Part 3 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: PL. VI. A relief upon the side of the sarcophagus of one of the wives of King Mentuhotep III., discovered at Der el Bahri (Thebes). The royal lady is taking sweet-smelling ointment from an alabaster vase.
A handmaiden keeps the flies away with a bird's-wing fan.
--CAIRO MUSEUM.]
[_Photo by E. Brugsch Pasha._
Be the explanation what it may, the fact is indisputable that archaeology is patronised by those who know not its real meaning. A man has no more right to think of the people of old as dust and dead bones than he has to think of his contemporaries as lumps of meat. The true archaeologist does not take pleasure in skeletons as skeletons, for his whole effort is to cover them decently with flesh and skin once more, and to put some thoughts back into the empty skulls. He sets himself to hide again the things which he would not intentionally lay bare. Nor does he delight in ruined buildings: rather he deplores that they are ruined.
Coleridge wrote like the true archaeologist when he composed that most magical poem ”Khubla Khan”--
”In Xanadu did Khubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.”
And those who would have the pleasure-domes of the gorgeous Past reconstructed for them must turn to the archaeologist; those who would see the damsel with the dulcimer in the gardens of Xanadu must ask of him the secret, and of none other. It is true that, before he can refas.h.i.+on the dome or the damsel, he will have to grub his way through old refuse heaps till he shall lay bare the ruins of the walls and expose the bones of the lady. But this is the ”dirty work”; and the mistake which is made lies here: that this preliminary dirty work is confused with the final clean result. An artist will sometimes build up his picture of Venus from a skeleton bought from an old Jew round the corner; and the smooth white paper which he uses will have been made from putrid rags and bones. Amongst painters themselves these facts are not hidden, but by the public they are most carefully obscured. In the case of archaeology, however, the tedious details of construction are so placed in the foreground that the final picture is hardly noticed at all. As well might one go to Rheims to see men fly, and be shown nothing else but screws and nuts, steel rods and cog-wheels. Originally the fault, perhaps, lay with the archaeologist; now it lies both with him and with the public. The public has learnt to ask to be shown the works, and the archaeologist is often so proud of them that he forgets to mention the purpose of the machine.
A Roman statue of bronze, let us suppose, is discovered in the Thames valley. It is so corroded and eaten away that only an expert could recognise that it represents a reclining G.o.ddess. In this condition it is placed in the museum, and a photograph of it is published in 'The Graphic.' Those who come to look at it in its gla.s.s case think it is a bunch of grapes, or possibly a monkey: those who see its photograph say that it is more probably an irregular catapult-stone or a fish in convulsions.
The archaeologist alone holds its secret, and only he can see it as it was. He alone can know the mind of the artist who made it, or interpret the full meaning of the conception. It might have been expected, then, that the public would demand, and the archaeologist delightedly furnish, a model of the figure as near to the original as possible; or, failing that, a restoration in drawing, or even a worded description of its original beauty. But no: the public, if it wants anything, wants to see the shapeless object in all its corrosion; and the archaeologist forgets that it is blind to aught else but that corrosion. One of the main duties of the archaeologist is thus lost sight of: his duty as Interpreter and Remembrancer of the Past.
All the riches of olden times, all the majesty, all the power, are the inheritance of the present day; and the archaeologist is the recorder of this fortune. He must deal in dead bones only so far as the keeper of a financial fortune must deal in dry doc.u.ments. Behind those doc.u.ments glitters the gold, and behind those bones s.h.i.+nes the wonder of the things that were. And when an object once beautiful has by age become unsightly, one might suppose that he would wish to show it to none save his colleagues or the reasonably curious layman. When a man makes the statement that his grandmother, now in her ninety-ninth year, was once a beautiful woman, he does not go and find her to prove his words and bring her tottering into the room: he shows a picture of her as she was; or, if he cannot find one, he describes what good evidence tells him was her probable appearance. In allowing his controlled and sober imagination thus to perform its natural functions, though it would never do to tell his grandmother so, he becomes an archaeologist, a remembrancer of the Past.
In the case of archaeology, however, the public does not permit itself so to be convinced. In the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford excellent facsimile electrotypes of early Greek weapons are exhibited; and these have far more value in bringing the Past before us than the actual weapons of that period, corroded and broken, would have. But the visitor says, ”These are shams,” and pa.s.ses on.
It will be seen, then, that the business of archaeology is often misunderstood both by archaeologists and by the public; and that there is really no reason to believe, with Thomas Earle, that the real antiquarian loves a thing the better for that it is rotten and stinketh.
That the impression has gone about is his own fault, for he has exposed too much to view the mechanism of his work; but it is also the fault of the public for not asking of him a picture of things as they were.
