History goes up in smoke in Egypt

[Thanas]

Idly I wonder how many historic treasures from around the world were destroyed in the World Wars in Europe, which would have been quite safe if they'd stayed closer to home...

A lot were destroyed or looted, so many in fact that we still do not know what a lot of German Museums had in their cellars. But you are assuming they would have been safer if they stayed at home - why? It is not as if the locals cared for them in most cases (for example, the famous Heroon - now in Vienna - was taken down because otherwise it would have collapsed in a few months and nobody gave a damn).

[emphasis added- SJ]

Thanas, please review what I actually said, and try taking it a bit more literally. I don't recall assuming a thing.

I do wonder how many historic treasures, which would have been safe at home, were instead destroyed. I also wonder how many treasures preserved in the museums would not have been safe at home, which is the converse question.

To put it simply, I asked a question. If you consider it a leading question, fine- but please don't make too many assumptions about what I "must be" thinking as a result of your own personal reading of the tone of my question.

See the bolded part. You are assuming they would have been safe at home.

[Broomstick]

This has a political point. It is quite in line with the Muslim Brotherhood's program of turning the place into an exclusively Muslim country (and the "right" muslim, note that even previous Islamic dynasty artifacts were destroyed). It is right in line with the attack on copt churches as well as other libraries and museums.

Of course there is also the possibility that most of those were just local thugs who thought they'd get gold and jewels there. I think this is at least as likely, if not more. But you could see this politically if you wanted to.

While I don't discount the extremist Muslims who have been destroying things they don't approve of for decades, Egypt has a very long history of grave-robbing. In fact, it was a chronic problem from the first in Pharonic Egypt. I can't help but think a significant percentage of the looters were simply taking advantage of the chaos to snatch a few valuables to sell later.

I wouldn't be opposed to relocating some stuff to safer places. On the other hand, concentrating all in Canada is pretty stupid for redundancy reasons and also pretty bad for allowing wider parts of the public access to them.

I think distributing certain key historical artifacts world-wide would be best, because no one location is guaranteed safe from all disasters and accidents. Also, distribution of copies, digital information, and so forth is also beneficial – we know of some Greek and Roman masterworks not from the originals but from copies of the originals that were made and distributed throughout the Roman Empire. No matter how careful we are we'll still lose an original artifact now and again, but with copies and information we can still retain some knowledge of them.

There are the cases of some museums saying "heck, we got so much stuff that we never really got around to cataloging them", but they are not the majority AFAIK.

Um... maybe, maybe not. I know in natural history museums there are often drawers and crates and boxes of fossils that were collected but not cataloged. Stephen J. Gould wrote in his essays about instances of this, where a century after something was collected and boxed someone finally took a look at it, instances of graduate students simply opening drawers than hadn't been touched in decades to do research instead of going out into the field, and so forth. Loss of fossils and the like are just as devastating to human knowledge as destroying art or written history.

The Smithsonian, a well known institution in North America, has trouble keeping track of everything in its collections. There's just so much stuff. The Field Museum in Chicago has a lot of stuff tucked away in corners that isn't well tracked, either.

Even if the majority of museums don't have cataloging troubles it does seem some rather large ones do have that issue. It wouldn't surprise me if the same applies to some larger European museums. Does the Louvre actually know for certain everything in its collections?

[Thanas]

While I don't discount the extremist Muslims who have been destroying things they don't approve of for decades, Egypt has a very long history of grave-robbing. In fact, it was a chronic problem from the first in Pharonic Egypt. I can't help but think a significant percentage of the looters were simply taking advantage of the chaos to snatch a few valuables to sell later.

The two are not really exclusive, but yeah. Probably the best case.

I think distributing certain key historical artifacts world-wide would be best, because no one location is guaranteed safe from all disasters and accidents. Also, distribution of copies, digital information, and so forth is also beneficial – we know of some Greek and Roman masterworks not from the originals but from copies of the originals that were made and distributed throughout the Roman Empire. No matter how careful we are we'll still lose an original artifact now and again, but with copies and information we can still retain some knowledge of them.

