I Weep

[thothmes]

As some of you may know, I majored in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology because I wanted to be an Egyptologist. It was my ambition from the time I was eight, and my passion, but ultimately I decided that some of the things that went along with attaining that goal (like being away from my husband for months at a time because he would be a settled primary care physician, and I would be digging in Egypt, or the fact that we would need to live in or near a major city where the academic jobs are, which neither of us wanted to do) meant that ultimately I never pushed on and got my PhD. It didn't help that being at the tail end of the Baby Boom, I faced a situation where the likelihood was that I would graduate with my PhD to find that the jobs were already held by those in the beginning wave of the Baby Boom. Still, the study of Ancient Egypt is something I care passionately about.

I have seen pictures of the looting at the Cairo Museum, the priceless statues broken, the cases smashed, the objects scattered about. This is not just Egypt's heritage, but the heritage of the whole world, because to understand Ancient Egypt is to understand a vital important part of human history and how we came of age as a species. Things which have come down to us through thousands of years lie broken, never again to be as they were because of a moment of anger at a modern dictator who has no real connection to the products or the rulers of the past.

I wept when the Bagdad Museum was looted. I weep now.