Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 12 (4 page)

Some scholars speculate that those instruments would have been tuned to a major scale, the scale in which Mozart composed
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
, the Kingsmen thrashed
Louie Louie
, and John Williams scored
Star Wars.

Eight instruments—five complete lyres and three fragments—give us the oldest, fullest picture of an ancient musical culture in the history of humankind.

Two of these instruments are now gone. One of them was made of gold and came from a mass ritual grave.
The New York Times
reported (Apr. 24, 2003) that the gold lyre was torn apart for the precious materials of its inlay. The other was precariously cast in plaster from the hole it rotted out from. The plaster lyre would not have survived rough handling.

Who cares? What is left to learn about them? A lot. We have little or no information on how these instruments were made, by whom, or to what specification. The bits of original wood still extant on these instruments could have been identified (as has been done for their Philadelphian cousins) and dated. Were these instruments all built at the same time? Were there competing lyre-making workshops? Could the method of construction give us clues to what qualities their creators were aiming for? Would having the full set of eight have gotten us closer to knowing what Sumerian music may have sounded like?

We'll never know. Mesopotamian music—our music—was stolen from us.

Does any of this matter? Now that we have language, and music, and laws, does it matter that a few early examples of language, music, and law are gone? Especially given the number of deaths from this invasion, or the number of people who die every day from preventable causes?

Maybe. History is cruel and the truth is that most of us will be remembered by our families for three or possibly four generations and then we will be gone. The stolen objects have borne witness to some two hundred and fifty generations. The cylindrical vase from ancient Uruk (the modern village of Warka) participated in a ritual of some sort five thousand years ago and depicts a five-tiered social hierarchy. From the bottom we can read a squiggly representation of water. Above the water, various grains. The grain in turn feeds the sheep in the third register. There is a significant gap, above which a line of humans is shown holding baskets of food. Although the series progresses, the quantum leap from animal to human is recognized. In the top register a few humans present offerings to a goddess—the food, of course, but also vessels in the shape of animals and two vases of the same shape as the Warka Vase itself. Is this a historical representation or an instruction manual on how to use this object? The aliens left us a clue, to go along with their Sumerian mysteries.

The Sumerians and later Mesopotamians understood history, and the passage of time. They lived their lives as we do, but occasionally acknowledged future generations in curses for those who would destroy their work and blessings on those who would restore them.

In the spirit of those curses, I feel confident in predicting that if Donald Rumsfeld is remembered a hundred or more years from now, he will be remembered for the callousness with which he dismissed this crime against Mesopotamia, against all of us. If I were more generous than I am, I could accept that—despite the warnings from scholars, despite the precedents set after the legitimate Gulf War, despite the armed guard outside the Oil Ministry—the lack of U.S. Army protection for the Iraq Museum was an oversight. I might even ignore the fact that wealthy art collectors have recently been lobbying the Bush administration to loosen the laws that govern the importation of antiquities and dismiss that as conspiracy minded. However, for Rumsfeld to dismiss the looting as an illusion of Mechanical Reproduction is appalling:

"The images [of looting] that you are seeing on television are images that you are seeing over and over and over. And it's the same pictures of the same person walking out of some building with a vase. And you see it twenty times. And you think, ‘My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the country?’”

At this press conference, the reporters laughed at the Defense Secretary's joke. Of course there are many more than twenty vases in the country; more importantly, the Uruk Vase alone is priceless. What if, say, the Mona Lisa were stolen?

The Mona Lisa was, in fact, stolen. In 1911, the portrait was taken from the Louvre by an Italian nationalist who held it for twenty-seven months before trying to sell it to the Uffizi. In
Becoming Mona Lisa
, Donald Sassoon argues that monotonous press coverage of the incident made the painting famous. For weeks after the theft, the Mona Lisa dominated Parisian and world newspapers and her image was reprinted on the front pages daily. The hot new medium of newspaper photography made her iconic. If Donald Rumsfeld were around at the time he might have gotten a big laugh from his friends and obsequious reporters. “My goodness, were there that many paintings? Is it possible that there were that many paintings in France?"

