Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800

Two: The Many Dimensions of the Antiquary’s Practice

58 We are in the habit of considering the past a continent which is the privileged territory for our Western conception of history to explore. Although Arnaldo Momigliano, in a famous essay, drew our attention to “alien wisdom,”1 we only pay distracted attention to antiquaries who are not European, and it is indeed rare that we investigate the different types of antiquarian practices in various civilizations. The idea behind this volume is to take a comparative approach with the aim of elucidating both the similarities and differences between China and the Western world. The first step toward this is to reflect on the very essence of antiquarian practices. In his canonical definition, Momigliano distinguishes between the antiquary and the historian. Of course both collect information and attempt to interpret ancient times, but the exercise of their curiosity differs . The reason, he says, is that the historian explores history through problems, favoring the order of time. The antiquary, on the other hand, is interested in all kinds of documents as long as they are ancient: their form, their type, and the way they were made. These themselves are the problems which appeal to the antiquary’s curiosity. Paul Petau, one of the forerunners of antiquarian curiosity in the seventeenth century, would affirm with pride, “I want nothing if it is not antique” (“nihil peto sine antiqua”).2 In investigating this curiosity about the past in terms of its material components—objects and monuments—I am well aware that the very concept of monument varies from one culture to the next and that my questions lead me to favor literate societies. However, this Two The Many Dimensions of the Antiquary’s Practice Alain Schnapp The Many Dimensions of the Antiquary’s Practice 59 investigation seems to me to respond to the challenge of comparing these two traditions, the Western and the Chinese, which each present a unique interpretation of the dialogue and rivalry between text and monument. What remains to be defined is what one means by “Occidental” tradition : the Egyptians and Mesopotamians are not Europeans, but their contribution to what we might call “the processes of memory” inspired Greeks and Romans in antiquity, and then through them, in the Renaissance , modern Europeans. (The nineteenth and twentieth century impact of these civilizations, once their texts became legible, is beyond the scope of this essay or volume, but suggests the extent of an ongoing relationship.) For, if we accept that the Western science of studying antiquities , which preceded archaeology in the modern sense of the word, represents one pole in a wide spectrum of investigative techniques of the past, and the Chinese tradition the opposite pole, there is room left to define the means that the ancient Egyptians, the ancient Mesopotamians , and even others used to explore the past. We must of course remember that Prehistoric man was somewhat aware of the past and that he sometimes attempted to retain traces of it. André Leroi-Gourhan has brought our attention to a “collection of curiosities”—strange fossils, rare or exotic stones—placed in the postMousterian layers of the Grotte de l’hyène in Arcy-sur-Cure. No matter the exact status of these precise objects, similar “collections” have been discovered by other pre-historians in different contexts. This therefore leads us to believe that there is a curiosity deeply rooted in the human conscience that is interested in what is not usual, in what is distant or strange. If we accept this hypothesis, every society—from the huntergatherers to the largest of the Empires—was in one way or another curious about the past and developed various techniques to explore it. Collingwood, who was one of the richest thinkers about historical method, did not hesitate to talk about “theocratic history,” even about “quasi history,” to describe the way ancient Mesopotamians wrote about history.3 In attempting to define the Egyptian and Mesopotamian approach , I will identify the foundational elements that determined—and determine still—the relationship between man and the past. In doing so, I am well aware that paying attention to the past is not history—in the Greek sense of the term historia—but I am persuaded that the collection , extracation, and restoration of objects and monuments defined as ancient is a part of the process that can lead to history by going down both the material and the immaterial path of memory. 60 Antiquarianism and Intellectual...