Thread by @SAChakrabooks

I went to see the Royal Tombs of Ur exhibit at the Penn Museum and as promised, I have some photos to share.

First up, the star of the exhibit: the burial headdress and beaded cloak of Queen Puabi, an Akkadian/Sumerian royal from Ur, who died in about 2600 BCE

Additional necklaces (note the incredible details on the tiny pendants) and what appears to be the world's longest drinking straw.

The famous "ram in the thicket," a crushed silver lyre, and the truly stunning frontpiece of an additional lyre with scenes from a banquet in the afterlife (check out the animal servants)!

Two cosmetic boxes (the one in the shells still holding 4500 year old pigment!) As well as a lion devouring a stag because sometimes putting your face on needs to Get Intense.

A gameboard and two cups (one gold and one ostrich egg). Also from Ur, 2450 BCE

Possibly my personal favorite and something I found quite touching: a baby's footprint preserved in clay. Nippur, Iraq 2000-1590 BCE

I was mostly there for research into...um, demons. So here's a Humbaba mask to ward off the days foes

Finally no demon research is complete without a visit to one of my favorite things ever: incantation bowls! Meant to trap demons, you buried them upside down in corners or thresholds. They were used throughout Mesopotamia and Iran in late antiquity across various faiths.

The drawings are often somewhat crude (I believe "batshittingly disturbing" is the non-academic term) and written in nonsense script by unscrupulous dealers who would have sold them to illiterate folks because humans have always been awful.

Speaking of unscrupulous dealers, while I did enjoy the exhibit and thought the displays did a particularly good job of teaching, there was NOTHING upfront about confronting the way in which these artifacts were "discovered."

Queen Puabi's tomb was untouched, as were the bodies of the dozens of servants, warriors, and courtiers who surrounded her (and who were violently killed). They literally took the adornments off her body (which is still kept at the British Museum because of course it is).

The crushed skulls of a man and woman killed during the funerary rites were on display as well (which is an unfortunate continuation of museums displaying human remains, the Penn Museum has the mummified body of a little girl on display as I write this).

There are people better versed than I in the decolonization of museums, but it was disappointing to see the care displayed on the educational side in a new exhibit didn't extend to the implications of literal Iraqi bodies and treasure on display in an AMERICAN museum in 2020.

Especially because there are ways to handle this. You can use reproductions to educate and return originals to lands they were stolen from (and yes, stolen!) You can have traveling exhibits with proceeds that fund local research and institutions.

(also if you come into my mentions with "b-but it's safer in the West nonsense," I will sic a djinn on you)

Relatedly, the story of what I truly hope is China quietly taking back their stuff: gq.com/story/the-grea…