On Nov 12, 2008, at 9:44 AM, William Conger wrote:
So what's your beef? The Persepolis Bull is heavily restored and yet remains on view.
I am impressed and intrigued when I see such restorations, such as pottery or in this case, a statue. I appreciate the ability of the restorers to figure out where the discontinuous pieces fit in the whole picture--which, to be sure, takes an imaginative elasticity to "see" the entire design or scene or figure only from the fragments. Equally impressive is the restoration of ancient written texts, which are carefully reassembled from the badly damaged originals. (For a contemporary parallel to this task, remember that when the Iranian students stormed the US embassy in 1978, the embassy staff shredded sensitive documents to prevent sensitive information from being disclosed. The students painstakingly reassembled the shreds to reveal many things the US didn't want revealed. And remember, English was not only a foreign language, but a foreign script to them.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady [EMAIL PROTECTED]
