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One of the outcomes of the US-Iraq war was Iraq's national heritage of antiquities getting plundered and sold illegally.[1] The burning of the Library of Alexa

One of the outcomes of the US-Iraq war was Iraq's national heritage of antiquities getting plundered and sold illegally.[1] The burning of the Library of Alexandria is a potent symbol in Western culture, but the world has repeatedly suffered massive losses of cultural and historical artifacts in the last few decades. The public quickly develops historical amnesia for recent events. Compare, for example, the loss of Brazil's National Museum to a fire two years ago.[2] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/iraq-war-archeology-invasion/555200/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/ir... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/fire-engulfs-brazil-national-museum-rio https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/03/fire-engulfs-b... edited: clarity and link formatting

keiferski 6y ago
The destruction of Baghdad itself, including the House of Wisdom (large library), by the Mongols in 1258 is probably a more apt comparison. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)
- deathgrips 6y ago
  What a tragedy. Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts and emptying their chamber pots into the streets, the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca. I wonder what the world could have been like if the Mongols had never destroyed so much civilization and progress.
  - laingc 6y ago
    Wait until you read about the Roman Republic thousands of years before this time - you’re gonna love it.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      Yeah but besides the sanitation system,the aqueduct, the roads, the irrigation system, medicine,oratory, law, historians, dramatists,Vitruvius..what did those lousy Romans have?
      - lootsauce 6y ago
        great Monty Python bit! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo
      - donw 6y ago
        They did invent chemical warfare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum
        gpm 6y ago
        1. Are you sure you linked to the right page? That looks to be a condiment. 2. Chemical warfare was used before the Romans, for instance, like that condiment, the greeks had it before them. (Though I don't believe the greeks invented it first either). For example, see this wikipedia article (which is really in need of some improvement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_warfare
        hnick 6y ago
        Garum is supposedly similar to south-east Asian fish sauce so as someone who can't stomach even regular seafood, let alone that horrible stuff, I'll stand by their humorous assessment :)
      - DrScump 6y ago
        ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
    - ReverseCold 6y ago
      And the indus river valley civilization! They had a pretty advanced irrigation system.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    One could say the same thing about a lot of conquerors including the Arab armies. For example, when the Arab armies conquered North Africa, it was one of the richest and most developed areas in the Mediterranean. After the Arab conquest, it became a backwater and never achieved the prominence it had before. Also, in Egypt, the Great Pyramid was once covered with gleaming white limestone, but this was removed and used to build mosques. The pattern of civilization, destruction, new civilization is a repeating motif in history. Yes the Mongols caused a lot of destruction, but they also facilitated the East-West exchange of ideas and goods on a hithero unknown scale.
    - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
      My understanding is quite different... north africa flourished for hundreds of years after the Arab conquest, particularly during the time of Andalusia which lasted almost 700 years. Even after, North Africa held quite some power from its pirating entities. It was very much a hub, controlling important sea routes. It wasn't until European colonialism that it really turned into a backwater and lost all prominence. At least that's my understanding from my historic readings.
      - User23 6y ago
        > It was very much a hub, controlling important sea routes. That’s an interesting way of saying they were pirates and slavers who raided Europe and abducted slaves for centuries.
        Mirioron 6y ago
        To add an interesting part about history: after the US became an independent nation US merchant vessels were not under the protection of the Royal Navy. This made US ships a good target for pirates from the Barbary States who would not only steal the cargo but enslave the crew (the pirates also raided European settlements near coasts for slaves). Because the US didn't have a navy at the time they decided to pay tribute to stop the attacks. At one point the US paid a fifth of its annual budget in tribute to the pirates. This led to the creation of a permanent US Navy and to the Barbary Wars. Now 200 years later the US Navy is a pretty powerful fighting force.
  - Veen 6y ago
    > amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca A more important factor in their quick spread was the violent conquest of a huge swathe of the Middle East, North Africa, and part of Western Europe.
  - Amezarak 6y ago
    All those things existed in the Roman Empire, which extended into the Middle East, until the early Muslim conquests destroyed most of the Roman Empire and all of the Persian Empire, sending the Middle East into a minor dark age. Because the region had been extremely wealthy and advanced for centuries, with plenty of intra-Empire cultural exchange, itdid eventually recover. Most (not all) of the “advances” were translations of and commentaries on Greek/Roman and Persian works, and notably, most of them were from the pre-existing conquered strata population in pre-existing centers of learning. Of course, as time went on, people did build up higher, but the conquests were a major setback. So let’s not hype it up too much - where would the world be, if, as Gibbon wrote, Mohammed had died in the cradle, and all those people hadn’t been killed, books burned, and cities sacked? There’s no way to know - it might have been worse off in both cases.
    - craftinator 6y ago
      Based on some quick back of the napkin calculations, we'd probably be facing severe overcrowding and famine; same as if Genghis Khan had been a stillborn.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    I’m pretty sure I learned all that in high school (in Virginia, 20 years ago when it was still a red state).
    - dsfyu404ed 6y ago
      As someone who moved between red and blue states in high school I like to say that the blue states refuse to teach history and the red states refuse to teach science though history of the middle east isn't usually what I'm referring to.
  - vondur 6y ago
    The Eastern Romans had it too, as it never ceased to exist in the East. However, I don't think the original Muslim Arabs had any of those technologies, the states they conquered did. (Roman and Persian)
    - mcv 6y ago
      Conquering something doesn't mean you automatically get to keep it. Systems need to be maintained.
  - thefounder 6y ago
    >> the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advance I wonder, why did they get stuck into the past still being ruled either by a monarch or some religious leader?
    - daseiner1 6y ago
