Several of our students have engaged in acts of rebellion against the idea that the past should be walled off, preserved in its partial decayed state, as it is in so many sites and monuments in Greece. The rebellion has taken the form of touching monuments and objects that should not be touched, and crossing barriers that should not be crossed. Some have even raised the question of why these remnants of the past should be preserved as if they were sacred relics. Let them crumble into dust, who cares?
To some degree I am sympathetic with this view. It is irritating to see a temple that I have visited in my youth, when we could walk in and around it, fenced off behind barriers. And the way that Greek officialdom--represented in particular by the overzealous guards on the sites we visit--treat these ruins as holy, and act as if their importance is self-evident, is a little galling. Ask every tourist who has visited the Acropolis why the Parthenon is so important, and most could do little better than mumble about the beauty of the structure, its perfection, its representing of the classical ideal, and so on. Mostly they just want to take a selfie with it in the background to prove they were there. It is like all of the visitors to the Louvre who stand in awed silence in front of the Mona Lisa. Most of them only know that it is an important painting; they have no idea why it is important. (Even more so for the Venus de Milo, which is a second-rate Hellenistic knock-off of a classical statue!).
So why preserve these monuments, and treat them as if simply breathing on them would cause them to collapse into dust? The ropes, barriers and mean site guards seem like overkill. But there is, in fact, a practical reason for this. The fact is that statues are affected by being touched. Most of these objects were dug up a century ago or less. They have been exposed to the polluted Athenian air, and to being touched by countless grimy hands. Our hands leave oils and dirt that corrode the stone. So any responsible museum curator must make sure that the statue remains untouched, to preserve it. As for the buildings, yes, they are less susceptible to decay; but consider how many thousands of tourists stampede onto the Acropolis every day. Even a lesser site like the Temple of Zeus Olympeios or the Temple of Hephaistos get hundreds of visitors. That's hundreds of footsteps, hands brushing on the marble, bags knocked against walls. The cumulative effect would be destructive. So even if it seems silly to keep you out, it is necessary for keeping these monuments in the shape they are in.
But that leads to a deeper question: why preserve them at all? Why not let them fall into decay and dissolution, which is after all the inevitable process of time? Why fight it? Why indeed. That is a question that gets at the heart of the question of why we bother to study the past at all. The study of the past--history, and the ancillary discipline of archaeology--is about reconstructing the lost stories of our earlier selves from fragments, whether they are fragmentary texts or fragmentary monuments. So little survives from the distant past; putting it together, I often tell my students, is like trying to assemble a giant jigsaw puzzle--or several--when most of the pieces are missing, and you don't even have a picture on the box to go by. So every little fragment, whether it is a text, a part of a building, a pot, or anything else that makes it through the destructive mills of time, is a precious document. A relic, if you will. Yes, we've seen this building or that statue. We've taken pictures, we've written descriptions. Is that a good reason to then destroy it? Do we have the right to deprive the next generation of direct access to that piece of the past? Is your description, your analysis, good enough to satisfy that next generation? Won't they want to see it for themselves?
Instead of being irritated at the museum curators, administrators, and poor underpaid guards who insist on keeping you away from these objects, and who are so fanatically devoted to keeping them safe, we should be thanking them. They are the stewards of a precious heritage. And it isn't because this building, or that statue, or yonder vase, is so special, so excellent. It is because it may in fact be ordinary. It may give us a little clue into the lives lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. That clue, no matter who mundane or obscure, is what is precious. That is what deserves to be saved.
To some degree I am sympathetic with this view. It is irritating to see a temple that I have visited in my youth, when we could walk in and around it, fenced off behind barriers. And the way that Greek officialdom--represented in particular by the overzealous guards on the sites we visit--treat these ruins as holy, and act as if their importance is self-evident, is a little galling. Ask every tourist who has visited the Acropolis why the Parthenon is so important, and most could do little better than mumble about the beauty of the structure, its perfection, its representing of the classical ideal, and so on. Mostly they just want to take a selfie with it in the background to prove they were there. It is like all of the visitors to the Louvre who stand in awed silence in front of the Mona Lisa. Most of them only know that it is an important painting; they have no idea why it is important. (Even more so for the Venus de Milo, which is a second-rate Hellenistic knock-off of a classical statue!).
So why preserve these monuments, and treat them as if simply breathing on them would cause them to collapse into dust? The ropes, barriers and mean site guards seem like overkill. But there is, in fact, a practical reason for this. The fact is that statues are affected by being touched. Most of these objects were dug up a century ago or less. They have been exposed to the polluted Athenian air, and to being touched by countless grimy hands. Our hands leave oils and dirt that corrode the stone. So any responsible museum curator must make sure that the statue remains untouched, to preserve it. As for the buildings, yes, they are less susceptible to decay; but consider how many thousands of tourists stampede onto the Acropolis every day. Even a lesser site like the Temple of Zeus Olympeios or the Temple of Hephaistos get hundreds of visitors. That's hundreds of footsteps, hands brushing on the marble, bags knocked against walls. The cumulative effect would be destructive. So even if it seems silly to keep you out, it is necessary for keeping these monuments in the shape they are in.
But that leads to a deeper question: why preserve them at all? Why not let them fall into decay and dissolution, which is after all the inevitable process of time? Why fight it? Why indeed. That is a question that gets at the heart of the question of why we bother to study the past at all. The study of the past--history, and the ancillary discipline of archaeology--is about reconstructing the lost stories of our earlier selves from fragments, whether they are fragmentary texts or fragmentary monuments. So little survives from the distant past; putting it together, I often tell my students, is like trying to assemble a giant jigsaw puzzle--or several--when most of the pieces are missing, and you don't even have a picture on the box to go by. So every little fragment, whether it is a text, a part of a building, a pot, or anything else that makes it through the destructive mills of time, is a precious document. A relic, if you will. Yes, we've seen this building or that statue. We've taken pictures, we've written descriptions. Is that a good reason to then destroy it? Do we have the right to deprive the next generation of direct access to that piece of the past? Is your description, your analysis, good enough to satisfy that next generation? Won't they want to see it for themselves?
Instead of being irritated at the museum curators, administrators, and poor underpaid guards who insist on keeping you away from these objects, and who are so fanatically devoted to keeping them safe, we should be thanking them. They are the stewards of a precious heritage. And it isn't because this building, or that statue, or yonder vase, is so special, so excellent. It is because it may in fact be ordinary. It may give us a little clue into the lives lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. That clue, no matter who mundane or obscure, is what is precious. That is what deserves to be saved.
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| Visitor damage is not a new problem--if you look carefully at the Temple of Aegina, you can see carved graffiti of 19th century travelers on the far lintel block. |
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