Revisiting: A History of the World in 100 Objects, and the importance of protecting our past during troubled times

Talking points: If great art and architecture belongs to humanity, do we have a responsibility to save it during wartime? If so, should the recent barbaric destruction of Iraq's ancient artifacts by Islamic State militants be treated as a war crime?

What began with the shocking videos that went viral showing Islamic State militants destroying priceless Iraqi antiquities at a Mosul museum has escalated into the wholesale destruction of Iraq's heritage as ancient archeological sites in Nimrud and Hatra lay in ruins. Nimrud is an ancient Assyrian city while Hatra dates to the first century B.C.

Reading about these recent disturbing events brought to mind a book I read a few years ago, A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor. It is a book which upon further review has given me a renewed appreciation for our past and made me realize why we should care about preserving it for future generations. 

From the handaxe to the credit card /
There's a lot we can learn through ordinary objects.

A History of the World in 100 Objects is based on the popular BBC Radio 4 series, and in the book the author "takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity" by using objects left behind by previous civilizations -- often accidentally -- and describes them as "prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them."

Imagine a book that is both an intellectual and visual feast, and allows you to travel back in time and across the globe to see how the human experience has shaped the world and been shaped by it over the past two million years.

In February 2012, I wrote about A History of the World in 100 Objects. 

In light of the tragic destruction of antiquities in Iraq, it is worth revisiting what I wrote three years ago so that we may appreciate the heritage of art and its humanity:

A History of the World in 100 Objects begins with the story of a chopping tool from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Africa, a relic that is between 1.8-2 million years old and is one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands. This hefty, 707-page book, which we recently checked out from our local public library, concludes with a story about an object from the modern, twenty-first century: a solar-powered lamp and charger manufactured in Shenzhen, Guandong, China, that is representative of the world we live in today.

A History of the World in 100 Objects /
Exploring world history from two million years ago to the present.

According to the book's dust jacket, Neil MacGregor's aim "is not simply to describe these remarkable things, but to show us their significance ~ how a stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people, how Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency, or how an early Victorian tea set tells us about the impact of empire."

MacGregor, who has been the director of the British Museum since 2002, writes: "The story is told exclusively through the things that humans have made -- all sorts of things, carefully designed and then either admired and preserved, or used, broken and thrown away. I've chosen just a hundred objects from different points on our journey -- from a cooking pot to a golden galleon, from a Stone Age tool to a credit card, and each object comes from the collection of the British Museum."

Through these 100 objects, MacGregor describes history as a kaleidoscope -- "shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined."

At the time of the book's publishing, Carol Vogel of the New York Times wrote: "These objects, some humble, some glorious, embody intriguing tales of politics and power, social history and human behavior."

The British Museum / As I saw it in 2005.

During a 2005 spring vacation trip to London, I took advantage of the opportunity to explore the British Museum. What's truly remarkable about this museum, replete with its Greek Revival facade and first opened to the public in 1759, is that its holdings do not including any paintings. However, what this museum does include is an impressive collection of antiquities. As it turned out, my visit to the British Museum was one of the most enjoyable afternoons I have ever spent at a museum.

Among many things that stood out for me in the breadth of the museum's collections was seeing the Rosetta Stone up close and personal. Like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, everyone crowded around, wanting to catch a glimpse of the Rosetta Stone and photograph it.

The Rosetta Stone, found at el-Rashid, Egypt in 196 B.C., is the 33rd of 100 objects whose story is told by MacGregor and, among visitors to the museum, it is definitely a must-see attraction.

"Every day when I walk through the Egyptian sculpture gallery at the British Museum there are tour guides speaking every imaginable language addressing groups of visitors, all craning to see this object. It is on every visitor's itinerary, and, with the mummies, it's the most popular object in the British Museum," writes MacGregor.

The Rosetta Stone /
The most popular object in
the British Museum.

"Why? It's decidedly dull to look at -- a grey stone about the size of one of those large suitcases you see people trundling around on wheels at airports," adds MacGregor. "The rough edges show that it's been broken from a larger stone, with the fractures cutting across the text that covers one side. And when you read that text, it's pretty dull too -- it's mostly bureaucratic jargon about tax concessions. But, as so often in the Museum, appearances are deceptive."

MacGregor continues: "This dreary bit of broken granite has played a starring role in three fascinating and different stories: the story of the Greek kings who ruled in Alexandria after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt; the story of the French and British imperial competition across the Middle East after Napoleon invaded Egypt; and the extraordinary but peaceful scholarly contest that led to the most famous decipherment in history -- the cracking of hieroglyphics."

What matters now, writes MacGregor, "is not what the stone says but that it says it three times in three different languages: in Classical Greek, the language of the Greek rules and the state administration, and then in two forms of ancient Egyptian: the everyday writing of the people (known as Demotic) and the priestly hieroglyphics which had for centuries baffled Europeans. It was the Rosetta Stone that changed all that; it dramatically opened up the entire world of ancient Egypt to scholarship."

