Monday, January 24, 2011

Does being locked out of trophy sites matter?

The Telegraph, UK (Christopher Howse)

With a somewhat bizarre account of how some items from the BM found their way into the author's home.

Perhaps some of those objects from Egyptian tombs I gazed on at home were, in reality, fakes. One that wasn’t made the strongest impression on me: a box of grain, thousands of years old, darkened with age but preserved by the desert dryness. Those seeds might still germinate if they were planted. They conveyed an intense feeling of connection with the days of the pharaohs.

That is what tourists must want when they hope to stand in the rock-cut tomb of Tutankhamun. There is not much else to see, for the fabulous sarcophagi and mummy-masks are safe, more or less, in the Cairo museum. It is the same wherever we crowd: we destroy the things we love to see.

No comments: