, Josh Tulisiak, and Alison Whyte, with contributions by Erin Bliss and Judy Radovsky.
Music by Ruba Hillawi
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Taylor (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge,
the podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
Have you ever wondered what ittakes to put on an exhibition in
(00:35):
a museum? Maybe you're imagininga curator, arranging and
rearranging pots in a displaycase, until it looks right. The
reality is very different, evenfor a small temporary display.
Behind that curator sent out totalk to the press stands a
complex team of specialistsbringing together a diverse
(00:58):
range of skills.
An exhibition burns brightly,but briefly. It will be open to
the public for only a fewmonths. That short period is the
culmination of a processstretching back far longer.
Exhibitions are years in themaking. Our guest is lead
(01:19):
curator of a new exhibition. Sheexplains how it came to be made,
what needs to be done, and whoare the invisible minds and
hands that helped shape thevisitor's experience.
So get yourself a cup of tea,make yourself comfortable, and
let's meet today's guest.
(01:47):
Hello, and welcome to Thin Endof the Wedge. Thank you for
joining us. Could you tell usplease: who are you, and what do
you do?
Susanne Paulus (01:55):
Hi. So my name is Susanna Paulus. I'm an
associate professor ofassyriology at the University of
Chicago, and the tabletcollection curator at ISAC,
which stands for the Institutefor the Study of Ancient
Cultures, West Asia and NorthAfrica. So in the past, you may
have known this as the OrientalInstitute.
Jon Taylor (02:17):
We're going to talk today about an exhibition you're
working on. Could you give us abrief introduction to the
exhibition please? What is itand when is it?
Susanne Paulus (02:25):
Yeah, so this is an exhibition I'm curating with
the team for ISAC. The topic isscribal education in Babylonia.
So we do especially focus onHouse F in Nippur, which may be
familiar to some of thelisteners of the podcast as one
of the best-known examples of ascribal school in the Old
(02:47):
Babylonian period. We areroughly timewise around 1740
BCE. And yeah, the exhibition isrunning from September 21st of
this year to March 24th of nextyear. And all the material in it
or most of the material in itwas excavated by the
(03:09):
Universities of Chicago andPennsylvania in 1951-52. And the
objects found during thoseexcavations are currently in the
Iraq Museum in Baghdad, in thePenn Museum in Philadelphia, and
in the ISAC Museum and thetablet collection.
Jon Taylor (03:27):
Okay, what are the key goals of this exhibition?
Susanne Paulus (03:31):
So yeah, we really have three sets of goals
roughly connected to thematerial itself, education and
also scholarship. I mean, manyof the listeners of the podcast
may know the wonderful materialwe do have about Babylonian
(03:52):
education, especially from theOld Babylonian period. But what
we wanted to do is to make thisreally available for the public,
and let them discover ancienteducation through material
objects. And also give them aglimpse into all the research
and really tell a story aboutthose students in ancient Iraq.
(04:17):
And yeah, on the educationalside, we wanted to raise
awareness of the intellectualheritage of ancient Iraq,
meaning not only like theziggurats and the temples and
statues, but the textual side ofthings: the literature, the
poetry and those kinds of thingswhich survive in the school
(04:39):
materials.
We also saw this as a chance toreally connect ancient and
modern experiences abouteducation. We did this also by
making the curation processitself about an educational
experience. I co-curated with ateam of our students. And we'll
(05:00):
talk more about them later. Andyeah, on the scholarly side as
you yourself Jon, you're arepart of the scholarship about
Babylonian education. I mean,there's so much done already.
But we really took this as anopportunity to research and
document the cuneiform tabletsin our collection. And also to
(05:23):
kick off the Nippur tabletproject, which has the goal of
making all our Nippur tablets atISAC and coming from the ISAC
excavations available online andto a wider public.
Jon Taylor (05:37):
How big an exhibition is this? How many
objects are in it? Did they allcome from the ISAC collection?
Or did you need to borrow fromelsewhere?
Susanne Paulus (05:46):
So, yeah, like how big is it? If you are
familiar with our specialexhibition space, you may know
that it's a really small space.
So we had space constrictions,but we're having 126 objects in
the exhibition. Most of them areinscribed clay tablets, and
prisms and similar objects. Butwe also included clay figurines,
(06:11):
terracotta plaques, ceramics,like vessels, some weights, and
other things which come from thesame context. And we were able
to borrow 15 objects from thePenn Museum. Those include some
of them, which are very wellknown to the public, like the
(06:32):
famous tablet with the bitemarks of a student, but also a
beautiful prism with personalnames. And the plaque with a
striding lion, which was once onthe walls of House F.
One thing I really wanted to dowas borrowing from the Iraq
(06:52):
Museum. But this was sadlyimpossible. So we came up with a
way of honouring their side andtheir objects, because during
the excavations, they madeplaster casts of all the finds
... the inscribed finds ... andwe have them in our collection.
So at least we could include theIraq Museum in some way.
Jon Taylor (07:16):
Okay. I guess you addressed there what was going
to be my next question in termsof which of these hundred or so
objects are the star pieces? Andwhat stories do you want to tell
with them? I guess the one withthe students tooth marks is
prime engagement material there.
Susanne Paulus (07:32):
Yeah. But it's a really interesting question. So
if you're coming into thisexhibition, and you're looking,
I don't know, for the mask ofTutakhamun or really the star of
the show, we don't have this. Wedon't have this one single
object, which takes your breathaway. I think it's more the
(07:54):
storytelling of the objectstogether and the things you find
if you look closer, like thebite marks, or the toothmarks
you just mentioned. But you willalso find amazing details like
the tablet, where you can stillsee the finger marks of the
student who erased it severaltimes. Or the tablet where a
student made a mistake with thecalculations. Or one of my
(08:18):
favourites, which is a reallytiny prism, where a novice
practicing Syllabary B-- so oneof the earliest exercises--wrote
it on one of the most complexshapes, a prism. And in doing so
he messed up things along theway. And I think, seeing those
marks and mistakes and thehumanity behind the objects, I
(08:42):
think that's the star of theshow.
Also, really early on, we wereat sort of a crossroads. One of
the things were did we want tohighlight the most amazing
tablets of ancient education,like the ones with the drawings
and the most complete prisms andthose? Or do we want to work
(09:04):
with the amazing assemblage ofHouse F, where we do have the
architecture, the objects andthe exercises, but also texts
like Edubba A or Schooldaystalking about school life in
ancient Babylonia. And wedecided to do the latter. And
then we also transformed ourrather modest exhibition space,
(09:29):
which is actually just a littlebit bigger than House F into the
school house itself, andreconstructed some of the
architecture. I visited thismorning. You can enter through
an arched entryway and the lightconditions change, because
you're inside the school house.
And we were able to reconstructsome of the architectural
(09:50):
features like the bench wherethe students were possibly
sitting and writing, or the boxfor tablet making. And also ...
you're very critical about that... recycling. So this was
really fun to do, and hopefullyalso brings the objects to life.
Jon Taylor (10:10):
That's a really interesting idea. I mean, when
you enter the exhibition, do youenter then the courtyard? Or do
you go into the back room orwhatever?
Susanne Paulus (10:18):
It's a little bit more abstract. So as you may
very well know, the entryway ofHouse F is not excavated. So
we've reconstructed the entrywayand then you go around the
corner, and then you are in thefirst rooms. But due to many
regulations in museumarchitecture, we couldn't make
(10:39):
everything as tiny and the wallsas close together and the rooms
as small as in House F. But theoverall structure looks similar.
And the bench is placed at leastwhere Room 205 would be. And the
recycling box is in thecourtyard region and that way,
(10:59):
and we obviously also show floorplans and try to explain it to
the visitor where you are.
Jon Taylor (11:05):
Okay, interesting. I guess we turn to the objects
again. With a topic like this,you face a huge, huge challenge,
in how do you display lots ofsmall brown lumps? So you have
100 or so objects; they'retablets, terracottas, ceramics.
