Invention Classic: The Museum

production of I Heart Radio. Hey you, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. You know, humans are aware of history. That's that's one of our our key attributes. Not always though, well to varying degrees, we're aware of history, or we have awareness of of of what we think history to be uh and uh and not just our own personal history, but history across generations,

across decades, across centuries, millennia. Even we're aware of what came before via oral traditions and the evidence of the world around us, even as we continually change in anticipation of the future. And then of course we have recorded history as well, and we have a concept of history that goes beyond concern for literal accuracy about what happened

in the past. I think about everything from ancient mythologies in which people tried to construct a you know, not not literally existent version of their past, but something to sort of explain the present, all the way to the kinds of mythical histories that people still like to engage in today, you know, ancient aliens and all, you know,

half the stuff on the history shows on TV. Oh yeah, Inevitably history ends up melding with myth and you really don't have to go too far back in history for that to take place, for for the historical to become

the legendary. At least, one thing that makes clear, I think, is that we have a kind of craving for something that we think of as history that is not always exactly the same thing as knowing what's actually true about what happened X number of years ago, right right, So establishing just from the get go that the human contemplation of history is in and of itself kind of a complex thing. Uh, narrative becomes an essential part of it,

but also a complicating aspect of it. Yeah, and then their additional concerns we're going to get into now when we when we think about history, I mean, one of the things about human use of history is that we're able to pass information on in a way that doesn't depend on our genetics. So a big part of it is, of course just recorded histories literature about the past. But

then uh, there are the artifacts of the past. Uh, there are the artifacts of the distant past, the the the relatively recent past, um artifacts of the present, and all of these things find their way into museums. Yeah. I mean, to think about what you're feeling about ancient Egypt would be if you could only have read about it and you never could have seen any of its artifacts, any of its artwork. You've never seen images of the pyramids, never seen the ancient figurines or the sarcopha guy or

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

our understanding, um and uh. And on top of that, we have photography, we have the motion picture, we have computer imagery, we have just a whole host of of inventions that have made it, first of all, made it easier for us to understand what agent Egypt was like. And it's made it easier for people all around the world to get a grasp of it. Like you no longer have to travel to ancient Egypt, as certainly even the Romans did the ancient Romans uh consider in their

contemplation of the even more ancient Egyptians. Uh. And then likewise you don't even have to be able to travel to a museum that has artifacts that have been transported from Egypt. Obviously, you can go to websites, you can go to uh two books, to films, etcetera. But the museum is still important. Yeah, that's exactly right, And it's important in multiple ways. I mean, I think about the

two main ways it's important. Number one, of course, is just the preservation and display of artifacts to show you what they looked like, you know, to give you the physical representation. But then I think Equally as important is the contextualizing literature of a museum, the interpretive material, because you know, this is and pointed out by archaeologists and historians that if we only form our picture of a past civilization by looking at its physical artifacts, there is

a necessary sort of uh, filtering mechanism there. That's time. You don't see all the aspects of the civilization that are prone to that are biodegradable, or that are prone

to erosion breaking down over time. Uh So, I mean there's sort of this joke about like, you know, if you only look at the artifacts and you don't read about the other things or see sort of artists representations of what the other things surrounding these artifacts might have been, you could assume that everyone in ancient Egypt like walked around in stone clothes. Yeah yeah, Or you know that that all the the art, all the sculpture and ancient

Rome was unpainted and you know stoic and gray. I mean, it's it's essentially in this sense, the archaeological and the anthropological are very much like palaeontology. Uh you know, it's it's one thing to look at the even the reassembled and uh, you know, the resembled fossils of a prehistoric creature. But then there are all the things that did not survive that we have to piece together, uh to get a full understanding of what this creature was or might

have been. Yeah, the skin across time. Uh, that can all be represented in the interpretive materials of a museum. So those are I think equally as important as just like having an artifact and preserving it from being destroyed by the elements. Oh yeah, Like I think of the like the really great museums I've been to, and I'm and I've been fortunate enough to get to go to you know a number of the more fortunate enough to live in a city that have some very nice museums

as well. Um. But but there's a you know, there's a journey you go on. There's there's a story that you involve yourself in when you're when you when you're in a really good museum or a really good exhibit. Uh. And I think you know part of that too is like it appeals to spatial learning. UM. For instance, free

plug for the Firm Bank Museum here in Atlanta. Uh, you know, they have a section called the like the Georgia Walk through time and uh, it's something that you know, kids that grew up in the Atlanta area have been going to for a long time and they probably end up taking it for granted. But you know, there's this it's like a spatial journey you do walk through time. You get to uh, you know, go through these exhibits and get kind of a you know, a walk through

of geologic history and uh. And I think that's important. Likewise with with fossils and and reproductions or even u taxidermy um animals, there is something about being in the physical presence of either this creature or representation of this creature that that just gives you an understanding of it that you don't necessarily get from a book or a description or a film or even some sort of uh,

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

I believe it was the Field Museum. I believe we we we were there together because we had a work thing up there, and uh, they had an exhibit about where they had an artistic recreation of slaveship, and you like walk through the hold of it, and it's, uh,

you know, it's just a really emotional experience. It just brings you know, I remember, you know, it brought tears to my eyes, you know, and it was like that's an example where you know, you you have this positive emotional manipulation to a certain extent by the by the museum, you know, to give you this emotional connection with the topic.

