First of all, these figurines are mighty cool, I remember being struck by them and taking a photo the first time I ever came to the British museum, nine years ago. Secondly, this podcast is extremely funny, because of an interview MacGregor did with the man who edited the Obituaries page of the London Times for ten years. The tomb figures in this exhibit were accompanied by a self-serving obituary which reminded this Obits editor of the fatuous letters he often received, “As I am not getting any younger, I thought I’d help you start a file on me...” where people would write these absurd things about themselves, the example he gave beginning with something like “Though a man of unusual charm...” (Say it with a well-educated British accent, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.) He made an interesting point, that obituaries really are the very first crack at writing history—what we did, the story of our time. People make the mistake of thinking they’re part of the grieving process, written for the benefit of friends and family; but those people can make their own memorials. The public obituary is for the historians.
Anyways, if you study these figures carefully you’ll notice that this grave includes two helpful (?) monsters, two porters, camels, and—I love this—two bureacrats. Apparently there’s so much paperwork in the afterlife, it was important to bring along your staff to take care of it for you. That, or else people in Tang China were so used to having that much bureacracy and paperwork, it seemed like the thing to do. So the next time you’re filling out some dumb form on behalf of the new dustbuster you just bought, remember the Tang mandarins.
No comments:
Post a Comment