They're all this very difficultmaterial. You and I can see why
(11:27):
they're interesting. But quiteoften, visitors don't even
recognise that cuneiform iswriting at all. And even when
they do make that recognition,they have no way of knowing what
that says. And they're not goingto be familiar enough with, if
you like, "real" cuneiformdocuments to see that these are
training texts. How do youtackle these kinds of
challenges? How do you help themto connect with the objects to
(11:50):
see what they actually are?
Susanne Paulus (11:51):
Yeah, I mean, that's, I think, one of the most
difficult challenges we face.
And hopefully, once we hear thefirst voices of our visitors, we
will see if we have beensuccessful. I remember very
well, when we laid out thematerial for the first time, the
museum people were like, "Oh, mygod, it's all clay, there's very
(12:13):
little images, it's gonna beAnd one thing I fought really
hard for doing is what we callsuper hard". And one thing is we
really heavily invested instorytelling. So for example,
instead of describing theeducational tablets, with the
typical ways, like Type 1 toType 4, we really introduced
them as part of the storySchooldays, because some of them
(12:37):
are featured in Schooldays. Andthen when the story is talking,
that the teacher is writing anexercise, we display what we
call a "teacher-studentexercise", where the teacher
wrote on the one side and thestudent copied on the other. We
try to stay away calling this a"Type 2". We also really let the
(13:01):
visitor follow the curriculumand learn alongside the
students. So once you'reintroduced to the questions of
who went to school, and what weknow, and what we don't know,
you really follow the curriculumalong.
(13:26):
the annotation. So each tabletis presented on a background and
around the tablet there areinteresting features of the
tablet, which we are pointingout. So for example, we are
pointing out where you can seefinger marks. But we are also
when we are introducing the listof trees and wooden objects, we
(13:49):
are pointing out how the sign"GISH" looks like, and where you
can find it on the tablet. Soour visitor is gaining a little
bit of literacy in cuneiformsigns. And we really want to
give them the agency also to seethings on the tablets. And
especially lexical lists, workreally well, because we have all
(14:12):
those repetitive signs. And thenyeah, we'll see how it works. I
can tell you it was really hardfor our design team to realise
this idea, because every tabletneeds to be positioned exactly
how we imagined it in thedisplays. That was a little bit
(14:32):
challenging.
Jon Taylor (14:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can imagine. Are you using
graphics or interactives? Do youhave videos and sound? Things
like that?
Susanne Paulus (14:43):
Yeah, we do. We decided, for example, not to put
a reconstructed stylus into theexhibition, but a video where
you see someone making a tabletor writing it and then getting
frustrated and throwing it backinto the box. {LAUGHS} We also
do have sound. So thanks to ournew wonderful colleague, Jana
(15:08):
Matuszak, who is also a regularon this podcast, we have
recordings of the disputes ...
of two of the disputes ... soyou can listen to the
soundscapes in translation. Andgenerally we invested in
translation, meaning almost allthe tablets are accompanied by
(15:28):
either if they don't haveannotations, they have those
small translations. So you canif you want, read more into
them. But also we decided totranslate some of the topics
into more modern language. Sorather than grouping literature
(15:49):
into hymns, epics, myths,literary, wisdom literature, all
this. We merge the genres andask questions like "what did
they learn about religion,history, rhetoric, ethics, and
so on?
Jon Taylor (16:08):
Yeah, I think sometimes you have to translate
the topics as well as the text,don't you?
Susanne Paulus (16:12):
Yeah, we definitely decided doing. And we
went with the more speakingtitles for the compositions. Not
talking about "Shulgi A", and"Shulgi B". Those kinds of
things. But rather "A praisehymn to king Shulgi", and really
trying to translate.
Jon Taylor (16:34):
Yeah, little quotations of a text seem to be
quite effective.
Susanne Paulus (16:38):
Yeah, we also wanted people to touch, so we
did some 3D replicas. So peoplecan touch cuneiform tablets.
Obviously, not the originals,but they can trace finger marks
of an ancient student and cantry to hold a tablet, or see how
a student who was slightlynervous, squeezed the tablets.
(17:00):
This is part of making thisreally an experience.
Jon Taylor (17:06):
It's a lovely topic for an exhibition. It's the kind
of thing that's very easy torelate to. But I wonder, whose
idea was it to put on thisexhibition? Why was this topic
chosen as opposed to anythingelse? And why is now the time to
do it? You know, the materialwas excavated in the 1950s. What
is it about 2023 that makes thisrelevant and important?
Susanne Paulus (17:30):
I was the culprit. {LAUGHS} So I picked
it. I pitched it to ourleadership; they luckily went
with it. Also, it's an uncommontopic. Why now? I mean, it's an
interesting question. On the onehand, I mean, right now is the
time when our students, both inthe schools, but also at
(17:52):
university, go back to school,which is, of course, like a
cyclical event. So it happens,it's timeless, it happens all
the time.
There are some other largerthings at play. So we just
restarted and revamped withAugusta McMahon and our
excavations in Nippur. So wewant to reconnect our audience,
(18:17):
really with the topic. Also, Imean, I'm starting the Nippur
tablet project, where we want tomake sure that those tablets
were excavated like 70 yearsago, and there are some earlier
and a lot of them were excavatedslightly later. They're still
not all available for thepublic. So yeah, we thought it's
(18:40):
a good time. And then overall, Ithink I do see a certain shift
in the last years, decade, totell more stories about daily
life in a museum context. And Imean, schooling is very
relatable. We have a lot ofschool groups visiting and yeah,
(19:04):
a large body of students alsoaround to hopefully like the
topic.
Jon Taylor (19:10):
You mentioned there that Augusta is going to resume
excavations at Nippur.
Presumably, you're not going tobe excavating that part of town
where House F is, but it's theNippur connection more
generally?
Susanne Paulus (19:22):
Yeah, more generally, the Nippur connection
that we're going back to Nippur,that we are returning. If people
are interested in what she'sdoing, she has a beautiful
lecture up on the ISAC YouTube,where you can learn more about
her excavation plans. But shewants to also excavate a
domestic context; houses ratherthan palaces or temples. So this
(19:46):
is falling right into ouroverall goals for the future.
Jon Taylor (19:52):
And then, you mentioned a couple of times
there the Nippur tablet project.
So you are curator of thecuneiform collection at ISAC,
aren't you? I was wondering howyou're going to make the Nippur
tablets available to the public.
Is it an issue of that therearen't photographs of all the
objects? Or are you going toprovide translations of these
hundreds of texts?
Susanne Paulus (20:13):
Hopefully, I mean, there's like several
issues, which hopefully we canresolve. And we are just at the
beginning of a bigger project.
So we will apply for funds andbuild cooperation. So one thing
is, a lot of those tablets arenot documented in photography.
They are not available to thelarger public on our databases
(20:35):
yet. The other thing is that, asyou may know, many of them even
from the very well-studied thirdseason, where the school
material comes from, are notpublished. So our goal will be
also to hopefully providetranslations for as many of
those objects and tablets as wecan. But obviously, this is not
(21:00):
going to be like me as a tabletcurator or me and a group of
students. But it's going to be alarger project with many people
collaborating, because there aretablets from the third to the
first millennium. And some ofthem are really, really
interesting. And I think it'stime to get those out. And some
(21:21):
have been waiting to getpublished for a really long
time.
Jon Taylor (21:29):
Yeah, it's a fantastic project. There is a
wider issue for museums. Youknow, in terms of collections
have now been in existence forquite a number of years, decades
and decades. And how do weprocess that? How do we handle
this increasingly old material?
Susanne Paulus (21:46):
Yeah. And also, how do we get funding agencies
to be re-interested in thismaterial? How can we justify
asking for funds? And if wehaven't published them for 70
years, how can we get themre-interested compared to fresh
material, which is possiblystill in the ground? And
(22:08):
probably sounds more excitingthan something which has been in
museum for a while.
Jon Taylor (22:13):
Yeah. But can I ask if all the material is
catalogued? Is it really just aquestion of detailed academic
study? Or is there more behindthe scenes work that needs to be
done as well?
Susanne Paulus (22:23):
{LAUGHS} As you may very well know from your own
catalogues and things ... ifit's cataloged, it's a larger
question. So if you know themuseum number, and you enter it
in our database, you will find acatalogue entry for the tablet.