And I think that's easy to overlook when we think of museums because you can think of them as as just like a stoic presentation of artifacts that are perhaps lacking in context, or acquire a great deal of reading a fine print. But they could also help you feel

the pain and passion of people who have been long dead. Right. Um. The Civil Rights Museum here in Atlanta also does a tremendous job through you know, all sorts of like multimedia of of you know, being able to like there's one exhibit where you you sit at a lunch counter and you wear headphones to give you the experience of of being a protester during the Civil rights movement in America.

And you know, it's little things like that often with with you know, some technological bells and whistles which you've you've used wisely, you know, can just really enhance what the museum is able to do from you know, an educational perspective. That's exactly right, And that's that's a good point about how you know, museums today are much more than just uh, the storage and display of physical artifacts.

I mean, that's the sort of classic museum tradition is like you have an object of some kind of significance. It's a work of art or an artifact found through archaeology or something, or you know, it's natural history. Maybe it's a mineral or a bone or something like that, um and and that's on display. But yeah, museums are

bigger than that now. They're there in many ways is sort of just like place you can go to engage with some form or other of history, right and and or so, or even celebrate it, you know, such as you know, when I think of some of our better you know, science and technology museums It's like a a space where where science is celebrated, and there will be various activities going on to aid in that celebration, from say a science themed playroom for very small children, to

say a lecture series for uh, for for older individuals who you know, who needs something more you know, substantive. So I guess the question is how did humans start doing this? Like when did the museum tradition begin? When when did we first get the idea that you would, uh, that you would put objects on display or have some kind of place where you could you could go to

interact with educational materials like this, right. And I think an important thing that we're we're kind of skipping over and all this is that is that a music hum ideally and um and generally the better examples that we tend to focus on are going to be open for everyone. So it's it's not just a matter of oh, well, this university has a storeroom of artifacts, or this uh, this institution or this family has some wonderful pieces set aside.

Uh you you'd love it if you could see it. Now, A museum is ideally a place that is open to the people and the and and and everyone is allowed to venture in and engage with the materials there. Right, So just the king's treasure room of like artifacts collected from the you know, from the cities he has conquered, is not necessarily a museum because that's just his treasure room, right.

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

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

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

the world leading up to that? And I think probably the best exercise here is to is to and not to try and think of like a world without museums, but think of the various things in history that are sort of like a museum but not quite. Okay, So first of all, we already mentioned like the King's treasure room. Right, you know, you have conquered many cities and many great lands, and maybe you you took artifacts that were sacred to them, and then you brought it back to your treasure room

and you kept it locked up for yourself. Right. Yeah, it's it's it's it's certainly kind of like a museum, but not a museum. And we should note I mean that many museums, I mean one of the sort of like counterpoints to the good things about a museum is 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 is uh, it's it's not a museum, but at the same time it does have a lot in common and I think that's going to be the case with all these not quite museum examples we're gonna touch on. You know, also worth pointing out that, you know, it's been long fashionable in human culture to steal treasures and art from a defeated adversary um and stuff to blow

your mind. We had a couple of episodes about the Ark of the Covenant, and of course the stories of the Ark of the Covenant involved it's uh, it's captured by the Philistines and later it's captured and possible destruction by the Babylonians, and the Philistines were said to have displayed the captured arc in their own temple of Dagon. Uh though of course, uh, you know this we don't know to what extent this you know, there's reality behind this,

or if it's just a myth, etcetera. But still it 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

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

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

seen museums raided, looted, or destroyed due to military action. So, you know, it's sad like continues to be the case that when when groups of people go to war with each other, um treasures, artifacts, items of historical or cultural importance are often targeted. Now the like rooms full of artifacts are not only created when say, you know, a conquering power or colonial power or something goes and takes from one culture and brings back home. People also create

rooms full of artifacts from their own culture. I mean a common way you find this is in tombs in the ancient world exactly, yeah, I mean unstuffable in your mind.

Especially we've discussed the tombs of ancient Egypt, the tombs of ancient China, uh, and these are you know, these are examples where generally it has to do with some contemplation of the afterlife, or the at least the idea that if if there is not a world for the ruler to pass into and presumably take their things, then there is still some continuation of identity in the body that is preserved, and therefore the the items, the wealth, all the material possessions or some form of them need

to be preserved there as well. Yeah, so it's kind of like a museum, but for the most part you are not invited to enter too generally, it's it's looked down upon. It's not designed to serve an educational purpose, and it doesn't have interpretive materials. These are these are just I'm taking all my lute to the next world, right, and I might put a crossbow trap in there just

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

view and admire. And in many cases the works are instructional in nature, you know, a means of seeing the form of a god or goddesses, or visually contemplating complex theological concepts like one sees so particularly in Tibetan art. I mean, I think about the relics and uh, the ways that many Catholic basilicas will say preserve the remains of a sainted person. Yeah yeah, and then yeah, so we kind of have a dash of the tomb there

as well. But there's something kind of museum e about that here is an object from the past, it's on display for people to come look at. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's also the shrine, which you know, can be something like a tomb and something like a temple. But of course there are secular versions of this as well

throughout the world. I mean, you go to Washington, d c. And you have all the you go to these monuments, these essentially shrines, and these you know, often are about celebrating something that is tied to cultural or national heritage. Large scale statues as well, public statues are generally a good example of this as well. Right now, speaking of shrine, this actually brings us to the word museum itself. So museum derives from the Latin what is it tomson, which

means precisely. This a shrine to the muses. Um, the muses of course, with the Greek goddesses of creativity and inspiration. Yeah. So so we've got to trying to the muses as the muse on and then that becomes the idea of the museum. I guess that that word is coined probably much later, to refer to what we think of this museums. Right.