Will this story, these museum pieces, continue to dominate the news? Will this incident kindle an interest in Mesopotamian art, and stimulate a nascent celebrity for these objects? Probably not. There were too many masterpieces taken at once and no individuals singled out. The news today is filled with too much reporting and not enough analysis.

Does any of this matter? Yes, that the greatest army in the history of the earth is run by men who do not care about history or culture is of great concern. If not history and culture, what are they fighting for? We can only shudder at the answer. Who are the aliens here?

Does any of this matter? To a few of us, scholars who dreamed of visiting the museum to study these objects firsthand, yes, it matters a lot. To many of us, people interested in learning about history lest we be forced to repeat it, it matters quite a bit. To any of us who care about human culture, it matters. To all of us Mesopotamians, we are saddened and outraged.

For images of some of the objects taken from the Iraq Museum, including the Warka vase and the gold bull lyre, see www.oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html

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Christoph Meyer

Whatcha gonna do with that twocent penny?

Drop it on down in yer hornaplenty.

Hoot ‘n’ Holler! Hoot ‘n’ Holler!

Dingdong knockknock midnight caller.

Games and fun, sup sum tea and biscuits.

Distract a Black Jack from its dire business.

Shout ‘n’ Shake It! Shout ‘n’ Shake It!

Fall down still and try ta fake it.

Don't hit opossum's cards with tuff enuff stuff.

Bluff the ace of spades stuffed in yer sleeve cuff.

One Eleven! Hell or Heaven!

Reincarnate. Call the reverend.

Whatcha gonna do when it comes to take ya

Down to the land where the dead foresake ya?

Beg ‘n’ Borrow! Steal Tomorrow!

Buy back yer life with yer sorrow.

So don't fritfret now bout yer ninebuck sawbuck.

Count all yer ill stars fer sum good luck.

Hoot ‘n’ Holler! Hoot ‘n’ Holler!

Give or take that extra doller.

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Ursula Pflug

For Rhonda Payne

I have dreams about a school. The classes were all girls, and taught by women. They were outside. We'd follow the teacher along country paths, usually bypassing the villages, sometimes stopping at the inn. Most nights we slept under the stars. That's when astronomy class was held; at night, after we'd made our fire and cooked our dinner. When the sun fell behind the green hills we'd unroll our bedding and lie down, staring up at the canopy of stars and our teacher would name them. So many stars. Later we were also taught astrology, or predestination, and one night, alone, much later, I saw how one woman's fate was spelled out in stars. She could no more have changed it than I could turn into a swan: now, here, in this world. She comes to me in dreams, white faced, raven haired. I have never seen a face so proud or haughty, so fierce and womanly at once.

This is a new world, and women no longer turn into swans, and don't hold their heads so high anymore, as high as she did, my proud and lonely queen. In this world we aren't taught the right things: to revere trees and wells and art and wisdom and transformation of many kinds. In this world we make do. And we pine for another way of being, and sometimes, in dreams we remember.

I began to read, trying to discover where and when my lovely school had been, if it had even existed, who the woman had been, my beautiful queen, her face so haunting in my dreams. And I began to try and expand my dreaming, to see more of that place and time. To my surprise, it was as if I already knew how, as if there were techniques for it I'd once learned, that slowly came back to me.

I left something back there, something back then. Something important. Was it my sisters’ hands in mine, sitting by the stream, braiding daisies into one another's hair and reciting love poems to the salmon?

Could I really have had the ability to turn into a swan?

From my expanded dreaming I learned so many things: we students enjoyed each other's company immensely, women and girls of all ages; we carried sticks with bells on them, they rang as we walked. We wore white. We carried crystal eggs in the big pockets of our robes, in beautiful colours: translucent red and green and blue. We talked as we walked, sometimes just joking and gossiping but more often studying, memorizing verses, thousands upon thousands. We'd stop at the holy wells, make sun-wise ritual to Brigit, to Macha, to Eire.

