Word: exhibitions
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...less-than-overwhelming crowds at the Nuzi exhibit are any gauge (visitors are pretty much guaranteed to have the place to themselves), History will not only fail to pass judgment, but History is probably not going to care. What we leave behind, it turns out, are non-biodegradable objects, a few random legal contracts, a few pieces of jewelry and a whole lot of garbage...
Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Before, the Semitic Museum was just a repository of large fiberglass statues and 3,000-year-old broken plates. But with this exhibit, it has become a vision of the future cast into the past, a concrete reason why history matters. Naturally, I had to stop by and see the secrets of Nuzi for myself...
When I actually visited the exhibit, however, I quickly realized that the Kushshi-harbe scandal comprises no more than a single displayed tablet--just a few inches tall--and a corresponding plaque. The exhibit, planned well before Clinton's troubles came to light, does not emphasize or explain the scandal in any more detail than it gives to the construction of toilet plumbing in Nuzi--the artifacts of which, also on display, are far larger and quite well-preserved...
...rest of the exhibit shows scraps of writing exercises by Mittani students, contracts between shepherds, court records from civil cases, stone weights, beaded jewelry, ritual objects and a heck of a lot of broken plates. It's a neat display. The work that went into it is impressive. It's exciting to know that we can learn such things about lives so distant from our own. But if you're looking for the lessons of history, the Semitic Museum's message might not be one you'd expect...
Presidents, of course, are concerned about their mark on History. So are many other people, including many intelligent and ambitious ones. But if we can glean any general truths from the Nuzi exhibit, one might be that on a macrocosmic scale, what people will know of us in the future is more or less random. Our reward will not be in the inscription of our names on credit cards in a museum's glass case a thousand years from now, or in copies of out-of-print books we authored or in the condemnations of the Starr Report. We cannot...