For instance, if we go back to the third century b C. We have the Museum of Alexandria to consider, which included the famed Library of Alexandria, and it was founded by Ptolemy the first Soter and noted for being who is noted for being the traveling companion and chronicler of Alexander the Great. However, the museum in this case was was not a display of collected art, but a center of learning that ultimately has more in common with a university. Uh, you know that we might think of today.

Um and uh, this was seemingly destroyed in the late third century see um. But yeah, more more like a university, a place of learning, a place where learned individuals would gather and celebrate knowledge. So you've got a lot of stuff kind of like this in the ancient world, but nothing that is quite like we think of a modern museum, right, Yeah, I mean you can you can make a case that specific museums or museums in general reflect these general attitudes

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

of these traditions. In fact, you know, if you look around for some of the example, the oldest examples of things that are museums, uh you know, a few that often pop Two that often pop up are the Capital line museums. The oldest public collections. The oldest public collection of art in the world. This is in Rome dates back to fourteen seventy one and Pope six to the

fourth donation of art to the people of Rome. You have the Vatican museums have their origin a public in public display in fifteen oh six under Pope Julius the Second. But uh, and we might be tempted to stop there, right and say, oh, well, okay, well there you go. This is these are some of the earliest examples, but uh, there is a much older example we're gonna get to in this episode that certainly predates anything that happened with

the Catholic Church. Yeah, and this one, also, I guess, is a matter of interpretation, because what you define as a museum is going to be a matter of interpretation. But this is going to be, uh, the earliest known museum, according to the great British archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley. So we don't know for sure when the first museum was created, but I think there's a really reasonable chance that the earliest museum we know about was actually the first one

in history. So let's take a journey to ancient Mesopotamia. Oh yes, let's do all right. So we're going to go to the city of or, Or was once one of the great powers and is of ancient Mesopotamia. And if you see photos of the sand covered ruins of the city and it's partially restored great Ziggurat. Today, it might be hard to imagine that this was once like a really thriving, lush, fertile settlement in the ancient world.

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

a coastal city. That I guess the Persian Gulf stretched farther up into where you would now have southern Mesopotamia. But in ancient times, the Euphrates River it took a different course and it ran much closer to the city, making it this this lush, fertile place that was it

was a great place for a city. And it's a place to consider the scale of history because as archaeologists believe that it was founded sometime in like the fourth millennium b C. So that that's going to be many thousands of years old to us in the early dynastic period of the ancient Sumerian kings or became the capital of southern Mesopotamia, and this would have been around the

twenty five century BC. So to do a history exercise that we've sent sometimes done on stuff to blow your mind before, just reminding you, like how much time elapsed through the part of the world history that we think of as ancient. Imagine your Julius Caesar and you're living in the first century b C. To you, as Julius Caesar, the old Kingdom of Egypt, which was liked b C. And the ancient dynasties of Mesopotamia, I wish it would

have been roughly the same time. Those time periods were more ancient to you, as Julius Caesar in the Roman Republic than the Roman Empire is to us. Ancient Rome is significantly more recent to us Us than those ancient civilizations were to the ancient Romans. More time passed between Sargon of a Cod and Julius Caesar than between Julius Caesar and US. That's the scale of the history of civilization.

And when you think about all that time, all the relics and remains of all those thousands of years coming and going. It's hard not to realize that the people who are ancient from our point of view, also had to contend with history and the idea of its memory, its preservation, and its destruction. And so sometimes history and even nostalgia can kind of feel like recently invented concepts. They're absolutely not. And a great example is a neo

Babylonian king who lived in the city of Or. So that this was a man named Nabonidas, who was the last real king of Babylon before the City of Or declined in power in the late sixth century b c. And was subsequently abandoned over the following decades. So Nabonidas seemed to have a great sense of historical consciousness. He

wanted to revive elements of past civilizations from Mesopotamia. One of the things we were reading for this episode was an article by h professor of Languages and literature of Ancient Israel from Macquarie University named Louise Prike, and one thing that she pointed out is that this ancient king, Nabanitas, is often referred to as sort of like an ancient archaeologist king he was sort of like, you know, one of the first archaeologists, sort of an ancient Indiana Jones

type here sort of, except he's a king, so he's got all this power to command with the the belongs in a museum mentality. Um so yeah. So so this ancient sort of archaeologist king. Apparently he conducted excavations to retrieve lost written records from past civilizations of the area. Uh. Later in life, he attempted to restore the ruins of the Great Sumerian Ziggurat of Or that had decayed significantly by his time. You may have seen representation their pictures

of the ziggurat. Uh. And and what we're seeing is a restoration of Nabandas's restoration of the ziggurat. So it's been through several it's got a few different codes of paint on it, and that alone, you know, brings up the question of, you know, the authenticity with artifacts, you know,

like like which one is the real ziggurat? I mean they're all the real zigaratte but but uh, but but then you know, you know, we have to take into account like how much time has passed two and then when what the extent does that get in our way of understanding the past. Yeah. Yeah, it's a weird question to think about. If something was restored in the ancient world after having decayed for hundreds of years, is that

just as original to us basically? I mean, I don't know, it's it's it makes you question the concept of what an original artifact is, what is archaeological authenticity? And maybe it's some degree, uh, to some degree undermines the concept of original, which might be a good thing. We'll talk about that later again. Um. But yeah, so he he attempted to restore the ruins of the Great Sumerian Zigguratador and he was also he was a religious revivalist, bringing

back cult traditions that had long fallen by the wayside. Specifically, he revived the cult of the moon god Scene also known and that spelled like sin like s I N s grount scene, also known to the ancient Sumerians as the god Nana. Now, the city of Or has a lot of cool stuff about it over over these you know, thousands of years, but one of them is that it has some of the most awesome high priestesses in history.

