Dilemma at Pakistan’s National Museum: save it or trash it?

One example of many is the looting of some 395 rare artifacts that had been seized in 2012 as they were underway to Faisalabad, Pakistan. The experts claim that they belong to the Gandhara Civilization (see: Old Buddhist complex discovered in Pakistan) and may have originated from Taxila and Mehrgarh both in modern Pakistan. 

Looting and smuggling is of all times and happens everywhere – unfortunately! We praise ourselves when the police track down the culprits and their precious cargo in order to return it either to its initial finding place or to the nearby museum where, we assume, the unique artifacts will be taken care of. 

[Picture from Archaeology News Network]

Sadly, in the present case, such a straightforward assumption is far from reality as it involves the National Museum of Karachi. It has transpired recently that hundreds of artifacts and dozens of archaeological sites have been seriously neglected by the country’s authorities responsible for the preservation of antiquities. Among these objects are five sculptures of Buddha heads, three of them standing four feet tall and two about three feet. Instead of being carefully studied, cataloged and stored away, they have been found on top of a pile of garbage at said Museum of Karachi. 

This clearly illustrates the incompetence and carelessness of the government officials in place. Lying there in plain sight for many months, exposed to wind and weather, there is no excuse for such negligence! Antiquity robbers and looters are pointed with the finger and highly condemned, whereas government officials are able to get away with such a crime – because it is a crime! 

It has been reported by museum employees who want to remain anonymous that rare treasures from the Indus Valley and similar civilizations have also found their way to the museum’s dump site. The director, however, claims that a total 100,000 objects in stone, wood, metal and even paper are carefully checked and stored; adding that every single piece inside and outside the museum building has been carefully recorded. The museum’s most valuable piece is the statue of the King Priest from Mohenjo-daro, and which the Director says is safely stored away. It is rarely on display, although copies may be shown. 

Whatever is happening in Karachi remains obscure, to say the least, but there is no smoke without a fire and I find it extremely upsetting when our heritage is mistreated in such a manner!

The Hippodamian plan, not so Greek after all

Where does an idea originate? Who is the first to “invent” this or that concept? In our modern world, we often hear that the true inventor is not the one who claims the invention to be his, either because the initial creator did not have the means to promote his idea or because he simply didn’t protect it with a copyright.

In antiquity, copyright did not exist, of course, and ideas traveled back and forth in the baggage of the merchants or in the minds of the craftsmen sold as slaves or moved from their homeland for whatever reason.

The grid plan of city building is largely attributed to Hippodamus of Miletus, a Greek mathematician, meteorologist, philosopher, and physician from the 5^th century BC, who also was known as a town planner. He planned the building of many cities around the Mediterranean, the first of which could be the harbor of Piraeus. He also was involved in the reconstruction of Miletus after the Persian destruction, to be followed by the construction of cities like Olynthus and Pella in Greece. His ideal city would be inhabited by 10,000 male citizens, which would correspond to a total of 50,000 people including women, children, and slaves. It would typically have a large central area that soon became the agora, surrounded by neighborhoods of 240 m2 blocks of houses with an upper floor and separated by a wall, all facing south.

Digging a little further into history, it turns out the layout of Babylon was equally following the same grid plan with right-angle streets and the city must have looked very familiar to Alexander when he arrived there in 331 BC. Although Babylon is much older, the city was rebuilt by the Assyrians who made it the capital of their Neo-Babylonian Empire between 609 and 539 BC. King Nebuchadnezzar II, who reigned from 605 to 562 BC, added the famous ziggurat and the Ishtar Gate, one of the eight entries to the city. The Hanging Gardens, which counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, were also constructed by him. Based on the available descriptions of Babylon, the grid plan was already known in Asia over a century before Hippodamus claimed his “invention”.

Yet, there is more to the ancestry of the so-called ideal Greek city layout. We have to go back 4,500 years in time and all the way to the Indus Valley where cities like Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa were founded using the very same layout. These cities had a central agora, large public baths, a large central well, and many small wells serving individual houses or a cluster of houses; the sewage was led to drains running under the main streets and many houses had their own bathroom. Both cities were large settlements belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization and located on the banks of the now dried-up Ghaggar-Hakra River, west of the Indus River.

With the coming of Islam and the general decline of the Middle Ages, we in the West lost this marvelously well-organized city planning till it was revived in the 20^th century all over the globe, from Asia to the Americas. Pending whatever discoveries will be made in the future, for now, Hippodamus’ “invention” is just some two thousand years older than generally accepted.

[Picture of Mohenjo-Daro from Assignment Point]