But often there is nodescription. And often nobody
(22:46):
has touched this object for areally long time. For others,
there is a lot of scholarshipdone, and the scholarship just
needs to be added to thecatalogue. And so the
information needs to beconnected to the object. And for
others, this information justdoesn't exist and needs to be
(23:07):
created.
Same thing, some have beenscanned for the CDLI project,
some have not been scanned forthe CDLI project; we're
photographing those. Anotherhuge issue, which I'm only
throwing out there is ... and wehope could do for the Nippur
tablet project ... is to reallyreconnect tablets with their
(23:27):
stratigraphy. And there are alsosurrounding objects, because
there is good information alsoin our archives about what
things have been found together.
But as we learned working on theschool project, the
stratigraphy, the layers, wheretablets were found, and objects
were found, is still a littlebit messy for those early
excavations.
Jon Taylor (23:51):
I'm sure there's a lot of still important work yet
to be done that will actuallyimprove our understanding quite
significantly of this material.
I wonder if we could take aslightly different path at this
point. Did you undertake anyvisitor research to support this
exhibition? Did you check thelocal community to see if they
had any recognition of the placeNippur, or they knew what
(24:12):
cuneiform was, or things likethat?
Susanne Paulus (24:16):
This is interesting, {LAUGHS} because
you just mentioned Nippur. WhenI pitched the topic, I wanted
the title to be "Back to Schoolin Nippur". And then the
feedback we got from the widercommunity is that they had not
an understanding of Nippur, andthey thought we should change
(24:38):
the title to "Back to School inBabylon". And I they told them,
{LAUGHS} "Yeah, it's a totallydifferent city. I love working
on Babylon as well, but no, wecan't". And that's how we came
up with "Babylonia", becausethis was something people could
connect with.
The other thing I noticed as acurator is that during my tours
(25:01):
schooling was one of the topicsvisitors constantly asked the
most questions. So they werereally interested in learning
more about the topic. And in2019, I curated a small display
for our permanent galleriesabout education. And that turned
(25:21):
out to be very popular. And thensomething we did not expect ....
and I'm still amazed by it ...
is that the metrics we get fromour social media specialist,
Tasha Vorderstrasse. She tellsus that cuneiform tablets are
constantly very popular on oursocial media, and are doing much
better than, for example,hieroglyphs. {LAUGHS} This
(25:42):
really helped us make a case forthis exhibition to take place.
Jon Taylor (25:50):
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exhibitionstend to run for a few months,
they're very visible, very highprofile; tend to be short lived.
The process of preparing for theexhibition, producing it, tends
to be a years long process. Inthis case, how long has it taken
to produce the exhibition? Andwhy does it take so long?
Susanne Paulus (26:15):
If we leave the brainstorming, pitching part and
all that aside, we really workedon it for a little bit over two
years. And "we" means a reallylarge team of people. And there
is a lot of work to do. Also, alot of things you don't see. We
(26:38):
touch on cataloguing, forexample. So a lot of time at the
beginning was research, readingup on scholarship, coming up
with an object selection,working on the story, going
through revisions, developing abasic design. And then it's
coming down to treating theobject. So they're fit, asking
(27:02):
for loans, facilitating this. Soit all takes a really long time.
And then we also decided to makea published catalogue, which
turned up to have 450-somethingpages, with essays and object
descriptions, which is prettymuch writing with many
co-authors, obviously, a bookand editing it. And don't get me
(27:27):
started on the issue ofphotographing every object and
making it shine in the bestlight. So there's just an
enormous amount of tasks to do.
Jon Taylor (27:37):
You've already mentioned that to put on an
exhibition, it's not just you,there's all sorts of other
people involved. I'll come backto the rest of the team in the
moment. But as the lead curatorof the exhibition, you have got
a lot of jobs to do, don't you?
So could you say something aboutthat, please? What actually do
you do when you curate anexhibition?
Susanne Paulus (27:58):
Obviously, it's research and documentation of
the material, then trying tomake them in a sequence. So at
the beginning, it was mostlyresearch, selecting objects,
then we moved more into when weselected the object, the
storytelling. And at that point,we started working on the
(28:21):
catalogue. Also photographingall the objects, which was not
my task. And I will come tothat, who did most of the tasks,
in a moment. But I mean, I hadto make sure that the objects
were photographed in certainways. Come up with a concept for
(28:41):
the catalogue. Invite people;coordinate this, edit things.
And then yeah, you have to writetexts, give an idea how the
displays will look like. Becauseof the annotations, we had to
pretty much lay everything outahead of time. And then yeah, we
(29:03):
had surrounding tasks, likeworking on merchandise,
programming and things likethat. Outreach, obviously,
social media. So it's quite abit, but I mean, I had a really
amazing team working alongside.
So often as a curator I was morelike coordinating and
(29:24):
brainstorming with them,bringing up ideas and working on
to realise them.
Jon Taylor (29:33):
Okay, can we turn maybe then to the team at this
point? How many people wereinvolved in this and what
different roles did they have?
Susanne Paulus (29:43):
There's two sides of this. And I'm gonna
talk a little bit about thecuratorial team first, and then
we're gonna turn more to themuseum team. I'm a professor. So
one of my main tasks is toeducate our students. So I
decided to co-curate with a teamof our students. And this was
(30:05):
the best decision I could evermake, because they were simply
amazing. And bear with mebecause I've got to mention the
team.
So we had Marta Díaz Herrera,who is a PhD candidate in
cuneiform studies andlinguistics. And she did a lot
of the initial researchcataloguing the tablets. But
(30:26):
later on, she worked really onthose annotations because of her
knowledge of Sumerian. And shewas really crucial in also
laying out how the tablets wouldbe displayed. Then we had Jane
Gordon, a PhD student incuneiform studies and
comparative literature, who isan amazing editor and really
(30:49):
helped with the catalogue. Andwas later also in charge of
editing our children's book. Twostudents, undergrads, actually:
Danielle Levy and C. Mikhail.
They took care of the wholemuseum photography, because we
don't have a dedicated museumphotographer. Madeline Ouimet, a
PhD student in cuneiform studiesand Near Eastern Art and
(31:13):
Archaeology. She worked on allthe archaeological stratigraphy
research, the non-cuneiformobjects, really helped me select
those for display. And she did
how light conditions would lookin House F, and drew new floor
plans for us and this kind ofwork. Then we have pretty much
(31:36):
Colton Siegmund, who did all ourobject movement. And he's now
postdoc in Cambridge. And we gotour own postdoc Ryan Winters,
who helped with all kinds ofaspects of the project. And over
the summer, we had additionallysummer interns, Pallas Eible
Hargro and Carter Rote and SarahWare who worked on all different
(32:00):
aspects.
So it was a really collaborativeeffort. And I mean, I can't
thank them enough. Pretty muchthe whole object description
part of the catalogue, we wrotetogether as a team. I'm really,
really proud of the students andtheir professionalism, their
(32:24):
enthusiasm, and also all theirideas they brought in. I think
what I want to make sure is thatthey get also really credit and
something for their work. So wemake really sure that things
like photography, but also theessays they wrote for the
catalogue, and their work iscredited, and they are mentioned
(32:46):
alongside everyone else.
Jon Taylor (32:49):
Yeah, yeah. It's good. And it's quite important
to recognise the contribution ofthe wider team. You broke it
down into two categories.
There's the curatorial team andthe other categories of museum
staff. Who were the other peopleinvolved in this exhibition?
Susanne Paulus (33:02):
That was the other thing we have, I mean,
ISAC is a really great museum.
And we have a great museum teamat our side. And they helped
really realising everything. Sofrom registration, who are
keeping track of the objectmovement, and facilitated all
the loan objects coming in. Hugeshout out to conservation,
(33:27):
especially to Alison Whyte, whodid an amazing job. Alison made
sure that the objects are fitfor display, and that everything
could be done that they are ingood shape and stable. And then
you have the whole design team,pretty much doing a lot of work,
(33:47):
creating an overall attractivedesign, deciding how we can
bring 126 tablets on the wall ofthe museum. How that would work
in practice, and then buildingall those amazing display cases
for us.