      resource curse, and all of its knock-on effects: ripe targets for resource extraction by foreign governments or multinationals (e.g. the offshoots of Standard Oil), said foreign entities will then support governments that abet their wealth extraction, which are typically governments whose mandate is not based on the will of the people even idealistically. said governments will return a portion of resource revenue to the people in the form of bread and circuses, to distract from how poorly their leaders serve them. saudi arabia had no taxes until only recently – if people are taxed, they’re likelier to be more critical of their government, and to demand representation https://www.ictd.ac/blog/tax-accountability-strengthen-links/ https://www.ictd.ac/blog/tax-accountability-strengthen-links...
      - thefounder 6y ago
        What about Iran?
  - deepnotderp 6y ago
    Rome had most of that long ago. Some of their field surgery technology in particular was extremely advanced.
  - foobar_ 6y ago
    That is a barbaric lie. It's akin to Christians taking credit for the Greco-Roman civilisation. Completely backwards. Persia / Babylon / Sumer was one of the first advanced civilisations. Arabs have contributed nothing to civilisation in terms of anything and are pretty much like the mongols for their role in history.
    - Cyph0n 6y ago
      Speaking in absolutes like that without sources is a great approach... if you don’t want to be taken seriously, that is.
      - foobar_ 6y ago
        In which history book does it say that Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of civilisation and muslims had anything to do with it ? The OP was talking about advanced muslim civilisations when he obviously meant Persia, who were Zoroastrians. I use the word Persia to mean Iran / Iraq / Syria / Turkey and parts of central asia who were fairly advanced in the past and some are still advanced to this day. Muslims did not invent and make anything. Even the so called islamic golden age was a direct result of brain drain from Persia. Arab muslims and Persian muslims are wildly different. Iran has long maintained their pre-islamic language and culture. It was because of Iran's resistance to becoming Arab that any golden age was at all possible. This rivalry persists to this day in the islamic world as Saudi Arabia vs Iran vs Turkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_Iran
        Cyph0n 6y ago
        > Muslims did not invent and make anything. Again with the absolutes, and again, no sources. You must be a great debater! I am not going to waste my time here ;)
    - dang 6y ago
      We've asked you repeatedly not to post flamebait to HN. If you keep doing it we will ban you. Religious and racial flamewar is particularly unwelcome here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - cscurmudgeon 6y ago
    Same thing happened in India. In fact, there was a lot of Indian influence on Islamic sciences. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_sc...) But unfortunately, more than just knowledge was exchanged. Imagine universities existing for hundreds of years, but promptly destroyed by invaders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda This pattern repeated throughout India for hundreds of years.
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
    The Europeans were emptying their chamber pots nearly 1000 years after the Greeks invented most major math theory and were sending water hundreds of miles on aqueducts.
  - luckydata 6y ago
    Ehm, plumbing is a bad example since the Romans did that WAY ahead of the Muslim world. For that AND sidewalks, you're welcome. Thanks for the numbers, that was handy.
    - cortesoft 6y ago
      > you're welcome I am confused... are you an ancient Roman?
      - luckydata 6y ago
        close, I'm Italian.
        michaelscott 6y ago
        Not that close
        daseiner1 6y ago
        actually not close at all, if dude is really trying to be Mr. Ancient Rome, well, he’s likelier descended from the “savages” that sacked her than the ancient patricians who led her in glory
        luckydata 6y ago
        why "likelier"? We had invasions and racial mixing like everywhere else in the mediterranean, but that was happening during roman times too. I'm actually more of a cisalpine gaul than a roman myself, but the beauty of the empire was that it was multi cultural and multi racial. Said that, Italians absolutely look like romans, this is a small example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdUPYm06gVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdUPYm06gVc Our language is also the closest to the type of Latin romans spoke during the empire (which itself evolved). I do not understand why it's even controversial, you're making a dumb point.
  - econcon 6y ago
    >the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances A lot of which came through Indian traders, first evidences of human surgeries are found in Indian subcontinent, Indus valley civilization had pretty advance irrigation system for the time and mathematics: quadratic equations, notion of zero, notion of limits and inifinty were here in philosophical sense even if no one every applied it in mathematics. In the field of war strategy and material, like steel for sword - India was wayy ahead at its time. They knew about the steel temperament long before Europeans even started using steel for swords. "During the 6th Century BCE, an Indian physician named Sushruta – widely regarded in India as the 'father of surgery' – wrote one of the world's earliest works on medicine and surgery"
    - newyankee 6y ago
      Hell Arabic numerals are actually the Indian nos which trader Arabs exported to Europe. I find the characterisation that Arabs invented no system used in so many places so misleading. It is almost as if western historians do not want to give adequate acknowledgment to South Asia.
  - drapred7 6y ago
    Medieval French village https://www.solosophie.com/medieval-town-of-dinan/ https://www.solosophie.com/medieval-town-of-dinan/ Modern Bagdad https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2BD66C-W58 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2BD66C-W58 I dont find any descriptions of specific surgeries here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Isl...
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    The Muslim world was on the decline from ~1100, before the Mongols were anything of note to them. Yes, the Mongols delivered the coup de grace though.
  - dntbnmpls 6y ago
    > Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts Mud huts? Rome was composed of mud hut? The tallest building in the world for almost the entire 2nd millenia was in england. Not exactly "mud huts". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_St_Paul%27s_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_St_Paul%27s_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral https://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-tallest-buildings-throughout-history-2015-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-tallest-buildin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world%27s_tallest_buildings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world%27s_talle... I think you are overselling the muslim world and underselling europe a bit. > the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca. Much of it brought to the muslim world by the roman empire and the greeks. Or from the indians/chinese/etc in the east. Of course there were muslim contributions but lets not get too carried away here. > I wonder what the world could have been like if the Mongols had never destroyed so much civilization and progress. The world would be exactly the way it was in the 1200s without the mongols. The muslim world had stagnated by the time the mongols came around. After all the arabic islamic golden age started in the 700s. The mongols destroy arabic islamic civilization but they helped create the turkic islamic civilization of the ottoman empire not to mention the persian centered khanates which went on to create mughal india. Without the mongols, we don't have the italian renaissance and modern europe and without modern europe we don't have modern civilization. The empire created by the mongols is why marco polo went east. It's also why christopher columbus set sail. Without the mongols, we don't have the new world. No doubt, the arab world suffered and lost out, but the world advanced immensely due to the mongols. The mongol empire was the first truly "global" empire. It helped europe bypass the muslim world and trade directly with india, china, etc.
    - deathgrips 6y ago
      >Without the mongols, we don't have the italian renaissance and modern europe and without modern europe we don't have modern civilization. The empire created by the mongols is why marco polo went east. It's also why christopher columbus set sail. Without the mongols, we don't have the new world. I'll take whig historiography for $500, Alex.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Was this incendiary comment really necessary?
  - Red_Tarsius 6y ago
    Islam actually slows down scientific progress. The golden age is nothing more than Muslims taking credit for the swan song of conquered cultures. If anything, Islamic culture might be the second worst thing that happened to the middle east after the Mongol invasion. There are many hypotheses as to why Muslim-majority countries produce a disproportionately small share of world scientific output even today. The following paper was an interesting read: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/chaney/files/paper.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/chaney/files/paper.pdf >Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts and emptying their chamber pots into the streets... North Europeans were more advanced than you're giving them credit for. Different biomes open up different strategies and possibilities. You can't expect a city like Rome – marble and all – in ancient Scandinavia. But we found samples of skilled craftsmanship (nebra sky disk, waldalgesheimer fürstengrab) that go against the cartoon narrative you described.
    - dang 6y ago
      No religious flamewar on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - brokenkebab 6y ago
    "Muslim world" is somewhat misleading glamorizing generalization in all such statements. Pretty much all examples which are used as a proof of the MW comparatively advanced stage at early medieval times come from Iran/Persia, and Middle East. Both were very much advanced well-before Arab conquests, and simply continued to be so. There were many other parts of MW which were much below that level, or which to tge contrary experienced devastation, and decline as a result of the conquest. The Christendom was very uneven too, of course. And lots if people lived in mud huts in both realms. Also, blaming Mongols as if they were the sole destroyers is absolutely incorrect.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      The arab conquests were like ~700, we're talking about hundreds of years later. I think 'the muslim world' can take some credit for developments on that timeframe.
  - frozenport 6y ago
    Were the Byzantines European?
  - eternalban 6y ago
    Not sure if Mongols are -entirely- responsible for the decline. We should also consider the shift of international trade from land to sea, and subsequent loss of contact with external world, as the possible culprit. (Consider the Ottomans, for example). That said, here's a famous quote: O would that my mother had never borne me, that I had died before and that I were forgotten [so] tremendous disaster such as had never happened before, and which struck all the world, though the Muslims above all . . . Dadjdjal [Muslim Anti-Christ] will at least spare those who adhere to him, and will only destroy his adversaries. These [Mongols], however, spared none. They killed women, men, children, ripped open the bodies of the pregnant and slaughtered the unborn. - Ibn al-Athir (1233–1160)
- emmelaich 6y ago
  A modern equivalent (sorta) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire
deathgrips 6y ago
Another example is shutting down What.cd, which was a digital library that had an unbelievably large collection of music. Many titles couldn't be found anywhere except on What.cd.
- bfors 6y ago
  Granted, a lot of that music probably wasn't amazing. But as an archive and community what.cd was unmatched, and I'm still upset that it's gone. RIP
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  License holders honestly can't be trusted with archiving or distributing their own works. So much music and movies is available in inferior or compromised formats if you go through the versions available on the market today from the license owners.
  - coldpie 6y ago
    The effectively-infinite copyright length that was introduced in the 1970s (yes, that recent!) definitely belongs in the same discussion as the burning of Alexandria. We haven't even begun to realize how much culture we've sacrificed at the foot of Disney and other copyright maximalists.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    Annecdote: My dad collects plastic model kits. A major model kit company asked him if he could scan the lid of one of their products they made decades ago, so that they could have the artwork to re-release the same model. I think LEGO Group is good about this; they have a vault containing a copy of every product they ever made.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
Ironically, purely from an amoral preservation point of view, having the antiquities in a museum in the United States or Western Europe has a higher chance of preserving the artifact for future generations.
- jhbadger 6y ago
  That's the argument that the British Museum uses to justify its collection (much of which was obtained through colonialism). Many countries (even Western ones like Greece) would like their stuff back.
- hrktb 6y ago
  Granted. Though there’s an argument on what preserving the antiquities is for in the first place. If we think there is a value provided to visitors seeing them in person, then preserving them far away deprives the Iraqi from these benefits making the preservation neutral at best in the short/middle term (long term? will it ever come back ?). It might feel like having your pet living abroad in a shelter, on one side it gets to live, on the other it doesn’t help you much to cope with your life.
- MandieD 6y ago
  Aside from a couple brief but extremely violent periods this past century, sure. The city I live by had its old town reduced to rubble in 1944-45 and is still rebuilding, despite being in one of the most prosperous regions of a rich, powerful country. The Germanisches National Museum wasn't spared, and they still lost stuff, despite preparing for bombardment. Countless works of art were destroyed throughout the city, despite the citizenry's pride in their cultural heritage. Or maybe because of an excess of pride in that cultural heritage, if you look at the big picture... I'm talking about Nuremberg/Nürnberg, of course. I love living here now, but oh boy was the evil of an evil time concentrated here. It's hard to reconcile the lovely place I live now with what I grew up learning about it, to the extent that I think of it as Nürnberg today, but Nuremberg when considering the horrors of the 30s and 40s. Big Western countries don't have constant, low-level instability like our former colonies - we have rare but all-encompassing blowouts. We've just been lucky in the US and Canada that geography protected us for so long (aside from the evil various European powers visited upon people we encountered or forcibly brought there). More historically, think about spasmodic but intense episodes in the West, like the iconoclastism during the Protestant Reformation. Good luck to any ancient religious art that happened to be in Switzerland at the time... and think about the various flavors of religious nuttery in the US, now being concentrated and inflamed with social media. The Hobby Lobby founders fortunately wanted these artifacts as evidence for their flavor of religious nuttery, but what would have stopped them from acquiring artifacts that they felt needed to be destroyed?
grumple 6y ago
This is basically the plot to Three Kings, which was set during our first time in Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(1999_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(1999_film)
deepnotderp 6y ago
The Burning of the Library of Alexandria was neither intentional nor absolute. A better example is the burning of the House of Wisdom by the Ilkhanate Mongols
- legerdemain 6y ago
  My point was that people often point to the burning of the Library of Alexandria as some kind of pivotal tragedy in Western history. But in reality, the world loses huge chunks of unique stuff in our time, irretrievably. Stuff like animal species and human communities and one-of-a-kind historic artifacts. We then soon forget that anything was lost and tell each other just-so stories with zero historical perspective.
khawkins 6y ago
Given the region's susceptibility to Islamic State uprisings, I'm not convinced Iraq and Syria are going to be good stewards of antiquities in the long-run. [1][2] These areas haven't been stable for decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_heritage_by_ISIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_herita... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Mosul_Museum_artifacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Mosul_Museum_ar...
- sonofhans 6y ago
  Well, one of these artifacts looks to have been in that region of the world for over 5000 years. That's a pretty good track record. I'm sure the citizens of Philly wouldn't be susceptible to any arguments that Baghdad would be a better place to store the Liberty Bell.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    That’s not a very good argument. ISIS has destroyed a lot of artefacts and antique ruins. The track record, even recent, is actually pretty bad.
  - Torok 6y ago
    Your first point makes sense but your second just isn't comparable in any way at all seeing as Baghdad is literally one of the most inhospitable places to live at the moment
  - nyolfen 6y ago
    it was sitting underground and unknown to men for almost all of time
- nemo 6y ago
  It's worth thinking through the question of whether Iraq or Syria would not be entitled to see stolen property returned due to destabilization. Right now the possessor of the stolen property is an American who also has trafficked in a number of items which were looted in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq (this particular tablet was stolen earlier). Art theft is a real issue in the US and Europe. If an art thief stole then sold a painting owned by an American to someone in China, would you support seeing the stolen property returned to the original owner? Would you take seriously the idea that the owner wasn't entitled to have their stolen property returned since there was a non-trivial chance the art could be stolen again?
djsumdog 6y ago
The documentary No End in Sight talks a lot about the looting of national museums. It was tragic and entirely preventable, but the US did not commit enough troops and did not have a plan for reconstruction or securing anything other than oil fields.
lopmotr 6y ago
Something 1000s of years old hardly belongs to any particular modern country. Perhaps if whoever is looking after it can't protect it from theft, they don't deserve to be looking after it and it's better that it got stolen. If an entire country is too weak to protect artifacts, then they should be given to somewhere that has that capability. Who would want to return artifacts to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan just because the Taliban happened to control that piece of land at the time? Nobody cares about some little political group on the scale of 1000s of years.
- daseiner1 6y ago
  so you feel the same about the elgin marbles, presumably? because i absolutely adored seeing them at the British Museum, but it sorta feels to me like they ought to be returned to Athens
  - lopmotr 6y ago
    I don't know what they are but if they were stolen, then obviously it was unable to protect them at that time. No, I don't think ancient Greek artifacts belong to modern Greek people or the modern Greece country. Perhaps they could just as well belong to the EU and be kept in any EU country. Who decides what political entities are the true heirs?
cm2187 6y ago
It depends on the definition of lost. I would argue that an artefact is better protected in a museum in Washington DC rather than in a country in a state of civil war. Then the debate isn't so much about being lost, but whether the artefact should be located in the country where it was originally created, thousands of years ago. And I think you can see it both ways. I don't understand people who identify themselves to the population that lived on the same territory centuries ago. It is a different people, a different culture, and there might be some trace of that culture left (like there are traces of the roman empire culture left all over europe), there might be some artefacts, some monuments left. But they are really a foreign people to the current inabitants. So should St Mark's Basilica in venice be destroyed to return the looted parts to Turkey? Or should the Lyxor obelisk on the place de la Concorde in Paris be returned to Egypt? I don't think so.
chx 6y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t6op5/facts_about_the_library_of_alexandria/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t6op5/facts... > > I am curious about what knowledge was lost in the fire, > Probably next to nothing, and certainly nothing of importance was lost. Alexandria was hardly the only library in the world, and the libraries at Pergamum and later Rome herself rivaled Alexandria in scale. Antony replaced the losses of the fire during the Alexandrine War with copies made from the library at Pergamum, and libraries in gymnasia or simply founded for citizens abound during that period in the Greek world, they're in like literally every city of any size. > We do not lose texts because of catastrophic events that wipe out all copies of them. We lose texts because they stop being copied. Also check https://www.ancient.eu/article/207/what-happened-to-the-great-library-at-alexandria/ https://www.ancient.eu/article/207/what-happened-to-the-grea...

