The glory of the PharaohsWeigall, Arthur E. P. Brome (Arthur Edward Pearse Brome)
History
The glory of the Pharaohs
Weigall, Arthur E. P. Brome (Arthur Edward Pearse Brome)
Egypt -- Antiquities
Some attempt should be made to rid the science of this forbidding
aspect; and for this end students ought to do their best to make it
possible for them to be regarded as ordinary, normal, healthy men. Let
them discourage the popular belief that they are prodigies, freaks of
mental expansion. Let them shun pedantry and the affectations of the
dons’ common-room as they would the plague. Let their first desire be to
show themselves good, useful, hardy, serviceable citizens, and they will
do much to remove the stigma from their profession. Let them be
acquainted with the feeling of a bat or racket in the hands, or a saddle
between the knees; let them know the rough path over the mountains, or
the diving-pool amongst the rocks, and their mentality will not be found
to suffer. A winter’s “roughing it” in the Theban necropolis or
elsewhere would do much to banish the desire for perpetual residence at
home in the west; and a season in Egypt would alter the point of view of
the student more considerably than he could imagine. Moreover, the
appearance of the scholar prancing about on his fiery steed (even though
it be but an Egyptian donkey) will help to dispel the current belief
that he is incapable of physical exertion; and his reddened face rising,
like the morning sun, above the rocks on some steep pathway over the
Theban hills will give the passer-by cause to alter his opinion of the
students of antiquity.
As a second argument a subject must be introduced which will be
distasteful to a large number of archæologists. I refer to the
narrow-minded policy of certain European and American museums, whose
desire it is at all costs to place Egyptian and other eastern
antiquities actually before the eyes of western students, in order that
they may have the comfort and entertainment of examining at home the
wonders of lands which they make no effort to visit. I have no
hesitation in saying that the craze for recklessly dragging away unique
monuments from Egypt to be exhibited in western museums for the
satisfaction of the untravelled man, is the most pernicious bit of folly
to be found in the whole broad realm of Egyptological misbehaviour.
A museum has three main justifications for its existence. In the first
place, like a home for lost dogs, it is a repository for stray objects.
No curator should endeavour to procure for his museum any antiquity
which could be safely exhibited on its original site and in its original
position. He should receive chiefly those stray objects which otherwise
would be lost to sight, or those which would be in danger of
destruction. He should make it his first endeavour not so much to obtain
objects direct from Egypt as to gather in those antiquities which are in
the possession of dealers or private persons who cannot be expected to
look after them with due care, or make them accessible to students.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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