Alexandria all over again

[muckefuck]

I'm not a news junkie, but I do end up checking the headlines a couple times a day just to avoid being caught flatfooted when someone says, "Wow, what about North Korea?" or "How about that queen!" But I haven't been able to look at news report for almost a day now because of the events in Mali. Every time I see a reference to the burning of the library in Timbuktu by retreating Islamists, it fills me with despair. Where does that sort of spiteful and narrow-minded urge to destroy the patrimony of humanity even come from?

Over a decade ago now, I attended a lecture given by one of the scholars who worked on the project to preserve and research the those scrolls. At the time, I was struck by the progressiveness of doing the work on site and giving the Malians training and tools so that the objects could remain in the country rather than being spirited off to Europe or North America, thus contributing to the reversal of centuries of imperialist appropriation. Now all I can think is that, if they had been brought someplace like the States, they would still exist.

Update: The CSM reports that the vast majority of manuscripts stored in the central library were spirited out of town weeks before the building was torched. In the end, probably no more than 2,000 were lost, some proportion of which had already been scanned and backups stored in the national capital. So it's not nearly as bad as it could've been--though you've really got to worry about the safety of ancient texts stored in private homes in what is still very much a war zone.

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

The news sites I frequent (including the NYT) don't seem to have put it in a prominent place, so this is the first I heard about it. And yes, it's depressing. Unfortunately, the whole idea that humanity has an intellectual patrimony that should be preserved isn't a universally shared value. (If your basic take is that anything that draws one's attention away from God is a distraction from the only important thing in the world, then it only makes sense to get rid of them. Still more if it might teach untrue beliefs.)

One ray of light: the Washington Post is reporting that while some documents were left behind (either in haste or to keep things looking normal) the staff successfully hid the bulk of the collection elsewhere. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/01/29/heres-what-was-in-the-torched-timbuktu-library/ We'll see-- developing stories like this often produce reports that turn out to be false. But one may hope.

(I admit that when it comes to historical materials, I tend to value safety and scholarly access more than any cultural imperative to keep them on site. Not that anyone's asking me.)

[tortipede.livejournal.com]

Hm. I hadn't seen/heard this on the news over here, & saw it first in your post. Not altogether surprising, but wholly disappointing. Will follow link in the previous comment & keep an eye on the news.