keiferski 6y ago

The destruction of Baghdad itself, including the House of Wisdom (large library), by the Mongols in 1258 is probably a more apt comparison. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Baghdad_(1258)

deathgrips 6y ago
What a tragedy. Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts and emptying their chamber pots into the streets, the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca. I wonder what the world could have been like if the Mongols had never destroyed so much civilization and progress.
- laingc 6y ago
  Wait until you read about the Roman Republic thousands of years before this time - you’re gonna love it.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    Yeah but besides the sanitation system,the aqueduct, the roads, the irrigation system, medicine,oratory, law, historians, dramatists,Vitruvius..what did those lousy Romans have?
    - lootsauce 6y ago
      great Monty Python bit! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo
    - donw 6y ago
      They did invent chemical warfare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum
      - gpm 6y ago
        1. Are you sure you linked to the right page? That looks to be a condiment. 2. Chemical warfare was used before the Romans, for instance, like that condiment, the greeks had it before them. (Though I don't believe the greeks invented it first either). For example, see this wikipedia article (which is really in need of some improvement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_warfare
        hnick 6y ago
        Garum is supposedly similar to south-east Asian fish sauce so as someone who can't stomach even regular seafood, let alone that horrible stuff, I'll stand by their humorous assessment :)
    - DrScump 6y ago
      ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
  - ReverseCold 6y ago
    And the indus river valley civilization! They had a pretty advanced irrigation system.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  One could say the same thing about a lot of conquerors including the Arab armies. For example, when the Arab armies conquered North Africa, it was one of the richest and most developed areas in the Mediterranean. After the Arab conquest, it became a backwater and never achieved the prominence it had before. Also, in Egypt, the Great Pyramid was once covered with gleaming white limestone, but this was removed and used to build mosques. The pattern of civilization, destruction, new civilization is a repeating motif in history. Yes the Mongols caused a lot of destruction, but they also facilitated the East-West exchange of ideas and goods on a hithero unknown scale.
  - IkmoIkmo 6y ago
    My understanding is quite different... north africa flourished for hundreds of years after the Arab conquest, particularly during the time of Andalusia which lasted almost 700 years. Even after, North Africa held quite some power from its pirating entities. It was very much a hub, controlling important sea routes. It wasn't until European colonialism that it really turned into a backwater and lost all prominence. At least that's my understanding from my historic readings.
    - User23 6y ago
      > It was very much a hub, controlling important sea routes. That’s an interesting way of saying they were pirates and slavers who raided Europe and abducted slaves for centuries.
      - Mirioron 6y ago
        To add an interesting part about history: after the US became an independent nation US merchant vessels were not under the protection of the Royal Navy. This made US ships a good target for pirates from the Barbary States who would not only steal the cargo but enslave the crew (the pirates also raided European settlements near coasts for slaves). Because the US didn't have a navy at the time they decided to pay tribute to stop the attacks. At one point the US paid a fifth of its annual budget in tribute to the pirates. This led to the creation of a permanent US Navy and to the Barbary Wars. Now 200 years later the US Navy is a pretty powerful fighting force.
- Veen 6y ago
  > amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca A more important factor in their quick spread was the violent conquest of a huge swathe of the Middle East, North Africa, and part of Western Europe.
- Amezarak 6y ago
  All those things existed in the Roman Empire, which extended into the Middle East, until the early Muslim conquests destroyed most of the Roman Empire and all of the Persian Empire, sending the Middle East into a minor dark age. Because the region had been extremely wealthy and advanced for centuries, with plenty of intra-Empire cultural exchange, itdid eventually recover. Most (not all) of the “advances” were translations of and commentaries on Greek/Roman and Persian works, and notably, most of them were from the pre-existing conquered strata population in pre-existing centers of learning. Of course, as time went on, people did build up higher, but the conquests were a major setback. So let’s not hype it up too much - where would the world be, if, as Gibbon wrote, Mohammed had died in the cradle, and all those people hadn’t been killed, books burned, and cities sacked? There’s no way to know - it might have been worse off in both cases.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Based on some quick back of the napkin calculations, we'd probably be facing severe overcrowding and famine; same as if Genghis Khan had been a stillborn.
- rayiner 6y ago
  I’m pretty sure I learned all that in high school (in Virginia, 20 years ago when it was still a red state).
  - dsfyu404ed 6y ago
    As someone who moved between red and blue states in high school I like to say that the blue states refuse to teach history and the red states refuse to teach science though history of the middle east isn't usually what I'm referring to.
- vondur 6y ago
  The Eastern Romans had it too, as it never ceased to exist in the East. However, I don't think the original Muslim Arabs had any of those technologies, the states they conquered did. (Roman and Persian)
  - mcv 6y ago
    Conquering something doesn't mean you automatically get to keep it. Systems need to be maintained.
- thefounder 6y ago
  >> the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advance I wonder, why did they get stuck into the past still being ruled either by a monarch or some religious leader?
  - daseiner1 6y ago
    resource curse, and all of its knock-on effects: ripe targets for resource extraction by foreign governments or multinationals (e.g. the offshoots of Standard Oil), said foreign entities will then support governments that abet their wealth extraction, which are typically governments whose mandate is not based on the will of the people even idealistically. said governments will return a portion of resource revenue to the people in the form of bread and circuses, to distract from how poorly their leaders serve them. saudi arabia had no taxes until only recently – if people are taxed, they’re likelier to be more critical of their government, and to demand representation https://www.ictd.ac/blog/tax-accountability-strengthen-links/ https://www.ictd.ac/blog/tax-accountability-strengthen-links...
    - thefounder 6y ago
      What about Iran?
- deepnotderp 6y ago
  Rome had most of that long ago. Some of their field surgery technology in particular was extremely advanced.
- foobar_ 6y ago
  That is a barbaric lie. It's akin to Christians taking credit for the Greco-Roman civilisation. Completely backwards. Persia / Babylon / Sumer was one of the first advanced civilisations. Arabs have contributed nothing to civilisation in terms of anything and are pretty much like the mongols for their role in history.
  - Cyph0n 6y ago
    Speaking in absolutes like that without sources is a great approach... if you don’t want to be taken seriously, that is.
    - foobar_ 6y ago
      In which history book does it say that Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of civilisation and muslims had anything to do with it ? The OP was talking about advanced muslim civilisations when he obviously meant Persia, who were Zoroastrians. I use the word Persia to mean Iran / Iraq / Syria / Turkey and parts of central asia who were fairly advanced in the past and some are still advanced to this day. Muslims did not invent and make anything. Even the so called islamic golden age was a direct result of brain drain from Persia. Arab muslims and Persian muslims are wildly different. Iran has long maintained their pre-islamic language and culture. It was because of Iran's resistance to becoming Arab that any golden age was at all possible. This rivalry persists to this day in the islamic world as Saudi Arabia vs Iran vs Turkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_Iran
      - Cyph0n 6y ago
        > Muslims did not invent and make anything. Again with the absolutes, and again, no sources. You must be a great debater! I am not going to waste my time here ;)
  - dang 6y ago
    We've asked you repeatedly not to post flamebait to HN. If you keep doing it we will ban you. Religious and racial flamewar is particularly unwelcome here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- cscurmudgeon 6y ago