I know, she's come up on stuff to blow your mind before, but one of my favorite ancient Mesopotamian figures. Is the earliest known named author of a work of poetry, so not necessarily the first poet ever, but the first poet in history whose name is recorded and known to us. And this is the ancient sumere In poet, Princess and High Priestess in Headuwana. Yeah, in Headuana lived in Or

long before in Abanitas. She lived in Or when it was an ancient Sumerian city state in the twenty third century b c e. Under the rule of her father Sargon of a cod and in Hituana was appointed by Sargon. Is the high Priestess of the Goddess in Anna and the moon God Nana. I know that might be kind of confusing. The goddess is in Anna and the moon God is just Nana, and then of course later became seen. So technically her title is in E n which is

a position of religious and political significance. She refers to herself as the radiant Inn of Nana, and one of her great works of poetry known to us is known to us today is the Exaltation of in Anna the Goddess, which is this amazing poem. To look up. You should especially look up a trans translation of the Exultation of in Anna. If you're ever trying to like work up a real sense of defiance and righteous anger, the best stuff, uh Robert, would you indulge me to read a few

lines certainly, okay, from the Exaltation of Anana. This is from the translation in the James Pitcher edition in nineteen You have filled this land with venom like a dragon. Vegetation ceases when you thunder like ishkur. You bring down the flood from the mountain. Supreme One, Who are the Ananna of heaven and Earth, who reign flaming fire over the land, Who have been given the me by on queen who rides the beasts. Okay, I got a one

from later, my Queen. All the Annunna, the great gods fled before you like fluttering bats, could not stand before your awesome face, could not approach your awesome forehead. Who can soothe your angry heart? These hymns are amazing and they are definitely worth looking up, so you've got in

you want to. She's this fireball hurling poet, the high priestess of the moon god Nana in or in the twenty third century BC, and then a little less than two millennial later, you've got this neo Babylonian king Nabontas

ruling over or who's looking back into the past. And in looking back into the past, one thing he decides to do is revive the worship of the moon god Nana, who they now called Seen and like Sargon, Nabonidus appoints his daughter the priestess of the moon God, consulting ancient records to get details about what this moon priestess role would be, like, what the duties would be, what the rituals would be. Uh, this is a point that that

Prike makes in her article. Is this like looking back into the records for what the priestess his role would be, because he's, you know, in a way, he's sort of trying to be the next Sargon. So who is the priestess,

the daughter of Nabonidus who gets this role? While her name is in a Galdy Nana also known as Belle shalty Nana, and unfortunately we know far too little about who in a Galdy Nana was, but we do know that, in addition to her religious role, in a Galdi Nana is recorded as having been the administrator of a school for young priestesses. But so in a Galdi Nana was more than just an educator. She was more than just a princess, more than just a high priestess of the moon.

It's here that we come to the first museum known to history, because it appears that in a Galdy Nana was its curator. And this is this is fascinating to behold because we have not only you know, you know, the case for the museum, but for a strong fake case for you know, why it was created, what purpose it served U the ruler of the day. Yeah, exactly. So maybe we should take a break and then when we come back we can have a look at this museum. Alright,

we're back. We're discussing the history of the museum as we know and understand it today, and we're looking at what may well be the earliest example of something that we can reasonably call a museum. Yeah, and so we should look again at what would be the criteria there. Right, how would we know if we'd found the first museum in history? Because, as we've discussed before, just having a treasure room of artifacts isn't really a museum, right, Um,

So a museum as understood today has two main parts. Right, He's got preservation and interpretation. You've got objects or artifacts that are preserved and kept on the display this preservation aspect, and those objects are explained and contextualized by educational interpretation materials, you know, like the little written placards you find next to objects at a museum exhibit today. And I think it's also important that it must be clear that this

institution has some sort of public educational purpose. Right. It can't just be like a private thing that's just for you, Right, It's about it's about sharing this information with the world. And we see that in our you know, our our best examples of museums. You know, it's say, like a really good science and technology museum is about you know, sharing the passing on the torch of of of of scientific inquiry and uh and and celebrating what it can

do for human civilization. And then on the other hand, you have say a creationist museum, which takes it a different approach, but is ultimately trying to do the same thing. Right it is it is it is using artifacts or supposed artifacts. I mean sometimes it's using actual um remnants of the past, but then using it to push in

a different narrative. I guess that's true. Like even if we judge the educational purpose of a museum to be misguided and leading to incorrect conclusions, I mean, I guess they'll if the goal of it is educational according to

the people who made it. Even if that education is you know, maybe look make making your king look good or something, you could consider that a form of a museum, right, I mean, And certainly even our better museums have had to evolve with the times, and if I had to, had to change the way that they present you know, particularly you know, things from a cultural but even a historical standpoint to to you know, to to either you know, keep up with the changing norms, to correct past errors

and then uh um, you know, and also to to take into account new information about the cultures and the time periods that are presented. Well, yeah, that's exactly right. I Mean. One great thing about modern museums is you know, they can often be a way, uh to see into

other cultures that you might not encounter firsthand. But you know, a lot of these exhibits, if the museum has been around a long time, they may have initially been established with a kind of condescending colonialist attitude or that that sort of shows other cultures but in a way that might not be accurate, maybe that looks down on them, that doesn't regard them as you know, equally valid cultures, right.