I learned that when we became older and had studied long enough we were called upon to adjudicate disputes in the villages. We were looked upon as wise and learned and our judgements were generally followed, for it was known they were not given lightly, nor taken lightly. We took our work seriously, yet so much of it was pure pleasure: to learn the stars, to chant poetry that encompassed all of Eire's history, all of her legends. When we grew up we had many opportunities for employment. We could teach or practise law or medicine, all things we'd learned in those countless verses committed to memory. We could guard a sacred well, priestess to the goddess. Our job then was to make sure the kings who stopped there always took the land into account, her voice, her needs, her pleasures. In times still older than ours only a king who did so had the right of kingship; it was the land herself which bestowed it upon him. And if he strayed, well, we were there to gently remind him.

Or so I thought when I was still young, in that other life I miss so much, but even then, the world was already changing, our power slipping though our hands like water from a shattered cup.

We eventually raised a building, a more permanent home to study in, at least in the winters. It's the school I miss the most, this time around. The school stood for centuries, on Brigid's Hill. Later it became a convent. That part I read in a history book. Queen Maeve visited us there, for I discovered it was indeed she I dreamt of, over and over and over. I was still a child, perhaps ten or eleven, and Maeve took me aside from the other girls and gave me a pin: the Celtic triple spiral emblazoned in silver: three for the Goddess who is tripartite, now as then. She had such fondness for me, Maeve said, giving me the pin.

Of course, they burned the academy to the ground, but that was hundreds of years later; I read about it in the same book. It's true I too have been raped, just like so many girls of this time, but not with the murderous violence bestowed upon those poor girls then, and sometimes, waking at midnight, melancholic, filled with rage and sorrow, I think perhaps some of my despair might rightly be theirs. For I have enough, in this world. I have many pairs of shoes and a roof and a car and a computer and a hair dryer, things not one of us had then, not one. Except Maeve. She had many pairs of shoes and a choice of roofs to shelter her at night but then, she was Queen of Connaught.

I eat. My family was good. How can I complain of my life?

Sometimes we accompanied the kings to war. Oh, there were so many kings then. Kings and kings and kings, kings upon kings. It was hard at times to tell them all apart, which could of course, be embarrassing, for we too were expected to pay homage to the kings and their sons, kings again.

Maeve stood out all the more for it.

I went to war once, but not for a king. I went for my queen. I did not want to go, but better a druidess along on a war than not, I thought. Perhaps I could have some small influence on events, point towards a harmonious outcome. I could mitigate, search for harmony, weave a new piece out of the bloody shredded tapestry of battle. I went with her in the end, because she begged me to; although in spite of all my druid magic I could no more change the course of events than the course of the stars.

I thought I could be a swan, then, a peace-keeper or maker and perhaps if I'd been older and stronger I could have, or perhaps war just turns all it touches into ravens, ravening birds of prey.

Like them, those two men; they didn't turn into swans or owls, but into birds of prey. And that is what they were; that was the bird their spirits most resembled, bloody-clawed carrion crows. They pulled all they touched into war, into bloodshed, including me. Shape shifters too, trained in the same techniques as I, yet far more powerful, they used their power to create adversity. Not one noble along on that still famous cattle raid knew who they were except the druids, but Maeve and Fergus and Ailill, Conchobor and Cuchullain didn't listen when we told them. Oh, they probably believed us; kings and queens believed their druids. They just didn't see it as a reason to stop the game.

It's been said you become what you hate. Perhaps I shouldn't have hated them so much, those two men, taking us all into bloodshed with them, for the sake of their huge folly, their childish competition. People even today, who know her story, will tell you it was Maeve who was childish and competitive, taking so many thousands to die in battle for the capture of a bull. It is true they all loved a game, all those Celtic kings and soldiers and their haughty gold-bedecked women: a sport above all else, but never forget it was their contest, those two wizardly pig-keepers, that was far the greater, she an unwitting pawn in their cosmic game.