And something I'd neverconsidered, but every object
(34:10):
needs, obviously something tohold it in place. So we had two
additional people joining usfrom mount-making, so they
brought it up. And then we alsohave the museum leadership and
curatorial team, which wasmostly there to keep all of us
on our toes and make sure thatwe did what we were supposed to
(34:32):
be doing and didn't do anythingwe were not supposed to do. And
then on the other wider side ofthings, we have people helping
with fundraising. So I mean,everything costs a lot, so funds
need to come in. We had awonderful editor for our
catalogue--Drew Baumann from thepublication office, whom we
(34:55):
caused many sleepless nights,because everything in
publications is always late. Imean, we were those people who
were always late. But in theend, I think it all worked out.
And yeah, we have outreach andmedia were also one of our
students, Carter Rote, did areally fantastic job assisting.
(35:15):
And we have people running themuseum shop, deciding what kind
of merchandise we should do,people working in adult and K
through 12 education developingprogramming with us. I always
say it takes a building full ofpeople to make an exhibition.
And it's really collaborativeand really exciting work.
Jon Taylor (35:36):
With so many different types of expertise
involved, it's not always easyto find the points where you get
the synergy between them. So,for example, curators have an
idea of what we want to say. Andthen the interpretation team
will say, "Well, this is howpeople will best be able to
understand it". And the designteam will say, "Well, this is
what's going to look best". Howdid you find that intersection?
(35:58):
Or have you had examples wheresomebody's just said, "Look, no,
this isn't going to work"?
Susanne Paulus (36:03):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is like the
challenge, but also some of thefun to find those compromises.
And something also, sometimesgood comes out of this. Like,
for example, in the beginning, Iwanted to have every tablet
annotation around it. And ourhead team was like very worried
(36:26):
that this would not make theobject shine enough. And it
would be too text heavy. Andtogether with some issues
conservation had, we decided toput, for example, then some of
our object, what became thehighlight cases, where there is
less annotation and only someinformation around it. Yeah, I
(36:50):
mean, there are ideas, whatwould work design-wise, which,
as a team ... curatorial team,we sometimes wanted one thing
and the museum people wanted adifferent thing. But in the end,
I think we always found adialogue. And we found
solutions. And I think that wasalso a great learning
(37:14):
experience. But also, yeah, agreat collaboration. And, yes,
sometimes really, things I wasnot so convinced about in the
beginning turned out reallycool.
Jon Taylor (37:27):
Yeah, that's great.
It's quite an important skill,isn't it, you know, to recognise
the different inputs? I mean,co-curation is a very important
concept these days. As part ofthe team, were you able to work
with Iraqi American communities?
Susanne Paulus (37:44):
It was something we pondered about. We just had a
really successful show curatedby my colleague, Dr. Kiersten
Neumann, in cooperation withIraqi artists. So I hope people
can check this out. It's called"Artifacts also Die". So I was,
because I already had a hugecuratorial team with the
(38:06):
students, I decided to go adifferent route for my
exhibition. But generally, yes,it's a huge topic for us as
well. We try to bring in a lotof more different voices to the
museum. And that's somethingreally en route with different
(38:26):
exhibitions. So for one we had,or we just had, more Iraqi
co-collaboration. And for thisone, we brought in student
voices, which I thought veryfitting for the topic.
Jon Taylor (38:40):
Yeah. Yeah.
Brilliant. An obvious question: as part of the events program, (38:40):
undefined
are you organising workshopswhere children can learn how to
write cuneiform. You know, writetheir name or something like
that?
Susanne Paulus (38:53):
Absolutely. Kate Hodge from the education team
and Tasha Vorderstrasse fromadult education, together with
their teams, developed with usworkshops for children. We also
organised teacher workshops,where teachers can learn more
about those topics and thenbring ancient education for a
(39:16):
lesson or two into theirclassrooms. And we also just if
you're visiting with childrenthe exhibition, and if you have
not time doing a workshop, wehave, Inshallah, children's
content in the exhibit and amobile activity card which comes
in from times to bring in moreengagement. Think cuneiform
(39:39):
scavenger hunts. And obviouslywe are allowing in the workshops
children are exploring to writetheir names, but we are going a
little bit further and reallyintroducing them to topics like
literacy. But also how thecuneiform script works. And how
(40:00):
it's different or similar, basedon their backgrounds, to their
own writing.
And one thing we're super proudof is our children's book. So we
wrote a whole children'sactivity book. It's called The
Adventures of Inanaka and Tuni.
Learning to write in ancientBabylonia. And Jane Gordon and
(40:20):
myself, we came up with thestory of the girl Inanaka and
her dog, Tuni. And they aregoing together to school and
learning to write. And MadelineOuimet, who I already mentioned,
she's an archaeologist andcuneiform studies PhD student,
she did amazing illustrationsfor the book, really marvelously
(40:43):
based on her reconstruction ofarchitecture, real objects and
things. And our summer scholar,Sarah Ware, she did fully
professionally the layout andthe design. And one thing is you
cannot only read the story ofInanaka, but also if you do it,
(41:03):
you can become a scribeyourself. You can write your
name, but also decipherproverbs, and find hidden images
in the stars. Marta Diaz Herrerajust translated the book into
Spanish. And we hope the nextthing we can do is a translation
into Arabic and hopefully otherlanguages in the future. It's
(41:25):
going to be available as a pdffor free but also in a printed
version.
Jon Taylor (41:33):
That sounds really cool. I have to ask
developed any fun new souvenirsfor the gift shop?
Susanne Paulus (41:40):
Well, let's say we have socks, which allow you
to run as quickly as KingShulgi. And you can have a
strong coffee with Inanna. Andcuddle with the world's first
cuneiform plushy or soft toycalled Tuppi, "my tablet", and
(42:01):
the usual stuff. But I thinkthose are some of the crazier
things. And one of our students,Danielle Levy, she came up with
all the ideas. And Pallas, oneof our summer scholars, she
worked really hard onvectorising all the cuneiform.
And yeah, we developed someskills in merchandise design.
Jon Taylor (42:23):
Ah, look at that! Beautiful. And what does he have
to say for himself?
Susanne Paulus (42:29):
He has the school riddle on it
you enter blind and leaveseeing, what is it? A school".
Jon Taylor (42:38):
Lovely! How much does that set you back?
Susanne Paulus (42:40):
I actually don't know yet. Okay, the prototype
which just came in, soleadership has not yet decided
on the pricing.
Jon Taylor (42:49):
All right, great.
Looks fantastic. I want one ofthose. Super close to the
opening of the exhibition. Iknow you're really busy. There's
all sorts of things you have todo. I could talk for hours, but
we really ought to let you go.
Thank you very much. I reallyappreciate it.
Susanne Paulus (43:02):
You're welcome.
And yeah, if you want to learnmore, you can check out our Back
to School ISAC website, where wehave all the information where
you can see the catalogue andthe merchandise and all the fun
events we're doing.
Jon Taylor (43:16):
Thank you very much indeed.
I’d also like to thank ourpatrons. Enrique Jimenez, Jana
Matuszak, Nancy Highcock, Jay C,Rune Rattenborg, Woodthrush,
Elisa Rossberger, Mark Weeden,Jordi Mon Companys, Thomas
Bolin, Joan Porter MacIver, JohnMacGinnis, Andrew George, Yelena
(43:40):
Rakic, Zach Rubin, SabinaFranke, Shai Gordin, Aaron
Macks, Maarja Seire, JaafarJotheri, Morgan Hite, Chikako
Watanabe, Mark McElwaine,Jonathan Blanchard Smith,
Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
(44:05):
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, Cheryl Morgan, Kevin Roy
Jackson, as well as those whoprefer to remain anonymous.
(44:27):
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
(44:51):
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
(45:12):
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
joining our Patreon family. Youcan find us at
patreon.com/wedgepod. You canalso support us in other ways:
simply subscribe to the podcast;leave us a five star review on
Apple Music or your favouritepodcatcher; recommend us to your
fri (45:33):
@wedge_pod. If you want the latest podcast news, you can
sign up for our newsletter. Youcan find all the links in the
show notes and on our website atwedgepod.org. Thanks, and I hope
you’ll join us next time.