I mean, yeah, it's important to know, like the the basic idea of the museum, uh, you know, it can be skewed for different purposes. I mean there's a difference between the Neuter Museum in Philadelphia and say, ah, you know, a a circus side show. Uh, you know, just like a display of preserved human remains with either no context

or faulty context regarding what those jars contain. There's a difference between an actual museum about say human evolution and uh, the Bigfoot Museum that we have in the North Georgia Mountains, which which is a wonderful museum, but it has a it has a definite agenda, definite narrative that it's pushing, and hopefully a lot of people that go there are you know, engaging with a sort of tongue in cheek or people were able to suspend disbelief, you know, and

enjoy it. But but yeah, it's it's a slightly different expert exercise or any you know, like roadside attraction you know from decades past where where something maybe on display that is uh, you know, that is maybe uh, you know, lacking in terms of it's you know, scientific or historical believability. Right. So I guess I want to trying to say is we can often think of a museum as a medium as opposed to like message. Okay, So to get back

to Inegaldi Nana. Throughout the nineteen twenties and thirties, there was a British archaeologist named Sir Charles Leonard Woolley who worked on the excavation of the ancient city of Ur. And in nineteen five, Willie and his colleagues were excavating a Babylonian palace within the ancient city, and they began

to uncover a very strange clustering of artifacts. Within this palace were artifacts from different geographical locations and different periods of ancient history, all neatly arranged together in this one building. And it appears that this collection was created sometime around the year five thirty b C. And now the earliest artifacts they found went back almost to the time of Sargon and in Headuana they went back to about b C e uh. And again I was trying to find

a point of comparison for historical scale. So if these people living in the sixth century b C had artifacts from b C, that's like us today having artifacts from the personal effects of Attila the Hunt who was invading the Western Roman Empire in the middle of the fifth century CEE. That's the the approximate time difference. So what was among this collection of things that Willie discovered here

in this in this ancient site. One thing was the partially restored remains of a statue of the great king Shulgi of Or, who ruled in the twenty one century b C. And you might remember Shulgi came up in our episode about walls, actually because Shulgi is credited with creating one of the first known defensive boundary walls in history. The wall he built was known as the Wall of the Land, or the Amorright Wall, or the Keeper at Bay of the Nomads. It's a little on the nose,

it was. It was this sim to defend sumer against attacks from nomadic people's called the Amorites who lived to the north of them. And Shulgi's wall is thought to have been more than a hundred miles long, stretching between the Tigris and the Euphrates river. Uh And in this uh this other episode, I quoted from an ancient Sumerian poem which mentioned it by recalling with nostalgia, how quote the wall of Unag extended out over the desert like a bird net, you know, comparing it to this thing

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

to invasions from the Amorrds and the Elamites. It was not an effective strategy and uh And in his own autobiographical writings on the excavation of or Charles Leonard Willie notes something interesting about the statue of Shulgi. So he described it quote as a fragment of dear white statue, a bit of the arm of a human figure on which was an inscription, and the fragment had been carefully trimmed so as to make it look neat and preserve

the writing. So there appears to be evidence here of an ancient preservation work to keep the carvings on the statue from being damaged and to keep them legible. Also among the things found here was an ancient Cassite boundary stone, a type of artifact known as a kudaroo. Now kudaru or stone boundary marker is used in ancient Mesopotamia. And

these things are pretty cool. It's kind of like if you could have a stone pillar with a written copy of the deed der house noting how you got the land and which notaries witnessed the sale of the property, and also possibly containing carvings of gods, celestial objects and monsters and definitely curses. It's going to be full of curses. The kudaru in in a Aldi Nana's museum is from around and will He noted that it contained an awesome

curse against anybody who displaced or destroyed the stone. So what are these curses like? Right? I was looking at an example of a kudaru excavated from tell Abu Habba, so it's not the same kudaru. But it's curse. Warning tells about what you cannot do or else face the curse.

So it says, winsoever in days to come among future men, an agent or a governor, or a ruler, or anyone or the son of anyone at all, who shall rise up and in respect of that field, shall make a claim or cause a claim to be made, or she'll say this field was not presented, or shall change that stone from its place, or she'll cast it into the water or into the fire, or shall break it with the stone, or because of these curses shall fear, and she'll cause a fool or a deaf man, or a

blind man to take it up and set it in a place where it cannot be seen. That man who shall take away the field, may Anu the father of the gods curse him as a foe. This covers so much. I'm about to get into exactly what the curses in a second, But I love this. It's like, Okay, you cannot erase the record of who owns this field. You can't throw it in the water, you can't throw it in the fire. You can't get a blind person who can't read these warnings to pick it up for you

and do it for you. Now, one one wonders if they were saying if this was simply you know, they were just thinking of potential loopholes, or this had been a loophole that was employed, that there was, that there was a blind individual who was often employed to you know, muck around with people's property rights. Right, okay, so here's what So what happens if you violate this this boundary marker you try to move it or something. Here's a

little bit of the curse play. The first line has some illusions, so it's it's Maya Dodd, the lord of the crops, do something. It's been worn. But after that it gets going. May Nergal, in his destruction, not spare his offspring. May shook A, Muna and Shuemlia pronounce evil against him. May all the gods whose names are mentioned on the stone curse him with a curse that cannot be loosened. May they command that he not live a

single day. May they not let him, nor his name, nor his seed endure days of drought, years of famine. May they assign for his lot before God, King, Lord, and Prince. May his whining be continuous, and may he come to an evil end. That's a pretty stiff curse. Yeah, Okay, may his whining be continuous. So to quote from Charles Leonard Willy's own account of the other objects they discovered.

