And truly, the practitioners of the art/science/scienceart, those fine, proud archaeologists, are the greatest; a noble, honourable, arcane bunch, admittedly given to well dodgy hats. I venerate the ground they walk upon – even when that ground has been disturbed by teeny, tiny, itty-bitty little spades.
An archaeologist hunched over a remarkable artefact known as Google Earth recently discovered a bunch of ancient sites in Saudi Arabia. He had to do it this way because there is a problem conducting field research in the desert kingdom. The rulers are “hostile to archaeology.”
Hostile to archaeology!!! The cads.
Apparently, there is little respect for ancient buildings on the peninsula. According to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, “90 per cent of the archaeological treasures in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina had been destroyed to make way for hotels, apartment blocks and parking facilities.” Who knew this would become a feel-good story? To wit: in the ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ stakes, it turns out that the good citizens of Skinny City and the Saudi people have much in common. Well, one thing at least: they both love the unbridled joy that comes from bulldozing old buildings. Our built heritage is a thing to be obliterated to the maximum extent possible.
meet
Oh, look the truth is that historians become historians because they want to whinge about how much better things were in the past and they hope to get paid for it.
Meanwhile, we step up our endeavours to bridge the cultural gap. A committee of local plenipotentiaries has been waiting patiently in Riyadh to see one of the minor royals. It’s only been six months and I’m told they have already been absolutely promised a meeting with a brother-in-law of one of the second tier functionaries to a junior prince of the House of Saud. It’s very exciting. There is much we can teach one another in the ways of flattening old things.
No comments:
Post a Comment