  Same thing happened in India. In fact, there was a lot of Indian influence on Islamic sciences. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_influence_on_Islamic_sc...) But unfortunately, more than just knowledge was exchanged. Imagine universities existing for hundreds of years, but promptly destroyed by invaders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalanda This pattern repeated throughout India for hundreds of years.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
  The Europeans were emptying their chamber pots nearly 1000 years after the Greeks invented most major math theory and were sending water hundreds of miles on aqueducts.
- luckydata 6y ago
  Ehm, plumbing is a bad example since the Romans did that WAY ahead of the Muslim world. For that AND sidewalks, you're welcome. Thanks for the numbers, that was handy.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    > you're welcome I am confused... are you an ancient Roman?
    - luckydata 6y ago
      close, I'm Italian.
      - michaelscott 6y ago
        Not that close
        daseiner1 6y ago
        actually not close at all, if dude is really trying to be Mr. Ancient Rome, well, he’s likelier descended from the “savages” that sacked her than the ancient patricians who led her in glory
        luckydata 6y ago
        why "likelier"? We had invasions and racial mixing like everywhere else in the mediterranean, but that was happening during roman times too. I'm actually more of a cisalpine gaul than a roman myself, but the beauty of the empire was that it was multi cultural and multi racial. Said that, Italians absolutely look like romans, this is a small example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdUPYm06gVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdUPYm06gVc Our language is also the closest to the type of Latin romans spoke during the empire (which itself evolved). I do not understand why it's even controversial, you're making a dumb point.
- econcon 6y ago
  >the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances A lot of which came through Indian traders, first evidences of human surgeries are found in Indian subcontinent, Indus valley civilization had pretty advance irrigation system for the time and mathematics: quadratic equations, notion of zero, notion of limits and inifinty were here in philosophical sense even if no one every applied it in mathematics. In the field of war strategy and material, like steel for sword - India was wayy ahead at its time. They knew about the steel temperament long before Europeans even started using steel for swords. "During the 6th Century BCE, an Indian physician named Sushruta – widely regarded in India as the 'father of surgery' – wrote one of the world's earliest works on medicine and surgery"
  - newyankee 6y ago
    Hell Arabic numerals are actually the Indian nos which trader Arabs exported to Europe. I find the characterisation that Arabs invented no system used in so many places so misleading. It is almost as if western historians do not want to give adequate acknowledgment to South Asia.
- drapred7 6y ago
  Medieval French village https://www.solosophie.com/medieval-town-of-dinan/ https://www.solosophie.com/medieval-town-of-dinan/ Modern Bagdad https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2BD66C-W58 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2BD66C-W58 I dont find any descriptions of specific surgeries here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine_in_the_medieval_Isl...
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  The Muslim world was on the decline from ~1100, before the Mongols were anything of note to them. Yes, the Mongols delivered the coup de grace though.
- dntbnmpls 6y ago
  > Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts Mud huts? Rome was composed of mud hut? The tallest building in the world for almost the entire 2nd millenia was in england. Not exactly "mud huts". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_St_Paul%27s_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_St_Paul%27s_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral https://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-tallest-buildings-throughout-history-2015-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-tallest-buildin... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world%27s_tallest_buildings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_world%27s_talle... I think you are overselling the muslim world and underselling europe a bit. > the Muslim world had plumbing, water filtration, surgery, advanced mathematics, and many more amazing scientific advances which quickly spread throughout Muslim countries due to the cultural exchange at Mecca. Much of it brought to the muslim world by the roman empire and the greeks. Or from the indians/chinese/etc in the east. Of course there were muslim contributions but lets not get too carried away here. > I wonder what the world could have been like if the Mongols had never destroyed so much civilization and progress. The world would be exactly the way it was in the 1200s without the mongols. The muslim world had stagnated by the time the mongols came around. After all the arabic islamic golden age started in the 700s. The mongols destroy arabic islamic civilization but they helped create the turkic islamic civilization of the ottoman empire not to mention the persian centered khanates which went on to create mughal india. Without the mongols, we don't have the italian renaissance and modern europe and without modern europe we don't have modern civilization. The empire created by the mongols is why marco polo went east. It's also why christopher columbus set sail. Without the mongols, we don't have the new world. No doubt, the arab world suffered and lost out, but the world advanced immensely due to the mongols. The mongol empire was the first truly "global" empire. It helped europe bypass the muslim world and trade directly with india, china, etc.
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    >Without the mongols, we don't have the italian renaissance and modern europe and without modern europe we don't have modern civilization. The empire created by the mongols is why marco polo went east. It's also why christopher columbus set sail. Without the mongols, we don't have the new world. I'll take whig historiography for $500, Alex.
- keiferski 6y ago
  Was this incendiary comment really necessary?
- Red_Tarsius 6y ago
  Islam actually slows down scientific progress. The golden age is nothing more than Muslims taking credit for the swan song of conquered cultures. If anything, Islamic culture might be the second worst thing that happened to the middle east after the Mongol invasion. There are many hypotheses as to why Muslim-majority countries produce a disproportionately small share of world scientific output even today. The following paper was an interesting read: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/chaney/files/paper.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/chaney/files/paper.pdf >Most westerners don't realize that when Europeans were living in mud huts and emptying their chamber pots into the streets... North Europeans were more advanced than you're giving them credit for. Different biomes open up different strategies and possibilities. You can't expect a city like Rome – marble and all – in ancient Scandinavia. But we found samples of skilled craftsmanship (nebra sky disk, waldalgesheimer fürstengrab) that go against the cartoon narrative you described.
  - dang 6y ago
    No religious flamewar on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- brokenkebab 6y ago
  "Muslim world" is somewhat misleading glamorizing generalization in all such statements. Pretty much all examples which are used as a proof of the MW comparatively advanced stage at early medieval times come from Iran/Persia, and Middle East. Both were very much advanced well-before Arab conquests, and simply continued to be so. There were many other parts of MW which were much below that level, or which to tge contrary experienced devastation, and decline as a result of the conquest. The Christendom was very uneven too, of course. And lots if people lived in mud huts in both realms. Also, blaming Mongols as if they were the sole destroyers is absolutely incorrect.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    The arab conquests were like ~700, we're talking about hundreds of years later. I think 'the muslim world' can take some credit for developments on that timeframe.
- frozenport 6y ago
  Were the Byzantines European?
- eternalban 6y ago
  Not sure if Mongols are -entirely- responsible for the decline. We should also consider the shift of international trade from land to sea, and subsequent loss of contact with external world, as the possible culprit. (Consider the Ottomans, for example). That said, here's a famous quote: O would that my mother had never borne me, that I had died before and that I were forgotten [so] tremendous disaster such as had never happened before, and which struck all the world, though the Muslims above all . . . Dadjdjal [Muslim Anti-Christ] will at least spare those who adhere to him, and will only destroy his adversaries. These [Mongols], however, spared none. They killed women, men, children, ripped open the bodies of the pregnant and slaughtered the unborn. - Ibn al-Athir (1233–1160)
emmelaich 6y ago
A modern equivalent (sorta) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire

deathgrips 6y ago

Another example is shutting down What.cd, which was a digital library that had an unbelievably large collection of music. Many titles couldn't be found anywhere except on What.cd.

bfors 6y ago
Granted, a lot of that music probably wasn't amazing. But as an archive and community what.cd was unmatched, and I'm still upset that it's gone. RIP
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
License holders honestly can't be trusted with archiving or distributing their own works. So much music and movies is available in inferior or compromised formats if you go through the versions available on the market today from the license owners.
- coldpie 6y ago
  The effectively-infinite copyright length that was introduced in the 1970s (yes, that recent!) definitely belongs in the same discussion as the burning of Alexandria. We haven't even begun to realize how much culture we've sacrificed at the foot of Disney and other copyright maximalists.
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  Annecdote: My dad collects plastic model kits. A major model kit company asked him if he could scan the lid of one of their products they made decades ago, so that they could have the artwork to re-release the same model. I think LEGO Group is good about this; they have a vault containing a copy of every product they ever made.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

Ironically, purely from an amoral preservation point of view, having the antiquities in a museum in the United States or Western Europe has a higher chance of preserving the artifact for future generations.

jhbadger 6y ago
That's the argument that the British Museum uses to justify its collection (much of which was obtained through colonialism). Many countries (even Western ones like Greece) would like their stuff back.
hrktb 6y ago
Granted. Though there’s an argument on what preserving the antiquities is for in the first place. If we think there is a value provided to visitors seeing them in person, then preserving them far away deprives the Iraqi from these benefits making the preservation neutral at best in the short/middle term (long term? will it ever come back ?). It might feel like having your pet living abroad in a shelter, on one side it gets to live, on the other it doesn’t help you much to cope with your life.
MandieD 6y ago
Aside from a couple brief but extremely violent periods this past century, sure. The city I live by had its old town reduced to rubble in 1944-45 and is still rebuilding, despite being in one of the most prosperous regions of a rich, powerful country. The Germanisches National Museum wasn't spared, and they still lost stuff, despite preparing for bombardment. Countless works of art were destroyed throughout the city, despite the citizenry's pride in their cultural heritage. Or maybe because of an excess of pride in that cultural heritage, if you look at the big picture... I'm talking about Nuremberg/Nürnberg, of course. I love living here now, but oh boy was the evil of an evil time concentrated here. It's hard to reconcile the lovely place I live now with what I grew up learning about it, to the extent that I think of it as Nürnberg today, but Nuremberg when considering the horrors of the 30s and 40s. Big Western countries don't have constant, low-level instability like our former colonies - we have rare but all-encompassing blowouts. We've just been lucky in the US and Canada that geography protected us for so long (aside from the evil various European powers visited upon people we encountered or forcibly brought there). More historically, think about spasmodic but intense episodes in the West, like the iconoclastism during the Protestant Reformation. Good luck to any ancient religious art that happened to be in Switzerland at the time... and think about the various flavors of religious nuttery in the US, now being concentrated and inflamed with social media. The Hobby Lobby founders fortunately wanted these artifacts as evidence for their flavor of religious nuttery, but what would have stopped them from acquiring artifacts that they felt needed to be destroyed?

