Paul Prather: Museum mummy inspires thoughts about life’s joys

My wife, Liz, and I sneaked out of town for a couple of days, just to get away. We headed to Cincinnati, where we visited several art museums we’d never been to before, as well as St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington.

My favorite of the museums was the Cincinnati Art Museum.

I’m no art expert. I pretend to paint occasionally as a hobby, but I possess no talent for it and have no formal education in art history. Years ago, an astute editor at this newspaper described me — too accurately — as “visually illiterate.”

Still, for me, as for many people, viewing secular art sometimes becomes a spiritual experience, as religious, in the broad sense of that word, as visiting a spectacular church such as St. Mary’s basilica.

At the Cincinnati Art Museum, I recognized and marveled at paintings by Picasso, Renoir, Monet and one of my longtime favorites, Edward Hopper.

Liz and I also encountered the works of a portrait artist from Covington, Frank Duveneck, who died nearly a century ago. We’d never heard of him, but were struck with his ability to suggest his subjects’ personalities by capturing a revelatory glint in their eyes or the slightest pursing of their lips.

The moment that stayed with me after our trip, though, the moment Liz and I discussed on our drive home, occurred in a wing of the museum devoted to ancient art.

We weren’t taking notes, so you and any curators who read this will have to forgive any technical misstatements here. I’m writing from memory.

Liz and I paused among the ancient art to contemplate an Egyptian mummy that was more than 2,000 years old. An accompanying placard explained what we were seeing. The remains inside the ornate shell, it said, were those of an unknown man about 35 years old, “the anonymous son of an anonymous woman.”

Nearby, we also paused before a row of busts from the Greco-Roman world. The bust that caught my attention was that of a noble-looking Roman official, a man clearly of great importance. The placard said his identity, too, was lost to history.

What occurred to me wasn’t at all a new thought; it was an exceedingly old one. Later, during our return to Kentucky, I learned that Liz had been thinking the same thing.

That is, the mummified man from Egypt and the Roman official and the subjects of the gallery’s various other busts clearly were, upon a time, people of repute, power and wealth.

They, their loved ones and their neighbors must all have considered them great successes. People to be reckoned with. Perhaps even people to be feared.

And now they’ve been dead for millennia. They’re utterly forgotten. Their mighty deeds and even their names are as lost as if they’d never existed.

All their triumphs, all their sleepless nights, their loves and hates, their sicknesses, their schemes, their rises to power and their falls from it — all gone.

In the scope of eternity, none of what they said or did or thought mattered. What remains is a piece of stone or a bit of burial wrapping holding a few bones, and even that’s more than their countless contemporaries left behind.

I was reminded of these words from Ecclesiastes:

“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh. … There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.”

Or as another mighty man, former President Bill Clinton, observed: “We’re all just passing through.”

That’s how it was in ancient Israel, Egypt and Rome. That’s how it is yet.

Currently, a platoon of men and women are clawing and maneuvering to become president of this country. An army of pundits parses their every word as if each pronouncement might spell our salvation or doom.

Candidates and pundits alike, whether they know it, mainly are doomed to the universe’s amnesia. In the end, no matter how important they appear today, they and their fame and their promises will vanish.

As for the rest of us, it probably goes without saying where our frettings will end up. In the long run, will it matter whether our retirement account lost 5 percent this past quarter or our wife left us or we didn’t get that promotion at work? Who will know or care?

For some people, recognizing this uncompromising fact — that everything and everyone disappears — creates despair.

I’ve always considered it a cause for relief and even joy. I think the writer of Ecclesiastes felt as I do.

If this is true, he said, the pressure is off. Don’t waste your life striving for the wind — for riches, fame or power. Better to enjoy the place you find yourself now. Improve your corner of the world to the small extent you can, but don’t delude yourself into thinking you can beat the cosmos. Just do work that fulfills you. Treat yourself to a good meal and a glass of wine. Love the wife or husband God gave you. Choose to be happy. Live contentedly while you have some life left. It will all be gone soon enough.

To that I can add nothing except, Amen.

This story was originally published February 27, 2016 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Paul Prather: Museum mummy inspires thoughts about life’s joys."