Man is by nature a creature of the present. It is only by an effort that he can consider the future, it is often quite impossible for him to give any heed at all to the Past. The days of old are so blurred and remote that it seems right to him that any relic from them should, by the maltreatment of Time, be unrecognisable. The finding of an old sword, half-eaten by rust, will only please him in so far as it shows him once more by its sad condition the great gap between those days and these, and convinces him again of the sole importance of the present. The archaeologist, he will tell you, is a fool if he expects him to be interested in a wretched old bit of sc.r.a.p-iron. He is right. It would be as rash to suppose that he would find interest in an ancient sword in its rusted condition as it would be to expect the spectator at Rheims to find fascination in the nuts and screws. The true archaeologist would hide that corroded weapon in his workshop, where his fellow-workers alone could see it. For he recognises that it is only the sword which is as good as new that impresses the public; it is only the Present that counts. That is the real reason why he is an archaeologist. He has turned to the Past because he is in love with the Present. He, more than any man, wors.h.i.+ps at the altar of the G.o.ddess of To-day; and he is so desirous of extending her dominion that he has adventured, like a crusader, into the lands of the Past in order to subject them to her.
Adoring the Now, he would resent the publicity of anything which so obviously suggested the Then as a rust-eaten old blade. His whole business is to hide the gap between Yesterday and To-day; and, unless a man is initiate, he would have him either see the perfect sword as it was when it sought the foeman's bowels, or see nothing. The Present is too small for him; and it is therefore that he calls so insistently to the Past to come forth from the darkness to augment it. The ordinary man lives in the Present, and he will tell one that the archaeologist lives in the Past. This is not so. The layman, in the manner of the Little Englander, lives in a small and confined Present; but the archaeologist, like a true Imperialist, ranges through all time, and calls it not the Past but the Greater Present.
The archaeologist is not, or ought not to be, lacking in vivacity. One might say that he is so sensible to the charms of society that, finding his companions too few in number, he has drawn the olden times to him to search them for jovial men and agreeable women. It might be added that he has so laughed at jest and joke that, fearing lest the funds of humour run dry, he has gathered the laughter of all the years to his enrichment. Certainly he has so delighted in n.o.ble adventure and stirring action that he finds his newspaper insufficient to his needs, and fetches to his aid the tales of old heroes. In fact, the archaeologist is so enamoured of life that he would raise all the dead from their graves. He will not have it that the men of old are dust: he would bring them to him to share with him the sunlight which he finds so precious. He is so much an enemy of Death and Decay that he would rob them of their harvest; and, for every life the foe has claimed, he would raise up, if he could, a memory that would continue to live.
The meaning of the heading which has been given to this chapter is now becoming clear, and the direction of the argument is already apparent.
So far it has been my purpose to show that the archaeologist is not a rag-and-bone man, though the public generally thinks he is, and he often thinks he is himself. The attempt has been made to suggest that archaeology ought not to consist in sitting in a charnel-house amongst the dead, but rather in ignoring that place and taking the bones into the light of day, decently clad in flesh and finery. It has now to be shown in what manner this parading of the Past is needful to the gaiety of the Present.
Amongst cultured people whose social position makes it difficult for them to dance in circles on the gra.s.s in order to express or to stimulate their gaiety, and whose school of deportment will not permit them to sing a merry song of sixpence as they trip down the streets, there is some danger of the fire of merriment dying for want of fuel.
Vivacity in printed books, therefore, has been encouraged, so that the mind at least, if not the body, may skip about and clap its hands. A portly gentleman with a solemn face, reading his 'Punch' in the club, is, after all, giving play to precisely those same humours which in ancient days might have led him, like Georgy Porgy, to kiss the girls or to perform any other merry joke. It is necessary, therefore, ever to enlarge the stock of things humorous, vivacious, or rousing, if thoughts are to be kept young and eyes bright in this age of restraint. What would Yuletide be without the olden times to bolster it? What would the Christmas numbers do without the pictures of our great-grandparents'
coaches snow-bound, of huntsmen of the eighteenth century, of jesters at the courts of the barons? What should we do without the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' the 'Compleat Angler,' 'Pepys' Diary,' and all the rest of the ancient books? And, going back a few centuries, what an amount we should miss had we not 'aesop's Fables,' the 'Odyssey,' the tales of the Trojan War, and so on. It is from the archaeologist that one must expect the augmentation of this supply; and just in that degree in which the existing supply is really a necessary part of our equipment, so archaeology, which looks for more, is necessary to our gaiety.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PL. VII. Lady rouging herself: she holds a mirror and rouge-pot.
--FROM A PAPYRUS, TURIN.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Dancing girl turning a back somersault.--NEW KINGDOM.]
In order to keep his intellect undulled by the routine of his dreary work, Matthew Arnold was wont to write a few lines of poetry each day.
Poetry, like music and song, is an effective dispeller of care; and those who find Omar Khayyam or ”In Memoriam” incapable of removing the of burden of their woes, will no doubt appreciate the ”Owl and the p.u.s.s.y-cat,” or the Bab Ballads. In some form or other verse and song are closely linked with happiness; and a ditty from any age has its interests and its charm.