Egypt Khedivate Judge's Badge question

[Elmar Lang]

Hello again,

 

I perfectly understand your words: in the past years, I've also been involved in the activities of archaeological excavation and the cataloguing/documentation of the excavations' results. My late wife (we met on the site of an excavation south of Rome) had a degree in Conservation/Restauration of archaeological artifacts... I think I perfectly understand your points and your observations.

 

Prof. Mericka once said (echoing the words of Oldrich Pilc) that phaleristic can be a branch of social siences and I agree: Orders and Decorations are not what we find in an excavation and they can tell us more than a piece of a broken vessel, but nonetheless, we try to put pieces, fragments, witnesses of the past together and try to understand their meaning, trying to accomplish a task that sometimes is far beyond our possibilities, but at least it's worth to try.

 

Understanding the past, through findings: on this subject, I would like to remember here, an exhibition held at the "Musée Romain" of Lausanne-Vidy (Switzerland), in 2002-2003: "Futur Antérieur", where the organizing committee, led by the then director, Dr. Laurent Flutsch, presented a rich series of pieces from our modern times (rubbish, mostly), broken cups, fragments of computers, buttons, etc., all artificially aged (in a very convincing way!) to look like being 1.000 or 2.000 years old: everything put in showcases with accurate descriptions explaining how archaeologists interpreted those artifacts. The exhibition, was accompanied by a very well made catalogue, where the very seriously and professionally written descriptions, were humourous or hilarious for us knowing what the artifacts on exhibit actually were.

 

In the truth, that exhibition, besides its success, was an invitation to think about the scientifical approach to the past.

 

Excuse me for the off-topic,

 

Enzo

Edited August 12 by Elmar Lang

[Rusty Greaves]

Hardly off-topic Enzo! Even orders & medals are material culture that have a behavioral background and individual histories that are part of the excitement of studying them. Hence the many researchers here on GMIC interested in photos, information from medal rolls, textual references, etc. 

 

Cheers, 🍻

 

Rusty