“Obviously we want to celebrate the centennial of this amazing event,” Rosenow says, “but we also want to interrogate it. Above all, we really wanted to showcase the Egyptian team, whose hard work has been overlooked for 100 years. A lot of them did very demanding physical labor, but others had their own expertise.” Carter had been working in Egypt for 30 years before unearthing Tutankhamun’s tomb, she notes, and in that time, he had come to appreciate and rely on the deep knowledge of local people, who had lived near the Valley of the Kings—where Tutankhamun and other pharaohs were laid to rest—for generations. “These people knew that territory,” Rosenow says.

~ Amy Crawford from, What We Overlooked in King Tut’s Tomb

It’s well-understood that crimes were committed. I choose the word crime, because I wouldn’t characterize what western societies have done in their self-asserted efforts to preserve history, as “mistakes”; Mistakes are something you didn’t mean to do. And Tut’s tomb was perfectly preserved for 32 centuries without western intervention. All that said, it’s a great step to see a large, well–done exhibition about some of the things that were ignored or glossed over at best, and were outright exploitation at worst.

Another negative thread to tug at from this article would be to ask what—pray tell!—will remain from western civilizations after 32 centuries? It’d be nice if the civilization itself remained. I think that’s a good bet. But in terms of artifacts? …nuclear waste seems like a good guess. (Although, I have a dream that once we get nuclear fusion power generation working at industrial scales, we’ll be able to inject all sorts of waste into the process. If you tear anything down to it’s nucleic components, the plasma of loose protons, neutrons and electrons is all just the same soup.) But on a more positive note, https:longnow.org has some neat projects in mind aimed at surviving 100 centuries.

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