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge,
the podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
Have you ever wondered what ittakes to put on an exhibition in
(00:35):
a museum? Maybe you're imagininga curator, arranging and
rearranging pots in a displaycase, until it looks right. The
reality is very different, evenfor a small temporary display.
Behind that curator sent out totalk to the press stands a
complex team of specialistsbringing together a diverse
(00:58):
range of skills.
An exhibition burns brightly,but briefly. It will be open to
the public for only a fewmonths. That short period is the
culmination of a processstretching back far longer.
Exhibitions are years in themaking. Our guest is lead
(01:19):
curator of a new exhibition. Sheexplains how it came to be made,
what needs to be done, and whoare the invisible minds and
hands that helped shape thevisitor's experience.
So get yourself a cup of tea,make yourself comfortable, and
let's meet today's guest.
(01:47):
Hello, and welcome to Thin Endof the Wedge. Thank you for
joining us. Could you tell usplease: who are you, and what do
you do?
Susanne Paulus (01:55):
Hi. So my name is Susanna Paulus. I'm an
associate professor ofassyriology at the University of
Chicago, and the tabletcollection curator at ISAC,
which stands for the Institutefor the Study of Ancient
Cultures, West Asia and NorthAfrica. So in the past, you may
have known this as the OrientalInstitute.
Jon Taylor (02:17):
We're going to talk today about an exhibition you're
working on. Could you give us abrief introduction to the
exhibition please? What is itand when is it?
Susanne Paulus (02:25):
Yeah, so this is an exhibition I'm curating with
the team for ISAC. The topic isscribal education in Babylonia.
So we do especially focus onHouse F in Nippur, which may be
familiar to some of thelisteners of the podcast as one
of the best-known examples of ascribal school in the Old
(02:47):
Babylonian period. We areroughly timewise around 1740
BCE. And yeah, the exhibition isrunning from September 21st of
this year to March 24th of nextyear. And all the material in it
or most of the material in itwas excavated by the
(03:09):
Universities of Chicago andPennsylvania in 1951-52. And the
objects found during thoseexcavations are currently in the
Iraq Museum in Baghdad, in thePenn Museum in Philadelphia, and
in the ISAC Museum and thetablet collection.
Jon Taylor (03:27):
Okay, what are the key goals of this exhibition?
Susanne Paulus (03:31):
So yeah, we really have three sets of goals
roughly connected to thematerial itself, education and
also scholarship. I mean, manyof the listeners of the podcast
may know the wonderful materialwe do have about Babylonian
(03:52):
education, especially from theOld Babylonian period. But what
we wanted to do is to make thisreally available for the public,
and let them discover ancienteducation through material
objects. And also give them aglimpse into all the research
and really tell a story aboutthose students in ancient Iraq.
(04:17):
And yeah, on the educationalside, we wanted to raise
awareness of the intellectualheritage of ancient Iraq,
meaning not only like theziggurats and the temples and
statues, but the textual side ofthings: the literature, the
poetry and those kinds of thingswhich survive in the school
(04:39):
materials.
We also saw this as a chance toreally connect ancient and
modern experiences abouteducation. We did this also by
making the curation processitself about an educational
experience. I co-curated with ateam of our students. And we'll
(05:00):
talk more about them later. Andyeah, on the scholarly side as
you yourself Jon, you're arepart of the scholarship about
Babylonian education. I mean,there's so much done already.
But we really took this as anopportunity to research and
document the cuneiform tabletsin our collection. And also to
(05:23):
kick off the Nippur tabletproject, which has the goal of
making all our Nippur tablets atISAC and coming from the ISAC
excavations available online andto a wider public.
Jon Taylor (05:37):
How big an exhibition is this? How many
objects are in it? Did they allcome from the ISAC collection?
Or did you need to borrow fromelsewhere?
Susanne Paulus (05:46):
So, yeah, like how big is it? If you are
familiar with our specialexhibition space, you may know
that it's a really small space.
So we had space constrictions,but we're having 126 objects in
the exhibition. Most of them areinscribed clay tablets, and
prisms and similar objects. Butwe also included clay figurines,
(06:11):
terracotta plaques, ceramics,like vessels, some weights, and
other things which come from thesame context. And we were able
to borrow 15 objects from thePenn Museum. Those include some
of them, which are very wellknown to the public, like the
(06:32):
famous tablet with the bitemarks of a student, but also a
beautiful prism with personalnames. And the plaque with a
striding lion, which was once onthe walls of House F.
One thing I really wanted to dowas borrowing from the Iraq
(06:52):
Museum. But this was sadlyimpossible. So we came up with a
way of honouring their side andtheir objects, because during
the excavations, they madeplaster casts of all the finds
... the inscribed finds ... andwe have them in our collection.
So at least we could include theIraq Museum in some way.
Jon Taylor (07:16):
Okay. I guess you addressed there what was going
to be my next question in termsof which of these hundred or so
objects are the star pieces? Andwhat stories do you want to tell
with them? I guess the one withthe students tooth marks is
prime engagement material there.
Susanne Paulus (07:32):
Yeah. But it's a really interesting question. So
if you're coming into thisexhibition, and you're looking,
I don't know, for the mask ofTutakhamun or really the star of
the show, we don't have this. Wedon't have this one single
object, which takes your breathaway. I think it's more the
(07:54):
storytelling of the objectstogether and the things you find
if you look closer, like thebite marks, or the toothmarks
you just mentioned. But you willalso find amazing details like
the tablet, where you can stillsee the finger marks of the
student who erased it severaltimes. Or the tablet where a
student made a mistake with thecalculations. Or one of my
(08:18):
favourites, which is a reallytiny prism, where a novice
practicing Syllabary B-- so oneof the earliest exercises--wrote
it on one of the most complexshapes, a prism. And in doing so
he messed up things along theway. And I think, seeing those
marks and mistakes and thehumanity behind the objects, I
(08:42):
think that's the star of theshow.
Also, really early on, we wereat sort of a crossroads. One of
the things were did we want tohighlight the most amazing
tablets of ancient education,like the ones with the drawings
and the most complete prisms andthose? Or do we want to work
(09:04):
with the amazing assemblage ofHouse F, where we do have the
architecture, the objects andthe exercises, but also texts
like Edubba A or Schooldaystalking about school life in
ancient Babylonia. And wedecided to do the latter. And
then we also transformed ourrather modest exhibition space,
(09:29):
which is actually just a littlebit bigger than House F into the
school house itself, andreconstructed some of the
architecture. I visited thismorning. You can enter through
an arched entryway and the lightconditions change, because
you're inside the school house.
And we were able to reconstructsome of the architectural
(09:50):
features like the bench wherethe students were possibly
sitting and writing, or the boxfor tablet making. And also ...
you're very critical about that... recycling. So this was
really fun to do, and hopefullyalso brings the objects to life.
Jon Taylor (10:10):
That's a really interesting idea. I mean, when
you enter the exhibition, do youenter then the courtyard? Or do
you go into the back room orwhatever?
Susanne Paulus (10:18):
It's a little bit more abstract. So as you may
very well know, the entryway ofHouse F is not excavated. So
we've reconstructed the entrywayand then you go around the
corner, and then you are in thefirst rooms. But due to many
regulations in museumarchitecture, we couldn't make
(10:39):
everything as tiny and the wallsas close together and the rooms
as small as in House F. But theoverall structure looks similar.
And the bench is placed at leastwhere Room 205 would be. And the
recycling box is in thecourtyard region and that way,
(10:59):
and we obviously also show floorplans and try to explain it to
the visitor where you are.
Jon Taylor (11:05):
Okay, interesting. I guess we turn to the objects
again. With a topic like this,you face a huge, huge challenge,
in how do you display lots ofsmall brown lumps? So you have
100 or so objects; they'retablets, terracottas, ceramics.
They're all this very difficultmaterial. You and I can see why
(11:27):
they're interesting. But quiteoften, visitors don't even
recognise that cuneiform iswriting at all. And even when
they do make that recognition,they have no way of knowing what
that says. And they're not goingto be familiar enough with, if
you like, "real" cuneiformdocuments to see that these are
training texts. How do youtackle these kinds of
challenges? How do you help themto connect with the objects to
(11:50):
see what they actually are?
