gradical

(Cylinder seal of First Dynasty of Ur Queen Puabi, found in her tomb, dated circa 2600 BC, with modern impression. Inscription: 𒅤𒀜 𒎏 - Pu3-abi(AD) Nin - Queen Pu-abi. Nicked straight off Wikipedia as it's a fab comparison of seal / relief.)

In the British Museum you can find "Lady Layard's jewellery". Austin Henry Layard is a guy whose academic efforts I'm admittedly very indebted to. He was passionate about Venetian and Roman glass and did a great job re-popularising both styles in the UK, but more importantly he was the assyriologist who excavated Nineveh and the Library of Ashurbanipal—where we've found the majority of the Gilgamesh tablets. Pioneer figure in terms of Near Eastern archaeology... but check this out:

This is a necklace Layard had made for his wife. It uses real cylinder seals.

To quote the British Museum's entry on the item: One cylinder seal is Akkadian (about 2200 BC) and four belong to the second millennium BC, but eight are late Assyrian (about 1000-612 BC). Late Babylonian and Achaemenid stamp seals (about 600-350 BC) are used for the pendants and clasp.

Enid later wrote in her diary that, when they dined with Queen Victoria in 1873, it was 'much admired'.

Ancient Near Eastern artefacts, repurposed as jewellery in a set that doesn't give a single fuck about accurately dating them, let alone treating them with the sort of respect you might perhaps expect of items over four thousand years old. Instead they've become a mark of elite colonial status, an Oriental curiosity utterly separated from their historical context. They're 'old'. They're non-descriptly 'other'. Time and place dissolve into an attractive and vague exoticism.

All while the place these seals have been appropriated from is busy being exploited by the very empire this "jewellery" is being shown off to!

It never should have been done like this, because it voids the seals of all meaning and turns them into a curiosity, but at least there's no significant damage to be expected and it retains the original intention to some degree.

Meanwhile, the medaillons Zendaya wore are, if I remember correctly, usually meant to be stitched to fabric or nailed to wood (you can see the holes intended for their application to something slightly to the viewer-left of the place the earring is attached). They're thin sheet metal and won't hold up well to hanging freely, attached only to a small point at the very edge of the disk, not to speak of the damage the attachment itself is bound to do.

So while Lady Layard's jewellery is in bad taste and undeniably orientalist, the damage done to the artefacts is likely minimal, while Zendaya's earrings actively altered the artifacts beyond their intended use and likely damaged them in the process.

you're racist and think there's no way racialized students could write an essay this good

you need to decrease your class average because it's the end of the semester and you haven't met your target average

one of your TAs gave out too many As and you don't want to regrade anything

you haven't redesigned your course in years and students have gotten advice on how to write their essay from past students

you're pissed off at a student with disability accommodations for making you do extra work

you want to feel powerful

you got into a fight with your wife

you want to bond with other professors over how lazy kids are these days and swap juicy stories about students crying in your office

(this is in reference to the zendaya's "ziwiye" earrings)

hey anon, i ended up writing a whole piece about this on my substack here: https://substack.com/@amoneill/note/p-207181232?r=31paxg&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web if you are still interested. this is obviously my perspective as a classicist and someone who's interested in the antiquities market + cultural heritage issues, but if you or anyone else has any writing on this by an iranian author to recommend please do!

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by Louise Glück