National Museum in Rio, images of the destruction. For us, it is like the burning of the Library of Alexandria

A great many artifacts were destroyed in the devastating fire at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a kind of South American British Museum and the museum with the fifth largest collection in the world: it had celebrated its 200th year of operation this year and was the most important among Latin America’s archaeology and anthropology museums. The “Luzia” skeleton, the oldest in all of Latin America, has burned to ashes: it is the most famous victim of the fire. This was confirmed by Kátia Bogéa, president of Brazil’s National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute, to the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo: “the public will never be able to see Luzia again, she was destroyed in the fire.” Insiders fear that all the major artifacts that the museum housed may have been lost in the flames: the Pompeian frescoes, Bertha Lutz’s botanical collection, the fossils of Maxakalisaurus and Angaturama limai (the largest dinosaur and largest carnivorous dinosaur found in Brazil, respectively), the sarcophagus of Sha Amun En Su, the throne of King Adandozan, and the Atacama mummy. Instead, the Bendegó meteorite was saved because of its composition: it is made of minerals that resist fire.

Meanwhile, crowds of citizens poured into the Quinta de Boa Vista, the large park in downtown Rio de Janeiro where the museum is located, to see the result of the devastation: photographs captured many desperate people, weeping as they observed the remains of the destroyed museum. And while accusations are being raised against the government, responsible for cuts that allegedly prevented efficient management of the National Museum, the first photos of the museum’s ashen interior began to appear in the Brazilian media. Among the first to publish exclusive photos were newspapers R7 and G1.

New comments are also arriving from insiders. João Carlos Nara, conservator of the museum, said that the “damage is irreparable” and that “little will remain” of the collections. However, it will be necessary to wait until the end of the firefighters’ work to have more precise estimates of the damage and losses. By contrast, Marina Silva, former environment minister in the Lula government, did not mince words, saying that the fire was like a “lobotomy of Brazil’s memory.” Anthropologist Mércio Gomes, former president of the Fundação Nacional do Índio, wrote on Facebook, “for us Brazilians it is a tragedy equivalent to what for the ancient world was the loss of the Library of Alexandria [...] We Brazilians have only 500 years of history. Our National Museum was 200 years old, but it was what we had, and now it is lost forever [...]. We have to rebuild it, redo the natural science collections, the indigenous art collections, the collections of plants, animals, maps, everything from the past that can be reconstituted.” Ironically, in June the Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) had awarded a grant of 21.7 million Brazilian reais (about 4.5 million euros) for restoration and redevelopment work at the National Museum, in which improvements to the fire-fighting system were also included.

National Museum in Rio, images of the destruction. For us, it is like the burning of the Library of Alexandria

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