Apart from these two we just explained, quote, then came a clay foundation cone of a larsa king about seventeen hundred b C. Then a few clay tablets of about the same date, and a large vote of stone mace head, which was uninscribed, may well have been more ancient by five hundred years. What were we to think here? We're half a dozen diverse objects found lying on an unbroken brick pavement of the sixth century BC. Yet the newest of them was seven hundred years older than the pavement,

and the earliest perhaps six hundred and so. Wooly writes that the evidence made it pretty clear that it was impossible that all these different artifacts would have ended up arranged together like this by accident. And he he notes again the trimming of the inscription on the Shulgi statue, which seems like a deliberate act of preservation. And then finally came the answer of what they were looking for.

Wooly writes, quote then we found the key. A little way apart lay a small drum shaped clay object, and which were four columns of writing. The first three columns were in the Old Sumerian language, and the contents of one at least were familiar to us, for we had founded on bricks of boer Sin, king of Or in two two two zero BC, and the other two were fairly similar. The fourth column was in late Semitic speech.

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

he recognized the significance of this find quote. The room was a museum of local antiquities maintained by the Princess Bell Shalty Nannar, which remembers another name for Inegaldy nana Um, who took after her father, a Keen archaeologist, and in the collection was this clay drum. The earliest museum label known, drawn up a hundred years before and kept presumably together or with the original bricks, as a record of the first scientific excavations that were That's incredible, you know, to

to just you know, imagine these you know, truly ancient people. Uh, you know, someone walking into this room seeing a curious old object and then potentially reading an inscription to see what it was and how it factors into their own history. Yeah. Yeah,

it's amazing. Uh. And the fact I think it's interesting that they've got they've got copies also notes about copies of things, which would be like the way that many museums today have not necessarily or an original artifact, but a reproduction or say a cast of a fossil that might be the original thing. Uh. Of course, you know. The funny irony there is that many fossils are not even the original bones, the stone, the potentially geologic castings

created there by, you know, without the aid of human intervention. Yeah. Um. And and I think that's an interesting thing, you know that we we feel like we need to make this distinction. Of course, it's like, well you could have the real thing here, you can have a reproduction of it. And and somehow there's this sense among many people I think, and I admit that I sometimes feel this. I probably shouldn't, but I feel like the reproduction is like not as good.

Wouldn't it be better if the real original thing were there? And I want to break myself of this thinking by the end of the episode, Yeah, because I mean, because I've found myself caught myself thinking a similar thing about

restored works before. You know, like, if you see, um, you know, pictures of what, say, the Sistine Chapel looked like before and after restoration, one might be tempted to say, well, it was it looked better before they restored it, which is kind of a silly thing to to think or to say, Um, but we get kind of attached to, like the sort of the historical wear and tear on a thing. We get attracted to, you know, to the ruins, and then we have at least mixed feelings about restoration efforts.

I mean, we've we've talked about before. I believe I'm stuff to believe I about the parthenon Um, Like the Parthenon is a great example of this, because with the original Parthenon, you have various waves of destruction um addition, and then considered reconstruction and their voices on you know, different sides. You know, should we should restore the actual Parthenon to its former glory? Uh oh? And then if we do restore it to a former glory, which former glory?

You know? And then likewise, we have the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a restoration and a model essentially a scale model of the Parthenon that you can walk into and and look around. I think that's the right model. I don't. I don't think they need to go messing around with the ruins of the Parthenon. But I like the idea

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

in on the episode. But you know, I think in a way there's almost kind of a a a tacit belief in sympathetic magic that makes us like the idea of the original artifact, whatever it was. We we like the idea that, like, you know, the actual artist touched this, or the actual person in history wore this, and a reproduction feels less powerful to us because we buy into some strange form of sympathetic magic. Right, it just doesn't have that magic spark if it wasn't the real thing

from the time that somebody actually touched. Yeah, like you want to touch it sometimes you want to lick it, and uh, and you're not allowed to. But there's a reason that you have a lot of the suited individuals standing around ready to intervene. If you start pointing a little too close to a particular work of art or posing for yourself, you're just a little bit too close

to it. Um because we we do want to interact with it, you know, we don't want to always we want to stand in its presence, but yeah, we also kind of want to actually physically make contact with it. Yeah, So concerning in a Galdy Nana's museum, of course, as we know, you know we've been talking about, this would not be the only place where powerful people in the

ancient world had collected relics of days past. You know, many kings of the ancient world would have understood old relics and artifacts to be a sort of genre of

treasure to collect and display your wealth and power. But what makes these artifacts in in a Galdy Nana's museum really seem like exhibits in a museum is is what Woollie notes That they were accompanied by carvings that bore interpretive data, explanations of what you were looking at, and the fact that it was associated with in a Galdy Nana's school for young priestesses. That sort of cements the idea that this building was a museum that was likely

created with an educational purpose. The st students could go in and look at this stuff and read about what it was, yeah, and say like, this is our history, this is our heritage. Look at these objects and learn

