Retrospective

After the museum, another visit to the Last Word bookshop to greet once again the laid-back, pre-blipped, literary feline who appears to run the place, this time from his vantage point on top of a stepladder.

We had already seen Egyptian cat mummies and had studied with interest an exhibition on the famous archaeological excavation of Ur by Prof. Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and 30s. His wife could be seen in a photograph of the assembled team, the only woman on site, holding a tabby cat. Katherine Woolley was a powerful and complex queen-bee of a woman who was herself described as 'feline'. Subsequently, she featured under a thin disguise as the murder victim in a archaeological detective story by Agatha Christie, who married Woolley's second-in-command on the dig, Max Mallowan. The relationship between the two couples during the excavations can only be guessed at!

Ur was situated in present-day Iraq. Beyond the exhibition, the final museum gallery held a small tribute of photographs, reminiscences and mangled debris relating to the destruction of the World Trade Center on the occasion of the 10th anniversary. On leaving I noticed this bizarre apology on the wall between the two rooms.

The physical juxtaposition of Excavating Ground Zero: Fragments from 9/11 with Iraq's Ancient Past was the result of a scheduling conflict and in no way implies a political statement on behalf of the Penn Museum or the University of Pennsylvania.

How tragic that such a disclaimer should be felt necessary.