Susanne Paulus (11:51):
Yeah, I mean, that's, I think, one of the most
difficult challenges we face.
And hopefully, once we hear thefirst voices of our visitors, we
will see if we have beensuccessful. I remember very
well, when we laid out thematerial for the first time, the
museum people were like, "Oh, mygod, it's all clay, there's very
(12:13):
little images, it's gonna beAnd one thing I fought really
hard for doing is what we callsuper hard". And one thing is we
really heavily invested instorytelling. So for example,
instead of describing theeducational tablets, with the
typical ways, like Type 1 toType 4, we really introduced
them as part of the storySchooldays, because some of them
(12:37):
are featured in Schooldays. Andthen when the story is talking,
that the teacher is writing anexercise, we display what we
call a "teacher-studentexercise", where the teacher
wrote on the one side and thestudent copied on the other. We
try to stay away calling this a"Type 2". We also really let the
(13:01):
visitor follow the curriculumand learn alongside the
students. So once you'reintroduced to the questions of
who went to school, and what weknow, and what we don't know,
you really follow the curriculumalong.
(13:26):
the annotation. So each tabletis presented on a background and
around the tablet there areinteresting features of the
tablet, which we are pointingout. So for example, we are
pointing out where you can seefinger marks. But we are also
when we are introducing the listof trees and wooden objects, we
(13:49):
are pointing out how the sign"GISH" looks like, and where you
can find it on the tablet. Soour visitor is gaining a little
bit of literacy in cuneiformsigns. And we really want to
give them the agency also to seethings on the tablets. And
especially lexical lists, workreally well, because we have all
(14:12):
those repetitive signs. And thenyeah, we'll see how it works. I
can tell you it was really hardfor our design team to realise
this idea, because every tabletneeds to be positioned exactly
how we imagined it in thedisplays. That was a little bit
(14:32):
challenging.
Jon Taylor (14:35):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can imagine. Are you using
graphics or interactives? Do youhave videos and sound? Things
like that?
Susanne Paulus (14:43):
Yeah, we do. We decided, for example, not to put
a reconstructed stylus into theexhibition, but a video where
you see someone making a tabletor writing it and then getting
frustrated and throwing it backinto the box. {LAUGHS} We also
do have sound. So thanks to ournew wonderful colleague, Jana
(15:08):
Matuszak, who is also a regularon this podcast, we have
recordings of the disputes ...
of two of the disputes ... soyou can listen to the
soundscapes in translation. Andgenerally we invested in
translation, meaning almost allthe tablets are accompanied by
(15:28):
either if they don't haveannotations, they have those
small translations. So you canif you want, read more into
them. But also we decided totranslate some of the topics
into more modern language. Sorather than grouping literature
(15:49):
into hymns, epics, myths,literary, wisdom literature, all
this. We merge the genres andask questions like "what did
they learn about religion,history, rhetoric, ethics, and
so on?
Jon Taylor (16:08):
Yeah, I think sometimes you have to translate
the topics as well as the text,don't you?
Susanne Paulus (16:12):
Yeah, we definitely decided doing. And we
went with the more speakingtitles for the compositions. Not
talking about "Shulgi A", and"Shulgi B". Those kinds of
things. But rather "A praisehymn to king Shulgi", and really
trying to translate.
Jon Taylor (16:34):
Yeah, little quotations of a text seem to be
quite effective.
Susanne Paulus (16:38):
Yeah, we also wanted people to touch, so we
did some 3D replicas. So peoplecan touch cuneiform tablets.
Obviously, not the originals,but they can trace finger marks
of an ancient student and cantry to hold a tablet, or see how
a student who was slightlynervous, squeezed the tablets.
(17:00):
This is part of making thisreally an experience.
Jon Taylor (17:06):
It's a lovely topic for an exhibition. It's the kind
of thing that's very easy torelate to. But I wonder, whose
idea was it to put on thisexhibition? Why was this topic
chosen as opposed to anythingelse? And why is now the time to
do it? You know, the materialwas excavated in the 1950s. What
is it about 2023 that makes thisrelevant and important?
Susanne Paulus (17:30):
I was the culprit. {LAUGHS} So I picked
it. I pitched it to ourleadership; they luckily went
with it. Also, it's an uncommontopic. Why now? I mean, it's an
interesting question. On the onehand, I mean, right now is the
time when our students, both inthe schools, but also at
(17:52):
university, go back to school,which is, of course, like a
cyclical event. So it happens,it's timeless, it happens all
the time.
There are some other largerthings at play. So we just
restarted and revamped withAugusta McMahon and our
excavations in Nippur. So wewant to reconnect our audience,
(18:17):
really with the topic. Also, Imean, I'm starting the Nippur
tablet project, where we want tomake sure that those tablets
were excavated like 70 yearsago, and there are some earlier
and a lot of them were excavatedslightly later. They're still
not all available for thepublic. So yeah, we thought it's
(18:40):
a good time. And then overall, Ithink I do see a certain shift
in the last years, decade, totell more stories about daily
life in a museum context. And Imean, schooling is very
relatable. We have a lot ofschool groups visiting and yeah,
(19:04):
a large body of students alsoaround to hopefully like the
topic.
Jon Taylor (19:10):
You mentioned there that Augusta is going to resume
excavations at Nippur.
Presumably, you're not going tobe excavating that part of town
where House F is, but it's theNippur connection more
generally?
Susanne Paulus (19:22):
Yeah, more generally, the Nippur connection
that we're going back to Nippur,that we are returning. If people
are interested in what she'sdoing, she has a beautiful
lecture up on the ISAC YouTube,where you can learn more about
her excavation plans. But shewants to also excavate a
domestic context; houses ratherthan palaces or temples. So this
(19:46):
is falling right into ouroverall goals for the future.
Jon Taylor (19:52):
And then, you mentioned a couple of times
there the Nippur tablet project.
So you are curator of thecuneiform collection at ISAC,
aren't you? I was wondering howyou're going to make the Nippur
tablets available to the public.
Is it an issue of that therearen't photographs of all the
objects? Or are you going toprovide translations of these
hundreds of texts?
Susanne Paulus (20:13):
Hopefully, I mean, there's like several
issues, which hopefully we canresolve. And we are just at the
beginning of a bigger project.
So we will apply for funds andbuild cooperation. So one thing
is, a lot of those tablets arenot documented in photography.
They are not available to thelarger public on our databases
(20:35):
yet. The other thing is that, asyou may know, many of them even
from the very well-studied thirdseason, where the school
material comes from, are notpublished. So our goal will be
also to hopefully providetranslations for as many of
those objects and tablets as wecan. But obviously, this is not
(21:00):
going to be like me as a tabletcurator or me and a group of
students. But it's going to be alarger project with many people
collaborating, because there aretablets from the third to the
first millennium. And some ofthem are really, really
interesting. And I think it'stime to get those out. And some
(21:21):
have been waiting to getpublished for a really long
time.
Jon Taylor (21:29):
Yeah, it's a fantastic project. There is a
wider issue for museums. Youknow, in terms of collections
have now been in existence forquite a number of years, decades
and decades. And how do weprocess that? How do we handle
this increasingly old material?
Susanne Paulus (21:46):
Yeah. And also, how do we get funding agencies
to be re-interested in thismaterial? How can we justify
asking for funds? And if wehaven't published them for 70
years, how can we get themre-interested compared to fresh
material, which is possiblystill in the ground? And
(22:08):
probably sounds more excitingthan something which has been in
museum for a while.
Jon Taylor (22:13):
Yeah. But can I ask if all the material is
catalogued? Is it really just aquestion of detailed academic
study? Or is there more behindthe scenes work that needs to be
done as well?
Susanne Paulus (22:23):
{LAUGHS} As you may very well know from your own
catalogues and things ... ifit's cataloged, it's a larger
question. So if you know themuseum number, and you enter it
in our database, you will find acatalogue entry for the tablet.
