Since this was my first time visiting the National Museum of Korea (in Seoul), it was naturally my first time checking out a special exhibition like this. As long as I've lived in Korea, I don't think I've ever seen foreign historical artifacts in person rather than on TV. Or maybe my memory is just that fuzzy. Let's just say I haven't. So I was looking forward to it, and since the exhibition happened to be about Islamic culture—which I've never experienced—my anticipation doubled, and I started getting as excited as a kid going to Everland (a major theme park) for the first time. Of course, this excitement was strictly limited to the organ in charge of my mind: my brain. The rest of my body, which usually spends its days lying down in a 5-square-meter room, was preparing to go on strike after walking around for four hours. You need good stamina even to have fun; I felt like I was dying.
Roads of Arabia
I'm not sure if the price for special exhibitions is always the same, but admission for "Roads of Arabia" is 6,000 KRW for adults. They set the price at a sweet spot where it's hard to say if it's expensive or cheap. It's fine when paying for myself, but a bit burdensome if I had to buy a ticket for a friend. It's about the price of a few packs of Chapagetti instant noodles. They were also selling an audio guide app, but I didn't think I'd need it that badly plus, I'm unemployed, so I just walked in with my camera. Inside, the exhibition hall feels more than just exotic; it feels like stepping into a cave. The space is dark, with spotlights shining only on the artifacts. I thought it perfectly captured the slightly mysterious vibe of Islamic culture, which made it really easy for me to focus.
The exhibition starts its story with artifacts from a time when the desert was green. Among them, artifacts from the Tayma region are the main focus. Aside from a few pieces, I mostly just skimmed through, so I didn't really grasp the overall flow. Wasn't the overall flow supposed to be the important part?
I hadn't walked far before the artifact from the poster appeared. It's a stone statue made around 4,000 BCE. Considering that artifacts found in Korea from a similar period are mostly pottery and arrowheads, the fact that this region produced works of art suggests their economic and cultural levels were on a completely different scale.A cup made of coral limestone. The material and pattern make it look exactly like plastic.The text at the bottom is Greek for "Farewell." It's a tombstone found in Arabia from the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, yet it uses Greek. Greek must have been a lingua franca back then, much like English is today. There's a reason the Romans learned Greek after conquering Greece.This is a bed leg.A golden mask and glove worn by a young girl. East or West, it seems that when a precious family member of a wealthy household died, they covered them in gold. I'm really glad that tradition is gone now. If it weren't... yikes.A bowl from around 1,000 BCE. Around this time, comb-pattern pottery was being made in Korea. Was there some kind of exchange? The artifacts from these two very distant cultures don't look all that different.The Stele of Nabonidus. It's evidence that King Nabonidus of Assyria stayed in Tayma, but you can't see a thing on the stele itself; you have to look at the rubbing next to it to make out even a ti~ny bit of the shape. Honestly, even looking at the rubbing, I couldn't tell what was what, so I just moved on.A tombstone. It was made BCE, but it gives off Picasso vibes. I feel like this design would be pretty popular even if it were used today.The background behind it is a video. They played a lot of videos, but I wish they had dubbed them.From here on, it's artifacts from the Al-Ula region. There was a map with explanations about the area, but I forgot to take a picture of it. If you go in person and look at the artifacts while referencing that map, you'll understand why it's called "Roads of Arabia." I didn't skip taking a picture on purpose.A sculpture of a nursing lioness.From here, these are artifacts from the Qaryat al-Faw region.A man's face. There was no explanation whatsoever. Is that a bump on his cheek? Or did Cubism exist since BCE? It's more impressive and memorable than any other artifact here. Honestly, I'm only writing all this because I took pictures of the items and their descriptions; other than this and the door to Mecca later on, I don't remember much else.It looks exactly like the tea strainers we use today. The design hasn't changed in 2,000 years!Hercules. You might ask why Hercules is in an Islamic culture exhibition. I did. Muhammad didn't appear until the 6th century.Harpocrates, the god of silence. They made Hercules look so detailed and cool, but then there's this...A mural depicting the upper class of the time. It's supposed to show them surrounded by fruit and servants, but I feel like I've seen this exact painting in a Russian church.A cup imported from Rome. You could probably just use it today.Bottles used in the 1st century. Looking at these, I almost thought, "Did they just make these themselves and fake the exhibit?" because they look no different from modern bottles. If they could make glass bottles this well, why did the stone statues above look like that?An expensive bed headboard ornament imported from Rome. It was reportedly buried in a tomb. Then and now, Italian luxury goods are top tier.Starting with these bottles, the timeline suddenly jumps forward. These are items from the 7th to 10th centuries that pilgrims carried around. Apparently, if they ran out of money, they would sell the bottles or their contents—I guess you could call it the origin of backpacking.The QuranA Quran that perfectly fits the phrase "A Quran in one hand, a sword in the other." It's the only Quran I saw that looked like it could double as a shield. It's even from the 16th-century Ottoman Empire.The door of the Kaaba. Personally, I think this was the highlight of the exhibition. It's the door leading into the Kaaba in Mecca, and just looking at it makes you imagine how grand Mecca must be. I'd only ever seen huge crowds of people in Mecca on TV, never a proper look at the buildings or doors, but seeing this helped me picture it a bit.The cloth covering the Shami door. It's not the Kaaba, but it's a cloth that covers a similar door. Even a door cover is this extravagant.
I paid to see this, so I took pictures and roughly wrote this up to avoid forgetting it, but personally, it wasn't exactly jaw-dropping. The door of the Kaaba being the exception. It would have been easier to understand if there had been a bit more information about the region; it was hard to grasp the overall flow of the exhibition. Of course, this is mostly due to my own lack of knowledge, so people who know a bit about this region will probably enjoy it a lot more.
No matter how many nice things I say, the only things that really stuck in my memory are the bust of the man with a bump on his cheek and the Kaaba door. Even if I think of it as paying 6,000 KRW just to see those two things, it's not a bad deal.
