I make no apologies for returning to this subject this morning because I was genuinely upset yesterday when I heard about the damage done to some of the artefacts held at the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo and the thefts from the site at the ancient city of Memphis about twenty miles south of there.
I know that there are those who believe that things are not important, that it’s people that really matter, and compared to the loss of life during the current protests, the loss of a few trinkets that belonged to some dead people long ago doesn’t add up to much.
However, these objects have survived through the whole of recorded human history and are important. Our understanding of where we are now and where we have come from plays a great part in the building of civilisation. If we allow things to just get smashed up, allow the barbarian within us to win then we truly are no longer worthy of being called civilised any more. Some objects transcend history, as anyone who has enjoyed “The History of the World in 100 Objects” or even just visited a museum or an art gallery should realise. Objects like these tell us more about ourselves and if we allow them to be lost, then they are lost forever.
I know I’ve recently been rather flippantly wittering on about the artefacts of my own childhood in these meanderings lately, and a few cheap trinkets that I’ve had for thirty years or so aren’t really all that important in the great scheme of things, but the Treasures of the Pharoahs are history, and it is not right for one transient generation to dare to destroy them, not least because such an act of cultural vandalism diminishes all of us and history might very well judge us and the times we live in very harshly indeed if we allow such things to happen. So much else has already been lost over the centuries, it would be truly awful to lose anything else to sheer mindlessness.
The terrible thing is that, should a looter succeed in getting hold of these unique and precious objects, and decide to break them up for the precious metals and jewels they contain, then it would not only be a tragedy, but it would be a crime against history. Reducing the gold and jewels of the Pharoahs to its basic monetary value is just a scandalous thing to consider, as would these items falling into private hands.
They belong, like all great art should, to the world.
The people of Egypt know the symbolic value that some of the Treasures of the Pharoahs has to their country’s place in the culture of the world. The Mask of the Boy King is such an important part of that image that they even chose to put in on their coins and I was very pleased to hear that it was the ordinary people who understood the importance of this, and it was they who linked arms around the museum in an attempt to stop any further damage. This is like the people of London spontaneously taking it upon themselves to link arms to try and stop someone from stealing the Crown Jewels such is the iconic status of that Mask of the Boy King.
Deep in the very heart of that suddenly oh-so-vulnerable seeming Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, there is a room that everyone who has ever visited must surely have wanted to go into. This is the room where the most valuable of the treasures from the excavation of the Tomb of Tutankhamun are displayed. In the centre of the room, in a rather surprisingly fairly plain glass case that mask was waiting for you.
It is an amazing thing, so iconic and so beautiful. You’ve seen pictures of it a thousand times and yet it still surprises you with its beauty and its great age and craftsmanship. You used to be able to quite literally able to walk right up to it and, apart from the glass of the case, be virtually nose-to-nose with it. I know, because, like so many others, I was once able to do precisely that. I stood there and stared into the eyes of an object so very famous and so very old for a good few minutes and, for the briefest of times, I felt the whole weight of history and the cultural significance of that most famous of objects and we were alone together, just me and that mask for one moment in its long, long history.
It has survived through so very much, been waiting in the darkness through centuries of events that we can only read about in history books and for one fleeting instance of time it’s unseeing eyes were locked with mine.
That remains one of the most vivid memories that I carry with me and it would be an absolute tragedy if no-one else ever gets their own chance of having that moment for themselves.
He was from Alpha Centauri you know.
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