What I find truly amazing after reading the chapter about the Rosetta Stone is that it survived unread through 2,000 years of various occupations, including the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Muslim Arabs and Ottoman Turks. Eventually, the 1798 Napoleon-led French military invasion of Egypt ("they wanted to cut the British route to India") yielded the Rosetta Stone. "The French seized the stone as a trophy of war, but it never made it back to Paris. With his fleet destroyed by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, Napoleon himself returned to France, leaving the French army behind. In 1801, the French surrendered to the British and Egyptian generals. The terms of the Treaty of Alexandria included the handing over of antiquities, among them the Rosetta Stone."

Soon, the stone found its way to Great Britain for good after its capture by the British Army where it was presented to the British Museum by King George III. The Rosetta Stone has been displayed in the public domain at the British Museum since 1802.

Today, the Rosetta Stone is freely available for the world's scholars to see. Ironically, it was a French scholar, Jean-Francois Champollion, who finally cracked the stone's hieroglyphics in 1822. For the British Museum's many visitors, who wait patiently like I did on a Sunday afternoon in March 2005 for a fleeting glimpse, seeing the Rosetta Stone is a thrill of a lifetime and a chance opportunity to photograph it for posterity.

Photographs of the British Museum and the Rosetta Stone by Michael Dickens, copyright 2005. 

At eye level in Iraq: An invitation to learn more about sorrow and hope

Sadr over Prayer, Thawra, Baghdad, Iraq, April 18, 2003.
Photograph © Thorne Anderson.

Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq, July 22, 2004.
Photograph © Kael Alford.

Eye Level in Iraq: Photographs by Kael Alford and Thorne Anderson, an exhibition which presented the photographs of two American-trained photojournalists who documented the deep impact and aftermath of the U.S.-led coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003, concluded a four-month engagement at the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco last weekend.

I viewed this incredibly compelling and moving exhibition Friday evening, which drew upon 62 digital inkjet prints that were representative of the work Alford and Anderson produced over a two-year period -- often under duress. (They were loaned to the de Young by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.)

In an interview earlier this year with the PBS NewsHour, Julian Cox, the chief curator at the San Francisco Art Museums, told of how he was spellbound by the photos which he first saw in 2006. "I felt vehemently they needed to be seen by a large audience.

"Those kinds of pictures are not typically seen in major art museums. There are one or two institutions across the country that do show these kinds of pictures, but you don't usually see them in art museum context ... The pictures are incredibly moving."

For most freelance photographers who are working in a war zone, getting good action photos and selling them to newspapers and magazines around the world -- as well as merely staying alive -- comprise their daily to-do list. That's what Thorne and Anderson did 10 years ago when they went to Iraq as freelance journalists and covered the beginnings of America's war in trying to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Maintaining objectivity was paramount and, indeed, they were hardworking photographers. By not being embedded with the U.S. military, it enabled Alford and Anderson, who are now married and teaching at a university in Texas, the opportunity to cover Iraq itself -- to photograph objects of interest -- and to portray the daily life and realities of a people as they were living with war going on all around them. And, although there are no photographs shot in a combat zone, the bravery and commitment shown by Alford and Anderson was evident throughout this haunting exhibit.

"From the beginning I sensed that Americans' view of the war was obscured," said Anderson in his artist's statement. "Perfectly descriptive words like 'invasion' and 'occupation' were sidestepped in our national press. Prisoners, we were instructed, must be called 'detainees.' These taboos felt like veils, and I wanted to tear them away."

According to Anderson, he tried to abandon his preconceptions of war and asked Iraqis to guide him through their experiences of the war. "I went as deep as I could, even behind 'enemy' lines. It wasn't easy. I tried to remain open and nonjudgmental, and I never felt so patriotic as when I was doing this work."

In the years following the events which comprise Eye Level in Iraq, new political leaders have emerged in Iraq. Yet, even today's headlines coming out of Baghdad in which two coordinated suicide bombers targeted a Shiite mosque, killing 29 people and wounding 55 others, are just the latest in a string of attacks to hit Iraq. While violence has surged as well as political tensions, it revives the fear that Iraq could be headed for a return to widespread sectarian bloodshed.

"Violence has breached nearly every household and Iraq's cities have been divided by fear along sectarian lines," according to Alford, in her artist's statement. "Educated professionals have been targeted and millions of people have fled. Today Iraq is widely regarded as one of the most corrupt and dangerous places in the world."

Alford returned to Iraq in 2011 and found the people in her photographs "plagued by insecurity, a deeply iniquitous judicial system, failing public infrastructure, and a wariness of foreign intervention.

"I found men and women haunted by loss and disappointment and young people, as always, pressing toward the future."

Searching for solace in Iraq, Alford found it in the depth of the country's history and its rivers. "The Euphrates River flows south past Babel, the mythical birthplace of languages, where it joins the Tigris River. Together they cradle the legendary site of the Garden of Eden. Although I am one more on a long list of invaders, I am invited by families to sit beside these rivers. We share meals and sweet flutes of tea and trade stories of sorrow and hope."

To learn more about the Eye Level in Iraq exhibition:

http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/exhibitions/eye-level-iraq-photographs-kael-alford-and-thorne-anderson

To watch the PBS NewsHour story "Remembering the Faces of the Iraq War Through the Eyes of Photojournalists":

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june13/iraqphotos_03-21.html