Loot
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: Today we’re on the train to Edinburgh; in a few days we’re heading out on a road trip through the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides Islands. It occurs to me that I’ve never dropped our locator link in here; if you’d like to know where we’re going to be for the next year or so, our itinerary is always available at rosenfinder.com
Loot
This is a long and winding trail of dots that all connect in my head, but I can’t quite figure out how to make them read like a proper essay, so I’m going to give you the highlights.
—When we were in Cyprus in April, we went on a long drive one day, to meet a friend for lunch. The lunch was wonderful, but the drive there was a bit of a saga. I wanted a cappuccino; we exited the highway in three different places (three!) and couldn’t get a coffee for love nor money (when we stopped in the third place and were told the electricity was out in the entire town, I began to despair).
By that time, we both needed the facilities as well. Lee, being a guy, finally just pulled over in a secluded spot and solved his half of the problem. I sat in the car, squirming, and opened up Google Maps to continue my search for a place where I could both pee and get some caffeine.
What I noticed was that our little blue dot—us—was in the UK. I took a screenshot, and zoomed out a bit. Sure enough, we were in a patch of Cyprus (a sovereign nation) that is somehow still considered part of the United Kingdom. It’s called Episkopi.
—Fast-forward to yesterday. I went to the British Museum, which I’ve loved since I was a teenager. It’s a massive collection (eight million items, only a fraction of which are on display) of art and artifacts from all over the world. The exhibits are organized both chronologically and regionally—if you have the stamina and the time to walk through every room, you could start in prehistory and make your way to the present, gazing at items from every major culture you can think of, plus a few more.
I spent a long while gazing at a small-but-exquisite temple, known as the Nereid Monument. It’s a building, y’all. An intact marble building, with columns and a pediment and life-size statues. It’s stunningly beautiful, occupying a place of honor above the crowd, for all to admire.
It’s from the ruined ancient city of Xanthos, in southern Turkey.
Now, we’ve been to Xanthos. It is an achingly beautiful spot, tucked between mountains and sea, dotted with olive trees and wild goats. The only other person we saw was a little old man who gestured that we should walk along the top of an ancient wall to see the view.
I wonder where, in that now-crumbled city, the Nereid Monument was standing when a British man named Charles Fellows decided to pack it up and send it to the British Museum? According to Wikipedia, its original plinth is still in Xanthos, but I didn’t know to look for it when we were there. It’s difficult to imagine an absence if you don’t know about it.
In the British Museum, I buzzed through the (very crowded) Egyptian rooms, noting only that there were a lot of beautiful, intact coffins. I’ve been in many of the major royal tombs in Egypt, and they’re empty. Which is understandable—you wouldn’t want them to be looted. And I’ve also been to both of the big collections in Cairo—the old Antiquities museum, as well as the (still-not-fully-open) new one. The coffins in the British Museum are preserved and displayed in optimal conditions, so the colors are still bright and definitely worth seeing. I don’t remember the coffins in Egypt looking quite so impressive. Maybe it’s a matter of optimal lighting?
When I got to the Cyprus room, I slowed down to read labels, because our visit to Cyprus is so fresh in my mind.
Looking at the bits and pieces—pottery, jewelry, beads, coins—I kept seeing the word Episkopi, where I’d been so desperate for a public toilet.
The rooms and the mental connections went on: a stunning headdress from the Ziggurat of Ur, mosaics from Carthage and Ephesus. We’ve been to those places, and ogled at the dregs of history, the remains of empty structures, monuments that have been looted and pillaged over centuries.
—Eventually I found a QR code that took me to an audio guide entitled ‘Colonialism and Empire.’ At least the museum is openly acknowledging the provenance of some of these items.
—By this time I was hot and thirsty, so it was time for a change of pace: I walked a couple of blocks to the Weiner Holocaust Library, to see and exhibit called Looted: Two Families, Nazi Theft and the Search for Restitution.
It was about a small, ordinary wooden table that was once owned by a Jewish family in Austria. Some of the family were murdered; the rest managed to escape from Europe, but they lost everything.
A few years ago, an Austrian artist was rummaging in the attic of the family home, and found a table that didn’t look like anything else her ancestors had owned. To make a long story short, she started doing research, and found out that her Nazi grandparents had acquired it from the estate next door, when the Jewish owners were forced to sell the property for a pittance.
She tracked down a descendant, who happens to be another artist, and together they restored the table, using the Japanese technique of mending damage with molten gold. It’s now an ordinary-but-extraordinary table, in a well-articulated exhibit that demonstrates our human capacities both to commit evil, but also to acknowledge each others’ pain without trying to rewrite the past.
—I have a lot of thoughts about art and artifacts, collecting and hoarding, history and memory, war and peace, empire and power, theft and restitution, and a whole bunch of other big concepts. What does it mean to acknowledge the past—for institutions, but also for individuals?
Why do we feel the need to take other people’s stuff? Who gets hurt? How can that damage be repaired?
My thoughts are messy and inarticulate, but I think maybe that’s what happens in life: big concepts, like humans ourselves, don’t always play nicely together.
I don’t have answers—only more questions. But perhaps that’s where repair begins: not with certainty, but with attention.
Take care,
Lisa
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