(no subject)
Apr. 14th, 2003 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfSo fucking depressing. The comments are similarly enlightening.
Call me a heartless bitch, but somehow this makes me saddest of all the things I've heard about this war. It's curious, to cry for the loss of inanimate objects when so many people have died. But this was the biggest repository of ancient Mesopotamian artifacts in the world. Almost everything we know about everybody's ancestors was in that museum. This was the birthplace of civilization. Think about that for a second. Doesn't that just make you go "Wow."? And it's all lost. Because Donald fucking Rumsfeld couldn't spare a goddamn tank. There will be a special place in hell for that man, God willing, and I don't even believe in either of them.
I feel sorriest for the curators. They were holed up in the museum before bombing started to try and protect the place from looters. And it was all for naught. It's all gone.
What makes me really sad is that U.S. art dealers lobbied for a relaxation in the laws that pertain to export of antiquities. They've reduced these things from their status as priceless artifacts to commodities to be traded and sold to whoever's willing to pay for them, while earning a hefty commission in the process. I think there will be a place in hell for these people too.
I'm sorry to rant so much. It just makes me profoundly sad to know that this happened, and there were ways to prevent this.
But instead, the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! - can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes - thousands of poems - Aristotle's own library brought to Egypt by the noodle's ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?
Call me a heartless bitch, but somehow this makes me saddest of all the things I've heard about this war. It's curious, to cry for the loss of inanimate objects when so many people have died. But this was the biggest repository of ancient Mesopotamian artifacts in the world. Almost everything we know about everybody's ancestors was in that museum. This was the birthplace of civilization. Think about that for a second. Doesn't that just make you go "Wow."? And it's all lost. Because Donald fucking Rumsfeld couldn't spare a goddamn tank. There will be a special place in hell for that man, God willing, and I don't even believe in either of them.
I feel sorriest for the curators. They were holed up in the museum before bombing started to try and protect the place from looters. And it was all for naught. It's all gone.
What makes me really sad is that U.S. art dealers lobbied for a relaxation in the laws that pertain to export of antiquities. They've reduced these things from their status as priceless artifacts to commodities to be traded and sold to whoever's willing to pay for them, while earning a hefty commission in the process. I think there will be a place in hell for these people too.
I'm sorry to rant so much. It just makes me profoundly sad to know that this happened, and there were ways to prevent this.
But instead, the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! - can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes - thousands of poems - Aristotle's own library brought to Egypt by the noodle's ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?
—Tom Stoppard, Arcadia