grumple 6y ago

This is basically the plot to Three Kings, which was set during our first time in Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(1999_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(1999_film)

deepnotderp 6y ago

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria was neither intentional nor absolute. A better example is the burning of the House of Wisdom by the Ilkhanate Mongols

legerdemain 6y ago
My point was that people often point to the burning of the Library of Alexandria as some kind of pivotal tragedy in Western history. But in reality, the world loses huge chunks of unique stuff in our time, irretrievably. Stuff like animal species and human communities and one-of-a-kind historic artifacts. We then soon forget that anything was lost and tell each other just-so stories with zero historical perspective.

khawkins 6y ago

Given the region's susceptibility to Islamic State uprisings, I'm not convinced Iraq and Syria are going to be good stewards of antiquities in the long-run. [1][2] These areas haven't been stable for decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_heritage_by_ISIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_cultural_herita... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Mosul_Museum_artifacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Mosul_Museum_ar...

sonofhans 6y ago
Well, one of these artifacts looks to have been in that region of the world for over 5000 years. That's a pretty good track record. I'm sure the citizens of Philly wouldn't be susceptible to any arguments that Baghdad would be a better place to store the Liberty Bell.
- cm2187 6y ago
  That’s not a very good argument. ISIS has destroyed a lot of artefacts and antique ruins. The track record, even recent, is actually pretty bad.
- Torok 6y ago
  Your first point makes sense but your second just isn't comparable in any way at all seeing as Baghdad is literally one of the most inhospitable places to live at the moment
- nyolfen 6y ago
  it was sitting underground and unknown to men for almost all of time
nemo 6y ago
It's worth thinking through the question of whether Iraq or Syria would not be entitled to see stolen property returned due to destabilization. Right now the possessor of the stolen property is an American who also has trafficked in a number of items which were looted in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq (this particular tablet was stolen earlier). Art theft is a real issue in the US and Europe. If an art thief stole then sold a painting owned by an American to someone in China, would you support seeing the stolen property returned to the original owner? Would you take seriously the idea that the owner wasn't entitled to have their stolen property returned since there was a non-trivial chance the art could be stolen again?

djsumdog 6y ago

The documentary No End in Sight talks a lot about the looting of national museums. It was tragic and entirely preventable, but the US did not commit enough troops and did not have a plan for reconstruction or securing anything other than oil fields.

lopmotr 6y ago

Something 1000s of years old hardly belongs to any particular modern country. Perhaps if whoever is looking after it can't protect it from theft, they don't deserve to be looking after it and it's better that it got stolen. If an entire country is too weak to protect artifacts, then they should be given to somewhere that has that capability. Who would want to return artifacts to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan just because the Taliban happened to control that piece of land at the time? Nobody cares about some little political group on the scale of 1000s of years.

daseiner1 6y ago
so you feel the same about the elgin marbles, presumably? because i absolutely adored seeing them at the British Museum, but it sorta feels to me like they ought to be returned to Athens
- lopmotr 6y ago
  I don't know what they are but if they were stolen, then obviously it was unable to protect them at that time. No, I don't think ancient Greek artifacts belong to modern Greek people or the modern Greece country. Perhaps they could just as well belong to the EU and be kept in any EU country. Who decides what political entities are the true heirs?

cm2187 6y ago

It depends on the definition of lost. I would argue that an artefact is better protected in a museum in Washington DC rather than in a country in a state of civil war. Then the debate isn't so much about being lost, but whether the artefact should be located in the country where it was originally created, thousands of years ago. And I think you can see it both ways. I don't understand people who identify themselves to the population that lived on the same territory centuries ago. It is a different people, a different culture, and there might be some trace of that culture left (like there are traces of the roman empire culture left all over europe), there might be some artefacts, some monuments left. But they are really a foreign people to the current inabitants. So should St Mark's Basilica in venice be destroyed to return the looted parts to Turkey? Or should the Lyxor obelisk on the place de la Concorde in Paris be returned to Egypt? I don't think so.

chx 6y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t6op5/facts_about_the_library_of_alexandria/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t6op5/facts... > > I am curious about what knowledge was lost in the fire, > Probably next to nothing, and certainly nothing of importance was lost. Alexandria was hardly the only library in the world, and the libraries at Pergamum and later Rome herself rivaled Alexandria in scale. Antony replaced the losses of the fire during the Alexandrine War with copies made from the library at Pergamum, and libraries in gymnasia or simply founded for citizens abound during that period in the Greek world, they're in like literally every city of any size. > We do not lose texts because of catastrophic events that wipe out all copies of them. We lose texts because they stop being copied. Also check https://www.ancient.eu/article/207/what-happened-to-the-great-library-at-alexandria/ https://www.ancient.eu/article/207/what-happened-to-the-grea...