But often there is nodescription. And often nobody
(22:46):
has touched this object for areally long time. For others,
there is a lot of scholarshipdone, and the scholarship just
needs to be added to thecatalogue. And so the
information needs to beconnected to the object. And for
others, this information justdoesn't exist and needs to be
(23:07):
created.
Same thing, some have beenscanned for the CDLI project,
some have not been scanned forthe CDLI project; we're
photographing those. Anotherhuge issue, which I'm only
throwing out there is ... and wehope could do for the Nippur
tablet project ... is to reallyreconnect tablets with their
(23:27):
stratigraphy. And there are alsosurrounding objects, because
there is good information alsoin our archives about what
things have been found together.
But as we learned working on theschool project, the
stratigraphy, the layers, wheretablets were found, and objects
were found, is still a littlebit messy for those early
excavations.
Jon Taylor (23:51):
I'm sure there's a lot of still important work yet
to be done that will actuallyimprove our understanding quite
significantly of this material.
I wonder if we could take aslightly different path at this
point. Did you undertake anyvisitor research to support this
exhibition? Did you check thelocal community to see if they
had any recognition of the placeNippur, or they knew what
(24:12):
cuneiform was, or things likethat?
Susanne Paulus (24:16):
This is interesting, {LAUGHS} because
you just mentioned Nippur. WhenI pitched the topic, I wanted
the title to be "Back to Schoolin Nippur". And then the
feedback we got from the widercommunity is that they had not
an understanding of Nippur, andthey thought we should change
(24:38):
the title to "Back to School inBabylon". And I they told them,
{LAUGHS} "Yeah, it's a totallydifferent city. I love working
on Babylon as well, but no, wecan't". And that's how we came
up with "Babylonia", becausethis was something people could
connect with.
The other thing I noticed as acurator is that during my tours
(25:01):
schooling was one of the topicsvisitors constantly asked the
most questions. So they werereally interested in learning
more about the topic. And in2019, I curated a small display
for our permanent galleriesabout education. And that turned
(25:21):
out to be very popular. And thensomething we did not expect ....
and I'm still amazed by it ...
is that the metrics we get fromour social media specialist,
Tasha Vorderstrasse. She tellsus that cuneiform tablets are
constantly very popular on oursocial media, and are doing much
better than, for example,hieroglyphs. {LAUGHS} This
(25:42):
really helped us make a case forthis exhibition to take place.
Jon Taylor (25:50):
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exhibitionstend to run for a few months,
they're very visible, very highprofile; tend to be short lived.
The process of preparing for theexhibition, producing it, tends
to be a years long process. Inthis case, how long has it taken
to produce the exhibition? Andwhy does it take so long?
Susanne Paulus (26:15):
If we leave the brainstorming, pitching part and
all that aside, we really workedon it for a little bit over two
years. And "we" means a reallylarge team of people. And there
is a lot of work to do. Also, alot of things you don't see. We
(26:38):
touch on cataloguing, forexample. So a lot of time at the
beginning was research, readingup on scholarship, coming up
with an object selection,working on the story, going
through revisions, developing abasic design. And then it's
coming down to treating theobject. So they're fit, asking
(27:02):
for loans, facilitating this. Soit all takes a really long time.
And then we also decided to makea published catalogue, which
turned up to have 450-somethingpages, with essays and object
descriptions, which is prettymuch writing with many
co-authors, obviously, a bookand editing it. And don't get me
(27:27):
started on the issue ofphotographing every object and
making it shine in the bestlight. So there's just an
enormous amount of tasks to do.
Jon Taylor (27:37):
You've already mentioned that to put on an
exhibition, it's not just you,there's all sorts of other
people involved. I'll come backto the rest of the team in the
moment. But as the lead curatorof the exhibition, you have got
a lot of jobs to do, don't you?
So could you say something aboutthat, please? What actually do
you do when you curate anexhibition?
Susanne Paulus (27:58):
Obviously, it's research and documentation of
the material, then trying tomake them in a sequence. So at
the beginning, it was mostlyresearch, selecting objects,
then we moved more into when weselected the object, the
storytelling. And at that point,we started working on the
(28:21):
catalogue. Also photographingall the objects, which was not
my task. And I will come tothat, who did most of the tasks,
in a moment. But I mean, I hadto make sure that the objects
were photographed in certainways. Come up with a concept for
(28:41):
the catalogue. Invite people;coordinate this, edit things.
And then yeah, you have to writetexts, give an idea how the
displays will look like. Becauseof the annotations, we had to
pretty much lay everything outahead of time. And then yeah, we
(29:03):
had surrounding tasks, likeworking on merchandise,
programming and things likethat. Outreach, obviously,
social media. So it's quite abit, but I mean, I had a really
amazing team working alongside.
So often as a curator I was morelike coordinating and
(29:24):
brainstorming with them,bringing up ideas and working on
to realise them.
Jon Taylor (29:33):
Okay, can we turn maybe then to the team at this
point? How many people wereinvolved in this and what
different roles did they have?
Susanne Paulus (29:43):
There's two sides of this. And I'm gonna
talk a little bit about thecuratorial team first, and then
we're gonna turn more to themuseum team. I'm a professor. So
one of my main tasks is toeducate our students. So I
decided to co-curate with a teamof our students. And this was
(30:05):
the best decision I could evermake, because they were simply
amazing. And bear with mebecause I've got to mention the
team.
So we had Marta Díaz Herrera,who is a PhD candidate in
cuneiform studies andlinguistics. And she did a lot
of the initial researchcataloguing the tablets. But
(30:26):
later on, she worked really onthose annotations because of her
knowledge of Sumerian. And shewas really crucial in also
laying out how the tablets wouldbe displayed. Then we had Jane
Gordon, a PhD student incuneiform studies and
comparative literature, who isan amazing editor and really
(30:49):
helped with the catalogue. Andwas later also in charge of
editing our children's book. Twostudents, undergrads, actually:
Danielle Levy and C. Mikhail.
They took care of the wholemuseum photography, because we
don't have a dedicated museumphotographer. Madeline Ouimet, a
PhD student in cuneiform studiesand Near Eastern Art and
(31:13):
Archaeology. She worked on allthe archaeological stratigraphy
research, the non-cuneiformobjects, really helped me select
those for display. And she did
how light conditions would lookin House F, and drew new floor
plans for us and this kind ofwork. Then we have pretty much
(31:36):
Colton Siegmund, who did all ourobject movement. And he's now
postdoc in Cambridge. And we gotour own postdoc Ryan Winters,
who helped with all kinds ofaspects of the project. And over
the summer, we had additionallysummer interns, Pallas Eible
Hargro and Carter Rote and SarahWare who worked on all different
(32:00):
aspects.
So it was a really collaborativeeffort. And I mean, I can't
thank them enough. Pretty muchthe whole object description
part of the catalogue, we wrotetogether as a team. I'm really,
really proud of the students andtheir professionalism, their
(32:24):
enthusiasm, and also all theirideas they brought in. I think
what I want to make sure is thatthey get also really credit and
something for their work. So wemake really sure that things
like photography, but also theessays they wrote for the
catalogue, and their work iscredited, and they are mentioned
(32:46):
alongside everyone else.
Jon Taylor (32:49):
Yeah, yeah. It's good. And it's quite important
to recognise the contribution ofthe wider team. You broke it
down into two categories.
There's the curatorial team andthe other categories of museum
staff. Who were the other peopleinvolved in this exhibition?
Susanne Paulus (33:02):
That was the other thing we have, I mean,
ISAC is a really great museum.
And we have a great museum teamat our side. And they helped
really realising everything. Sofrom registration, who are
keeping track of the objectmovement, and facilitated all
the loan objects coming in. Hugeshout out to conservation,
(33:27):
especially to Alison Whyte, whodid an amazing job. Alison made
sure that the objects are fitfor display, and that everything
could be done that they are ingood shape and stable. And then
you have the whole design team,pretty much doing a lot of work,
(33:47):
creating an overall attractivedesign, deciding how we can
bring 126 tablets on the wall ofthe museum. How that would work
in practice, and then buildingall those amazing display cases
for us.