just another passage I came across. So there's another book where Wooly discussed in a Galding Nana's Museum and commented quote that there should be a collection is altogether in accordance with the antiquarian piety of the age, and especially of the ruler Nebendas, who with whose daughter this building

is probably to be associated. So he's he's saying that in this age in ancient Mesopotamia, that in the city of Ur, and this would go along with everything we know about in Abanetas trying to restore the Zigarattes and doing archaeological excavations and all this, that there was this spirit of nostalgia, you know, that they were sort of unusually obsessed with the past for for people of their

time and place. And I wonder what what triggers that, you know, what causes a civilization to set only take intense interest in preserving and reconstructing the past, like Nabendas and in a Galdy Nana. Well, I wonder if a lot of it does come down to sort of like in a spatial understanding of things and a need to be you know, in the environment of the past, you know, to fully comprehend it on an almost animal level. Yeah,

I guess so. I mean part of one thing I think that's attempting historical interpretation is that we know that the dynasty that created the museum wouldn't last like as I mentioned, So this museum was created around the year five thirty BC, and the city of Or went into decline after the reign of Nebanitas and was abandoned almost completely,

you know, sometime in the following decades or centuries. This is probably because of local climate change where the Euphrates River the bed shifted and moved farther away from the city, and that combined with drought to basically turn this once fertile power center into this abandoned desert ghost city. And so it's tempting, I think for us to look at that and say, oh, you know, this was the end

of a long civilization in this area. Maybe maybe it's they sensed they were at the end and this is what made them, you know, so nostalgic for the past and want to create this first museum like that this was their greatest hits album, right. But I you know, I don't know if that really makes sense, because I don't know if they thought they were living towards the end of their dynasty, you know, that's right, I mean,

a museum doesn't. It's we can easily fall into the line of thinking that a museum is a is a place of dead things, things that you know, things that have u that are no longer around that are important only historically, But we have plenty of museums today that are about, uh, you know, celebrating things that are alive, celebrating movements that are still happening, and and and are

still unfinished. We have the works of art that we talked about this and stuff to blow blow your mind that are that are have been left unfinished, either just through the accident accidents of human life or intentionally to

make some statement about about the nature of human progress. Uh. And so I think it's it's reasonable to think that some of those elements would very much have been in play in ancient times, you know, to to realize that, like because we talked about it being used as an educational space, so it would have been you know, not even it would have a have a it would have had a spirit of of renewal to it. I would imagine an educational place and a place of religious significance.

So it was part of a school. It was part of in Egaldy Nana's school for priestesses. Um. So yeah, it makes you wonder about the interplay of the religious impulse also with the desire to preserve and display elements of history. Yeah, all right. Well, on that note, we're going to take a quick ad break, and when we come back, we will discuss the legacy of the museum and uh and some of some current ideas about where we stand in regards to the museum. A. You're back.

So one thing we sort of mentioned and earlier is that, you know, I love museums. I'm I'm a big fan of you know, natural history museums and cultural history museums, and they can do a really wonderful thing um. But also, you know, there are a lot of drawbacks to museums,

especially some you know, how museums used to be. I think a lot of museums are doing a lot of work in recent years to try to like disentangle the nature of their educational exhibits from say, you know, colonial legacies and stuff like that, and to you know, do do what needs to be done to honor say, you know, living thriving cultures that there are artifacts represent. Yeah. So there are important questions to ask about what museums represent today and how, you know, what role they play for

us culturally, and maybe how they could be made better. Yeah, And a lot of it comes down to questions of ownership not only who owns a particular item. You know, does this does this piece of this is painting belong to a certain family? Or no, does it belong to this museum? Now does it belong to the nation in which the museum um his house? Like he goes beyond that, I gets into considerations of like who owns the past

and who owns the story of the past. So we were looking at an excellent Dan magazine essay on the subject titled Who Really Owns the Past? By American archaeologist Michael Press and um I recommend everyone check this out. But some of the key points that Michael makes are really worth thinking about. Here he points out that are you know, our current way of thinking about heritage began to take shape in the nineteenth century, both in the

West and in the Middle East. The Westerners were pretty quick to disregard local emerging laws concerning artifacts, uh, you know, considering them an attempt by local rulers to lord over the dead and interfere with what they seemed to, you know, to see as this sort of natural migration of artifacts to Europe. This interpretation of uh, you know, so on one side, you know, the locals might be saying, well, we need some laws in place to keep these artifacts

from wandering outside of our borders. And then the colonial impulse was more, oh, no, these belonged to the world. Where so this this is everybody's heritage. But the world happens to be in London. The world's back in London, so we're going to take right back there. And also

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

as as as a medium for a story. You know, there's and we we often forget this when we really place a lot of trust and say the met or the Natural History Museum. You know, I think we generally trust these institutions for good reason, you know, to present the best interpretation of the the history or the science, or the or the the the artistry that is on display, and we see again various museums make an effort to change their displaces, to honor an evolving understanding of the past,

or to honor living cultures they depict, etcetera. But Press points out that when nations and nation when nation states themselves own the artifacts own the past, uh they can use these treasures to push a nationalistic agenda. So Michael Press writes, quote government's increasingly looked to remains of the distant past to bolster national identities and a sense of greatness,

or to marginalize disfavored groups. Suddam Hussein used the ruins of Babylon to spread ideas of Iraq's greatness as well as his own, even portraying himself as a modern Nebuchadnezzer. China's leadership has used archaeology to project national greatness onto the distant, semi legendary past. Today, India's Prime Minister Narindra Emodi's Hindu nationalist government has worked to use archaeology to prove that modern Hindus can trace their descent from the

