National Museum of Brazil Fire Should Come as a Warning

You may or may not have read about the devastating fire that engulfed the National Museum of Brazil three days ago on September 2, 2018. The museum housed over 20 million objects, including the largest collection of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman artifacts in Latin America and one of the largest in the entire western hemisphere. While the extent of the destruction has not yet been fully assessed, it is highly probable that nearly all the artifacts in these collections were destroyed or irreparably damaged by the fire. The entire interior of the building appears to have been reduced to nothing but ash and broken rubble. Worst of all, this destruction was not a freak accident of nature or an inevitable result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; this disaster was entirely preventable. It was entirely the result of sheer human carelessness.

A brief summary of just a few of the things that were probably destroyed forever

The National Museum of Brazil’s collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts contained more than 700 individual items. Among the most precious items in the collection was the ornate painted wood sarcophagus of Sha-amun-en-su, dating to the Egyptian twenty-third dynasty during the Third Intermediate Period, or around 750 BC. The sarcophagus was among the very few that had never been opened, meaning the mummy inside was still completely intact.

ABOVE: Photograph of the sarcophagus of Sha-amun-en-su (c. 750 BC), which was extremely precious, both for its ornate design and for the fact that it had never been opened, meaning the mummy inside was still intact.

The museum also held three other sarcophagi from roughly the same time period belonging to three priests of the sun-god Amun: Harsiese, Hori, and Pestjef, as well as an additional six Egyptian mummies without sarcophagi. The highlight of the collection, however, was a female mummy from the Roman Period known as “Princess Kherima,” which was one of only nine known surviving mummies whose fingers and toes are bound separately with painted strips. The mummy was one of the most popular exhibits in the museum and was associated with a number of paranormal events that allegedly occurred in the 1960s. According to Cristiano Serejo, the entire Egyptology collection was completely destroyed by the fire.

ABOVE: The mummy of the so-called “Princess Kherima” was one of only nine known mummies of its kind and had acquired quite a legend surrounding it on account of the alleged supernatural events associated with it from half a century ago.

The National Museum of Brazil’s classical civilizations collection contained more than 750 individual items from Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Italiote civilizations. These included four frescoes from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii, dating to the first century AD. Two of the frescoes displayed marine animals (including the mythical cetus), while the others depicted nesting birds. These frescoes survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD because the temple they were inside protected them from the mountains of falling ash and soot. Now they have almost certainly been destroyed.

ABOVE: Four well-preserved first-century AD Roman frescoes from the Temple of Isis in Pompeii that were housed in the National Museum of Brazil and almost certainly destroyed in the fire.

In addition to the four frescoes from the famous ancient city, the National Museum of Brazil also contained a vast collection of items from everyday ancient life, including a large collection of ancient Greek ceramics, with specimens representing nearly all the most important periods, styles, and painters. The museum also held works of Greek and Roman sculpture.

ABOVE: Roman bronze Phalaera with the face of Medusa

ABOVE: First-century alabaster statue of a female nude torso from Veio in southern Italy

ABOVE: A remarkably well-preserved Greek oinochoe from the city of Corinth, dated to the early archaic period (c. 600-575 BC), predating nearly all extant works of Greek literature except the Homeric and Hesiodic poems

ABOVE: Fifth-century BC Greek marble kore. Original Greek sculptures are extremely rare, with most extant works being later Roman copies based on earlier Greek originals. Also note that the feet bear unmistakable traces of their original pigment.

The National Museum of Brazil also contained the largest collection of Brazilian archaeological artifacts in the world, along with one of the largest collections of pre-Columbian civilizations in general. The linguistics section of the museum, which is already confirmed to have been completely destroyed, contained the only copies of thousands of recordings of indigenous South American languages, many of which are now extinct, that the museum has invested massive resources into collecting ever since 1958. Cira Gonda, a Brazilian linguistics expert, called the destruction of these recordings “an irreparable loss of our historic memory” and lamented, “It just hurts so much to see all in ashes.”