And something I'd neverconsidered, but every object
(34:10):
needs, obviously something tohold it in place. So we had two
additional people joining usfrom mount-making, so they
brought it up. And then we alsohave the museum leadership and
curatorial team, which wasmostly there to keep all of us
on our toes and make sure thatwe did what we were supposed to
(34:32):
be doing and didn't do anythingwe were not supposed to do. And
then on the other wider side ofthings, we have people helping
with fundraising. So I mean,everything costs a lot, so funds
need to come in. We had awonderful editor for our
catalogue--Drew Baumann from thepublication office, whom we
(34:55):
caused many sleepless nights,because everything in
publications is always late. Imean, we were those people who
were always late. But in theend, I think it all worked out.
And yeah, we have outreach andmedia were also one of our
students, Carter Rote, did areally fantastic job assisting.
(35:15):
And we have people running themuseum shop, deciding what kind
of merchandise we should do,people working in adult and K
through 12 education developingprogramming with us. I always
say it takes a building full ofpeople to make an exhibition.
And it's really collaborativeand really exciting work.
Jon Taylor (35:36):
With so many different types of expertise
involved, it's not always easyto find the points where you get
the synergy between them. So,for example, curators have an
idea of what we want to say. Andthen the interpretation team
will say, "Well, this is howpeople will best be able to
understand it". And the designteam will say, "Well, this is
what's going to look best". Howdid you find that intersection?
(35:58):
Or have you had examples wheresomebody's just said, "Look, no,
this isn't going to work"?
Susanne Paulus (36:03):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is like the
challenge, but also some of thefun to find those compromises.
And something also, sometimesgood comes out of this. Like,
for example, in the beginning, Iwanted to have every tablet
annotation around it. And ourhead team was like very worried
(36:26):
that this would not make theobject shine enough. And it
would be too text heavy. Andtogether with some issues
conservation had, we decided toput, for example, then some of
our object, what became thehighlight cases, where there is
less annotation and only someinformation around it. Yeah, I
(36:50):
mean, there are ideas, whatwould work design-wise, which,
as a team ... curatorial team,we sometimes wanted one thing
and the museum people wanted adifferent thing. But in the end,
I think we always found adialogue. And we found
solutions. And I think that wasalso a great learning
(37:14):
experience. But also, yeah, agreat collaboration. And, yes,
sometimes really, things I wasnot so convinced about in the
beginning turned out reallycool.
Jon Taylor (37:27):
Yeah, that's great.
It's quite an important skill,isn't it, you know, to recognise
the different inputs? I mean,co-curation is a very important
concept these days. As part ofthe team, were you able to work
with Iraqi American communities?
Susanne Paulus (37:44):
It was something we pondered about. We just had a
really successful show curatedby my colleague, Dr. Kiersten
Neumann, in cooperation withIraqi artists. So I hope people
can check this out. It's called"Artifacts also Die". So I was,
because I already had a hugecuratorial team with the
(38:06):
students, I decided to go adifferent route for my
exhibition. But generally, yes,it's a huge topic for us as
well. We try to bring in a lotof more different voices to the
museum. And that's somethingreally en route with different
(38:26):
exhibitions. So for one we had,or we just had, more Iraqi
co-collaboration. And for thisone, we brought in student
voices, which I thought veryfitting for the topic.
Jon Taylor (38:40):
Yeah. Yeah.
Brilliant. An obvious question: as part of the events program, (38:40):
undefined
are you organising workshopswhere children can learn how to
write cuneiform. You know, writetheir name or something like
that?
Susanne Paulus (38:53):
Absolutely. Kate Hodge from the education team
and Tasha Vorderstrasse fromadult education, together with
their teams, developed with usworkshops for children. We also
organised teacher workshops,where teachers can learn more
about those topics and thenbring ancient education for a
(39:16):
lesson or two into theirclassrooms. And we also just if
you're visiting with childrenthe exhibition, and if you have
not time doing a workshop, wehave, Inshallah, children's
content in the exhibit and amobile activity card which comes
in from times to bring in moreengagement. Think cuneiform
(39:39):
scavenger hunts. And obviouslywe are allowing in the workshops
children are exploring to writetheir names, but we are going a
little bit further and reallyintroducing them to topics like
literacy. But also how thecuneiform script works. And how
(40:00):
it's different or similar, basedon their backgrounds, to their
own writing.
And one thing we're super proudof is our children's book. So we
wrote a whole children'sactivity book. It's called The
Adventures of Inanaka and Tuni.
Learning to write in ancientBabylonia. And Jane Gordon and
(40:20):
myself, we came up with thestory of the girl Inanaka and
her dog, Tuni. And they aregoing together to school and
learning to write. And MadelineOuimet, who I already mentioned,
she's an archaeologist andcuneiform studies PhD student,
she did amazing illustrationsfor the book, really marvelously
(40:43):
based on her reconstruction ofarchitecture, real objects and
things. And our summer scholar,Sarah Ware, she did fully
professionally the layout andthe design. And one thing is you
cannot only read the story ofInanaka, but also if you do it,
(41:03):
you can become a scribeyourself. You can write your
name, but also decipherproverbs, and find hidden images
in the stars. Marta Diaz Herrerajust translated the book into
Spanish. And we hope the nextthing we can do is a translation
into Arabic and hopefully otherlanguages in the future. It's
(41:25):
going to be available as a pdffor free but also in a printed
version.
Jon Taylor (41:33):
That sounds really cool. I have to ask
developed any fun new souvenirsfor the gift shop?
Susanne Paulus (41:40):
Well, let's say we have socks, which allow you
to run as quickly as KingShulgi. And you can have a
strong coffee with Inanna. Andcuddle with the world's first
cuneiform plushy or soft toycalled Tuppi, "my tablet", and
(42:01):
the usual stuff. But I thinkthose are some of the crazier
things. And one of our students,Danielle Levy, she came up with
all the ideas. And Pallas, oneof our summer scholars, she
worked really hard onvectorising all the cuneiform.
And yeah, we developed someskills in merchandise design.
Jon Taylor (42:23):
Ah, look at that! Beautiful. And what does he have
to say for himself?
Susanne Paulus (42:29):
He has the school riddle on it
you enter blind and leaveseeing, what is it? A school".
Jon Taylor (42:38):
Lovely! How much does that set you back?
Susanne Paulus (42:40):
I actually don't know yet. Okay, the prototype
which just came in, soleadership has not yet decided
on the pricing.
Jon Taylor (42:49):
All right, great.
Looks fantastic. I want one ofthose. Super close to the
opening of the exhibition. Iknow you're really busy. There's
all sorts of things you have todo. I could talk for hours, but
we really ought to let you go.
Thank you very much. I reallyappreciate it.
Susanne Paulus (43:02):
You're welcome.
And yeah, if you want to learnmore, you can check out our Back
to School ISAC website, where wehave all the information where
you can see the catalogue andthe merchandise and all the fun
events we're doing.
Jon Taylor (43:16):
Thank you very much indeed.
I’d also like to thank ourpatrons. Enrique Jimenez, Jana
Matuszak, Nancy Highcock, Jay C,Rune Rattenborg, Woodthrush,
Elisa Rossberger, Mark Weeden,Jordi Mon Companys, Thomas
Bolin, Joan Porter MacIver, JohnMacGinnis, Andrew George, Yelena
(43:40):
Rakic, Zach Rubin, SabinaFranke, Shai Gordin, Aaron
Macks, Maarja Seire, JaafarJotheri, Morgan Hite, Chikako
Watanabe, Mark McElwaine,Jonathan Blanchard Smith,
Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
(44:05):
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, Cheryl Morgan, Kevin Roy
Jackson, as well as those whoprefer to remain anonymous.
(44:27):
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
(44:51):
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
(45:12):
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
joining our Patreon family. Youcan find us at
patreon.com/wedgepod. You canalso support us in other ways:
simply subscribe to the podcast;leave us a five star review on
Apple Music or your favouritepodcatcher; recommend us to your
fri (45:33):
@wedge_pod. If you want the latest podcast news, you can
sign up for our newsletter. Youcan find all the links in the
show notes and on our website atwedgepod.org. Thanks, and I hope
you’ll join us next time.
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