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

And then on the other side of the equation, you know, the whole colonial movement was steeped in arguments that these were items of global heritage. And and this is used to times to justify removing artifacts from native lands. So I mean, I like the idea that there are things that are, you know, the common heritage of humankind for history,

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

part of my heritage as well. But it's another thing to say that means that they need to be relocated to uh, to your city, you know, your country, or that you know your nation has can lay a claim

to it. But then again, as he points out in this article, you know it gets this is still a very complicated scenario you bring in, uh, you know, the fact that you have, you know, in our day and age, you have people from various nations that have spread all over the world, and and so it's not always as simple as this cultural group stole this cultural group's belongings, though sometimes it is, well yeah, I mean it's weird

because it's hard to say who owns the past. But then again, something definitely feels wrong about just say, a colonial power taking artifacts from one country and then taking

them back to the home price. Absolutely. Another side of the City points South that I hadn't really thought about is that in some cases you have designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites that you know, sit places where and the it is a you know, a place of very important historical significance that needs to be preserved, but then also ends up being a kind of thing people want to visit and that can actually impact local communities forcing the removal of people either to you know, to to allow

the study of this location or to make a way for developments associated with the site's new historical significance. Yeah, and uh and then then you throw you know, various other uh, political factors into the mix, and it gets even more complicated. Points out that in the case of Syria, multiple parties have used heritage as a weapon of war.

Obviously isis, but also it brings up Russia and even the United States using uh, you know, celebrations of of archaeological materials as being sort of part of the overall messaging associated with, you know, whatever side of the political scenario the player happens to be on. He does drive home that it is it's mess the you know, when you have you know, all these different factors playing into

the past and these artifacts of the past. But he points out that cultural heritage experts proposed several ideas for a better future of museums. So just to to run through them really quickly, the three main points are. Number one, give more control to local communities, not national interests, those sort of on the ground with people rather than with national governments. Right. The second one is to reduce the importance of the original, which we talked about a little earlier.

You know, yeah, this, this one is a tricky one to to think about. And well, one of the reasons is that he points out that, you know, and there's this high Western priority placed on the original item, the original work of our the original carvings, etcetera. But he says, we, you know, we have long seen a different approach in Eastern cultures, which were more about just you know, preserving and recreating the thing itself, the work itself, like it

was more about the message in the work. Um. But it but it is, you know, it's it's someone who loves museums. You know, it is hard to get past that. Like it, there is something really awesome about standing in the presence of the actual work or the you know,

the actual um remains that have been transported here. Uh. But then when you take into account all these other factors we've been discussing, you do have to ask yourself, well, would it really make it, you know, any less impressive if it was just a really fantastic recreation of a particular work or a particular carving. I mean, certainly, when you get into sculptures, it's a it's a lot easy. I can easily see that being the case, Like, do I really need the actual let's say it's, uh, you know,

the statue of David. Uh, do I need that transported over here to look at? Or what if it was just a perfect copy. I think I would be happy with that. And if I'm happy with that, wouldn't that apply to various other museum artifacts as well, especially if

the context is really good, if the narrative is really good. Yeah, I mean, I think that is something that you know, people who are the audiences for museums should try to adapt themselves to to be more satisfied with high quality recreations and uh, you know, uh casts, and you know, all kinds of things that don't necessarily involve having the

physical original there. Yeah, especially now when you can have all this additional information, you can have pictures of the original, videos of the original, additional technological interactions with with media about the original piece. But then you also have this physical recreation that you can enjoy as well. Yeah, exactly.

The third point that he makes, though, is that that we should rethink the idea of heritage as property at all, that we should have something along the lines of open access heritage again in a very interesting but also potentially challenging way to think about it, Like it forces us to turn some of our experiences with museums on their head.

But but I could I could see that working though, because certainly some of the trickier parts of all of this is just the treating heritage as something that is that is property, and then their property rights tied up with it. And then say a museum just cannot return a particular artifact to the culture it came from because

of some sort of a property issue. Oh, I hadn't even thought about that, but yes, I guess sometimes things are probably on loan to museums from people who supposedly own them, But like, why does that person own them? It might be because, you know, somebody way down the line stole it and then left it to them or gave it to you know, yeah, or they just acquired it.

If not through like like outright and obvious um military or colonial treachery, then perhaps through you know, economic pressures that would not have been there had it not been for the colonial influence to begin with. Yeah, this is a difficult issue, definitely worth giving thought to, especially if

you're a person who frequents museums. Yeah, and really we only will only cratch the surface here um on this issue, because they are also additional layers to consider with with the you know, archaeological artifacts, you know, such as what Lynn Mescal calls negative heritage. What do you do about an historical artifact that's tied up with you know, a 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 drives like, this is still another like complicated area when we we try to figure out exactly where the museum is headed in the future. Yeah, alright, Well, on that note, we're gonna have a go ahead and close this one out.

But obviously we'd love to hear from everybody. We know you all have favorite museums you would like to uh mention and uh to us, So perhaps we've been to them as well, or maybe you'll point out some new, smaller museum that we've never even heard of, and we'll be able to put that on our radar for our future travels. As always, if you want to support the show, 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 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, my 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 us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention is production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio because the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,