Yes but nobody is going to spend that much money on culture. The only country which does this on a wide scale, with an apocalypse-safe bunker and microfilming everything is currently Germany. The rest of the world probably does not care.

Even if the majority of museums don't have cataloging troubles it does seem some rather large ones do have that issue. It wouldn't surprise me if the same applies to some larger European museums. Does the Louvre actually know for certain everything in its collections?

I don't know and I don't have anybody at the Louvre I could ask.

[Broomstick]

I think distributing certain key historical artifacts world-wide would be best, because no one location is guaranteed safe from all disasters and accidents. Also, distribution of copies, digital information, and so forth is also beneficial – we know of some Greek and Roman masterworks not from the originals but from copies of the originals that were made and distributed throughout the Roman Empire. No matter how careful we are we'll still lose an original artifact now and again, but with copies and information we can still retain some knowledge of them.

Yes but nobody is going to spend that much money on culture. The only country which does this on a wide scale, with an apocalypse-safe bunker and microfilming everything is currently Germany. The rest of the world probably does not care.

Ah, the legendary German thoroughness! Always admirable when turned to good ends.

I think some duplication and distribution has been occurring for some time, just not systematically and no, not on a wide scale. Knowledge of the Mona Lisa won't disappear even if something happens to the painting but there are a lot of artifacts not nearly as well documented.

[Thanas]

Here is a link in German (but images work): http://www.geschichtsspuren.de/artikel/ ... chutz.html

Also, it mentions the Swiss have a similar "bunker" which is partnering with the German one.

[Dartzap]

Although not specifically for artifacts, the National Archive opened a deep storage facility in a dried up salt mine a few years back. DeepStore

[Simon_Jester]

Thanas, please review what I actually said, and try taking it a bit more literally. I don't recall assuming a thing.

I do wonder how many historic treasures, which would have been safe at home, were instead destroyed. I also wonder how many treasures preserved in the museums would not have been safe at home, which is the converse question.

To put it simply, I asked a question. If you consider it a leading question, fine- but please don't make too many assumptions about what I "must be" thinking as a result of your own personal reading of the tone of my question.

See the bolded part. You are assuming they would have been safe at home.

Excuse me, you seem to be having trouble with the grammar. My apologies.

To me, "how many [items X], which would have been [condition Y], instead [experienced condition Z]" is logically equivalent to:

"How many of the items X, which would satisfy condition Y that not all items satisfy, instead experienced condition Z."

I did not claim all the items would have been safe at home; had I intended to say that then I would have said so more directly. I claimed some of them would have, and it's hard to imagine this not being true. Some of them were buried in sand or dirt for millenia; not all of them would have been utterly destroyed by random pillaging in the past century alone.

Of those which would not have been destroyed, I wonder how many were destroyed because they were moved to some place that itself got destroyed.

I am perfectly able to accept that the answer is "Few of the things that were moved, and that would have been safe, were destroyed. Nearly all the things were either kept safe, or would have been destroyed anyway." Please do not assume I am asking a loaded question, until you've considered the obvious possibility that I mean exactly what I say, no more and no less.

[Thanas]

Excuse me, you seem to be having trouble with the grammar. My apologies.

To me, "how many [items X], which would have been [condition Y], instead [experienced condition Z]" is logically equivalent to:

"How many of the items X, which would satisfy condition Y that not all items satisfy, instead experienced condition Z."

I did not claim all the items would have been safe at home; had I intended to say that then I would have said so more directly.

Please do not assume I am asking a loaded question, until you've considered the obvious possibility that I mean exactly what I say, no more and no less.

You should have expressed yourself better then. Please take care in the future that when you talk about a huge group and then ascribe adjectives to it while not meaning the whole group, to use words like "some", or "parts of".