295: Blog Post Two

 

Behold the image of Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramesses II. Behold the man in the cap photographing him, the woman in the blue capturing her partner in front of him. He is the figure I'm truly interested in: a man with arms folded at his sides, looking conquering, looking assertive. This is the picture that I want you to see. 

I am a human confronted.

Ramesses’ plaque reads: “This is the upper part of a colossal seated statue, one of a pair flanking the entrance to the hypostyle hall in the king’s mortuary temple (the ‘Ramesseum’). / The statue was carved from one block, quarried at Aswan almost 200 kilometres further south. Roughly shaped and weighing some 20 tonnes, it was transported 20 tonnes, it was transported on sleds over land and on a purpose-built boat down the river Nile. Once erected, the finer sculpting was completed. Like all Egyptian statues, this was originally painted. Traces of pigment remain: black for the eye pupils, red for the skin, and blue and yellow for the stripes on the headcloth. / Ramesses II erected more colossal statues than any other pharaoh. Those at the Ramesseum are among the finest, showing the technical skills of the sculptors. Ramesses encouraged popular cults in which he was deified. Many of his colossi had their own name and were a focus for prayers.”

TLDR; “This is a statue of a revered king. He was rightfully loved.”

A proper transcription for the “colossal seated statue” would tell visitors that Ramesses II enslaved the Jews, forced them to build effigies to him in the forms of pyramids and statues, killed them and starved them, refused to allow them leave until G-d brought down the ten plagues, and then followed the Jews through the Nile as an afterthought. The statue was carved by one block, likely hauled by several slaves, transported on sleds by the enslaved, and, like all Egyptian statues, was originally painted. Ramesses II ordered the erecting of more colossal statues than any other pharaoh, meaning that he used more forced labor than any other pharaoh. Those statues at the Ramesseum are among the finest, according to modern discretion. He was deified by Egyptians and feared wholly by the Jews. 

Behold this image. 

Take a picture of yourself in front of it, or take a picture to post on Facebook because this is something that you’ll love to look back at in a few years when you think about your visit to a museum that reaps artifact and deifies tyranny and never mentions – not even once – that the people who suffered to create these colossal effigies were Jews. Tell me, I need to know: why would you pose in front of him? Why would you crave his remembrance?

I have a terrible taste in my mouth.

Some of you may not be religious, or may feel that Biblical stories are meant for moral reckoning, or may not know about the Biblical relevance of historical figures, or do not care (Insert: Why are you so worked up, Hannah? Is everything you look at in any museum going to make you feel nauseas because you’re a Jew? Insert: Yes.) et alia. To me, this is the maker of the raison d’Exodus.

(Insert: You think people know that? Would they still take a picture with him if they did? Insert: I think that they do not know that, or they do not care.)

It’s difficult for me to impart the feeling that I had today as I watched tourists pose in front of this statue. Nagra was successful in capturing this feeling in “Meditations on the British Museum”: “They’re emblazoned. Cleansed of a barbarous home from which they were bled. / Is each dancing massacre, each perverse beauty on a plate or vase, the work of Love designed to leave us mollified? / With our global leaders, oligarchs and moguls, we go soft / about these rooms, despite some visitors who pray or cower before a relic, / what voice stimulates them? Are they held by the glare of torture? / Was our gaze educated to swoon amid the exotic sublime?”

The voice stimulating me is a whimper. It is streaked with frustrated tears. While I understand the thirst for vis-a-vis education quenched by museums and the widespread attention that objects housed in a museum can garner, I cannot appreciate the history preserved here in the British Museum. There are histories that do not belong here. These are incomplete stories. I feel vile even having photographed this statue, having seen him, having felt the stone eyes of him on me as I stood before him and cowered. Someone has tied a string inside me and is tugging on it repeatedly, pulling in the back of my belly button and drying out my throat and staring at my neck so hard that it’s visceral.

Do I have a right to feel this way? (Insert: What way, Hannah? How do you feel? Insert: Alas, I’ll try it like Nagra: Come bask in our show of Egyptian monologue, our lumps of stones or in throats. Could this be a deity? Beloved? Look at our hands, each covered in blood and emaciated. Step back, who decided our words? How did we forget, who did we decide to remember?)

We were meant to find an exhibit that connects to our text for the post due tonight, to meditate on what it means for an artifact to be in the British Museum. But what does it mean that we were there, too? What does it matter for me to be "held by the glare of torture"? I waited behind that statue for a fair while until I could get a clear photograph of someone mollified, someone soft, posing in front of it. I wanted to see their face.

Nagra wants to know whose culture we’re really getting when we go to the British Museum. It was once mine, but I don’t think it is anymore.

Perhaps I’ll try synecdoche. (Insert: It worked for Nagra. Insert: Ribcages. Hunger. Blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death.)

TLDR; This does not deserve to be standing.