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irak special
He wasn’t very pleased because he was a very
productive and industrious scholar. When
you are a real scholar, you don’t want students.
They are a pain in the neck, you know, they
take time and all that, so, he was rather hostile
to me.
He said, “Well, look, all right, learn these
things. Come in on Tuesday. We’ll have a
look.” It’s almost unique in the history of the
world. I read through what he told me. I went
to the first class, and he put some stuff on the
board and we looked at something. I knew
then just like that, that that was my entire life’s
work. I’d never heard of it before. It was just
fortuitous. It was like a railway line from then
on that ended up in the British Museum.
All my friends got fellowships here for three
months then went to Australia for a year, and
their wives didn’t want to go and children
didn’t want to change school. In the end,
they gave up. It’s so hard. I’ve had this blessed
sunshine-filled career.
to read everything, I was happy, and I’ve been This place is marvelous because the collections
there ever since. are fantastic right across the board, from all
the countries of the world, and the resources
How did you come into this field? After all, it’s are marvelous. 130,000 pieces of clay! I have
not a common field of study. looked at them all, but I haven’t read them all.
That’s true. It’s not an everyday choice for There’s everything you can imagine. I love it
schoolchildren. I was a bit lucky! When I was and want to tell the world outside about it.
at the end of my schooling, I decided I wanted
to be an Egyptologist. So, I got a grammar, the I didn’t know about the Royal Game of Ur nor
famous grammar, and I read a lot of Egyptian. cuneiform before you talked about it.
When I went up to university, I was going When the museum discovered the YouTube
to do Egyptology. The elderly Egyptologist platform, curators started to post videos there.
professor gave one class with about 15 people One was done on the Royal Game of Ur. We
or so, and the next day he dropped dead in the didn’t do any rehearsal. We just had a model
kitchen of his house. And that was that. board and the pieces, and started to play. On
the video I explain the rules, and we played a
The department head called me in and said, game all the way through with commentary.
“Look, it’s going to take me a long time to get It looks like it’s a scripted piece of drama. But
another Egyptologist. I’ll have to advertise. actually, it was all improvised then put on
So, in the interim, there’s a man here called YouTube. Today more than 6.9 million people
Wilfred Lambert, and he teaches cuneiform. have watched the video. I just cannot believe
Why not do a bit of cuneiform with him? It’d it! So, they know about this game all over
be useful. And then when the Egyptologist the world. For instance, when we got to the
comes, you can switch back.” airport in Dubai, we were sitting around with
our papers trying to arrange a visa, and a man
So, I went and knocked on Lambert’s door and comes up to me and says, “Hey, aren’t you the
said, “Hello, I want to learn some cuneiform.” guy who does that game?” He recognized me
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from this YouTube video on the Royal Game “I’m hoping we can create a sort of
of Ur.
network where we’re all in it togeth-
I do lots of videos about cuneiform writing er, so that if somebody attacks one
and about objects in the museum. Lots of
other curators do the same. It’s the best way museum, we all come and defend the
to get outside the building into the world attacked museum.”
at large, because people all over the world
watch YouTube, grandmothers, two-year-
olds… When they find something interesting,
sometimes they write comments, which is
interesting. They tell their friends. in Paris in this respect and the Met in New
York and St Petersburg and Berlin, the group
The British Museum, when I joined, was a of really big museums.
kind of nineteenth century institution with
suits and everybody called by his surname, I’m hoping we can create a sort of network
not by his first name, very proper. Over the where we’re all in it together, so that if
years it’s moved gradually into the twenty- somebody attacks one museum, we all come
first century, with the internet and YouTube and defend the attacked museum.
especially. People write remarks like, “I never
been to the British Museum, but I think I’m I don’t think it’s legitimate to argue that
going to go now.” Or, “I didn’t realize that the museums don’t have a function. They
curators were alive.” And we even get rude have a big function. Once you start taking
remarks. something out, whatever it is, then somebody
– the Chinese, the Japanese, the Hungarians –
Well, you know, people see the institution not anybody will say, “Well, if you’re giving their
those who are behind it. thing back, what about ours?” And before you
That is true. Actually, that can play into the know it, you have an MPB or something.
museum’s need to raise money with sponsors.
There’re all sorts of things you can do with I’m interested also in fighting what I regard
sponsors, but the real sure-fire system is to take as destructive criticism, which is unthinking.
them through a locked door behind the scenes There are two problems with this. One is that
because they turn into five-year-old children people seem to have a very unclear idea of
with their mouths open because it’s all so the difference between truth and lies, because
wonderful to see. If I go to the Louvre and one there’s so much confusion.
of my colleagues takes me through a locked
door, it’s the same thing, just captivating. There doesn’t seem to be any rigor about
everything. So, people become indifferent.
Do you have relations with other museums? That’s one thing. And then the other thing is
We do. Especially now in the world where that the museum is to do with truth. It’s not
there’s a lot of trouble about what’s in to do with the value of the object, it’s to do
museums from the nineteenth century and with truth and what we know about things
all that send-it-back stuff. In my experience and what we can explain about them, where
in Britain, most people think that the British all people, all nations, are equal.
Museum is absolutely wonderful and should
be left alone. The politicians, who are in It’s a kind of catholic view of the achievements
charge of everything, see it’s a good way to get of humankind, of the intellectual and artistic
a public reaction. But in fact, ordinary people, achievements, which is a marvelous thing. It
if you ask them in a conversation, they think has to be saluted and we have to hold on to
it’s good because everything’s looked after so it because there are so many terrible things
well, and it’s free to see, and you can see all undermining all this. The Philistines are
the world together. We’re a bit like the Louvre everywhere. I believe that, like when they
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