Footprints

On Thursday I was caught in horrible traffic as I drove the expressway into Dallas to see the Etruscan exhibit at the Meadows Museum. All four southbound lanes were packed with cars bumper-to-bumper.

“Why am I doing this?” I asked myself as my Elantra crept forward at 10 miles an hour. Who cares about the Etruscans anyway? They were conquered by the Romans and their name and culture disappeared before 150 B.C. I should say “virtually” disappeared, using the word like we now say “virtual reality” for computer games.

In Dallas, the Ancient Etruscans have been trumped by Ancient Egyptians. The Dallas Museum of Art has the big “King Tut” show of objects from tombs in Ancient Egypt. I admit I saw the “Tut” first and only came to the Etruscans when I realized I had to hurry before the SMU exhibit closes. Southern Methodist University has a "dig" in an Etruscan archeological site in Tuscany. All of its “finds” must be kept in Italy. In return the archeological museum in Florence loaned some of its treasures to this exhibition at SMU’s Meadows Museum.

The Etruscan show fascinated me – well worth the discomfort of being stopped in traffic for almost an hour in a drive which should have taken less than half that time. I listened to classical music on the car’s radio. Not a bad way to spend an hour on a Thursday afternoon.

The Meadows is housed in a big, marble, neo-classic box of a building, a kind of 20th Century version of an over-sized Roman temple. I took the elevator up to the second floor, where one wing is used for temporary shows. The central room is a 50-foot cube, reminding me of the sanctuary of a Protestant Church. Right now it displays a collection of statues of life-sized, fat, toga-clad, stone Etruscans, lying on their carved stone caskets and holding in their hands offerings to their gods.

I was more interested in the side galleries with glass cases displaying more intimate objects. Little cards dated the items from the 9th to the 2nd Century B.C. The painted designs on early ceramic pots are similar to the ones hand-crafted by Pueblo Indians in New Mexico. Quite different were the elaborate gold and bronze “safety pins” used to hold togas in place before the invention of buttons and button holes. Gold earrings with dangling stones could be worn today. Also looking quite contemporary were bronze ladles and tweezers. An Etruscan touch: an implement on a bronze brazier ended with a replica of a little human hand, cupped to rake the hot coals.

After pouring over the 400 objects until my feet hurt, I stepped out the front door of the museum and met the setting sun. I tuned and saw a cube of marble, the base of a statue which had been removed. I have no idea why the statue was gone, but it provided a place to set my purse while I dug for my keys and sunglasses. Instead of the statue, “footprints” showed where the figure’s feet had been attached to the marble. Instantly I was transported mentally back to a hot August day in Olympia, Greece. I had stopped to rest on a piece of marble beside the avenue which had once been lined with statues of heroes at the original Olympic games. There, too, I saw footprints, and at that moment, somehow the ghosts of the Ancient Greeks came alive to me.

Going to museums and reading history reminds me that these were real people living through difficult times. The times are always difficult. The Etruscan woman, dipping up stew from her bronze kettle, worried about how to deal with the Romans, just as the American mother, serving her family Campbell’s chicken-noodle soup, worries about terrorists.

I read Herodotus. About 450 B.C. this Greek, “the father of history”, traveled to Egypt. He marveled at the pyramids, which were already 2,000 years old! Think about that. Today we hear doomsday sayers: “The end is coming!” Perhaps instead, we, like Herodotus, are just one era in the long line of history. A thousand years from now people may look back and call us Ancient Americans. Will they say we lived in another Dark Age? Or is this the beginning of an era of worldwide peace and prosperity?