Possibly the most devastating single-item loss were the bones of the Luzia Woman, which may be the oldest human bones ever found in the Americas. These bones were discovered in 1975 and were carbon-dated in 2013 to between 8,086 and 8,020 BC. The destruction of these bones represents an immeasurable loss to our understanding of the origins of native Americans. Scientists had only extracted a tiny fraction of the information those bones contained and their destruction is nothing short of a catastrophe.

ABOVE: The bones of the Luiza Woman, which may be the oldest human remains ever discovered in the Americas

The objects made of wood, cloth, human remains, and other flammable materials were destroyed beyond a doubt. Some of the metal and stone artifacts may have fared better, but, even for them, the chances of any one item having survived in any recognizable state is extremely slim. These massive fires consuming whole buildings often burn at temperatures hot enough to crack stone and melt iron. Additionally, the collapse of the ceilings and floors mean that objects may have fallen multiple stories or been crushed by other falling objects. Stone usually crumbles when it falls from such a height and that is most likely what happened to the statues and other sculptures in the National Museum of Brazil’s collection.

What caused this fire?

While the direct cause of the fire is yet to be determined, there is no doubt that the indirect cause was the fact that the building was not being properly maintained. Starting in 2014, the Brazilian government massively cut the amount of funds allocated to the museum for maintenance to less than 520,000 Brazilian reals per year. By the time of the fire, the building was in a state of atrocious disrepair; walls were peeling, electrical wires were exposed, and whole rooms were closed to the public because they were unsafe. The room housing the museum’s most popular attraction, an assembly of a replica skeleton of Maxakalisaurus, the first large dinosaur ever discovered in Brazil, was closed to the public due to overwhelming amounts of termite damage.

The lack of funding was so hopeless that professors who worked at the museum had to start running fundraisers just to pay for basic cleaning. The museum had no fire-suppression system beyond a few smoke detectors and fire extinguishers, but the smoke detectors were so old that they did not go off when the fire started. To make matters even worse, the fire hydrants closest to the museum did not even have water in them. With maintenance levels this appalling, it is hardly surprising that a fire broke out. Indeed, it would rather have been almost shocking if a fire had not broken out.

ABOVE: Replica reconstructed skeleton of Maxakalisaurus, the largest dinosaur ever discovered in Brazil and the museum’s most popular attraction. The room housing it was closed due to extensive termite damage at the time of the fire.

Another fact that makes this disaster all the more baffling is that, in December 2015, Brazil opened the massive Museum of Tomorrow, a science museum built in Neofuturistic architectural style, which reportedly cost 213 million Brazilian reals to build, over 409 and a half times the National Museum of Brazil’s entire annual maintenance budget. Clearly, the Brazilian government was willing to pay massive amounts of money for museums, but only for science museums. Museums housing historical and cultural artifacts, on the other hand, clearly did not matter to them.

ABOVE: The Museum of Tomorrow, built in 2015, cost over 213 million Brazilian reals and was built in time for Rio’s hosting of the 2016 Summer Olympics, while the National Museum of Brazil was left massively underfunded and in a state of extreme disrepair.

What we should learn from this

We should take this disaster as a lesson and recognize that (gasp) museums, libraries, and universities require funding for everyday maintenance and, when they are not being properly maintained, they fall into disrepair, making tragedies like this one a high probability. The National Museum of Brazil is far from the only museum in the world that is massively underfunded. The problem, of course, is that politicians and people who allocate funds for these matters do not seem to realize the value or importance of historical and cultural artifacts.

The treasures that were housed in this museum and that are still housed in others like it around the world are part of our human heritage. It is important that we preserve them, not only so that we can study them and learn more about our ancestors, but also so that our posterity may continue to study and admire them just as we do today. This is no easy task. We cannot just waves our hands and make history magically be kept safe; it takes deliberate and conscious effort to preserve the past. Artifacts need to be housed and carefully protected and it costs money to maintain both the artifacts themselves and the buildings in which we store them. Unfortunately, the lessons of history have already repeatedly shown that, if we do not value our history, then we are destined to lose it forever. Let us hope that we grow better at heading those lessons before there is nothing left for us to preserve.