Thaûma

Mary Beard felt her first sense of thaûma, the ancient Greek word for wonder, while staring at a piece of 4,000-year-old Egyptian cake. The now famous classicist, author, and Rick Steves of ancient civilizations, described this inception of intellectual curiosity occurring when she was about six years old. Because the exhibits at the British Museum in the early 60s weren’t child-friendly, her view of this ancient cake was strained and her mother had to lift her up. Then the guard did something unthinkable, something no museum guard would do today. He unlocked the case, picked up the 4,000 year-old-cake and held it out to Mary, just inches from her face.

I watched the online lecture live the other night from my bedroom, concluding that knitting in my pajamas was a better way to absorb Mary Beard’s delightful stories than actually sitting in her live audience in Chicago. Going to Chicago was my original plan, but the logistics weren’t in my favor. I had already met her in Philadelphia, when I attended a reading of Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern. During the Q &A, I joked about people who give their children Roman names, telling her I’d met a clerk at Trader Joes, whose name tag read Nero. I struck up a conversation with him as he scanned my groceries, and yes, Nero was his actual name. I asked her what she thought of my niece and nephew’s names: Octavia and Quintus. She said she approved. At the book signing, she asked me what I do, and I told her I was a teacher. I thought of telling her I was a teacher at Girard College, but I thought that information might be inconsequential. Later, when reading her book and learning that Girard College was, for many years, the resting place of a famous ancient Roman sarcophagus in which our genocidal president, Andrew Jackson, refused to be buried, I regretted having been so reticent. Sure, I made her laugh with my Trader Joe’s story, but I adore Mary Beard so much, and I wished I could have kept talking to her.

I guess it’s probably for the best that I couldn’t make it to Chicago to meet Mary Beard a second time. I just would have fangirled all over her and embarrassed myself. I probably would have brought up the 100-year-old cookie, which is preserved in a glass case at the Girard College Museum. It’s called the Hum Mud, and one of my favorite assignments that I gave students when I was a teacher at Girard College was to personify and write from the perspective of one of the objects in the museum. Many students chose the Hum Mud, and the stories that came from their imaginations were just delightful.

I don’t know how much thaûma is being felt in my classroom, certainly not as much as I’d like. Today, I bribed one of my classes with candy so students would finish their research papers. I had followed orders about which candy to buy. Apparently, the time I bought Hi-Chews was seen as an abomination. “Fake Starburst” was the class verdict. I was also instructed to buy ring pops, but I could only find blow pops. Surprisingly, students were content with blow pops, even though they couldn’t put them on their fingers and fake propose to each other.

Mary Beard had some sharp criticism for conservators who want to blue surgical glove-ify everything and make history less accessible to young people. She remembered how that museum guard holding that 4,000-year-old piece of cake in front of her face ignited her with enough thaûma to last a lifetime.

According to Merriam-Webster, a thaumatourgós was a performer of wonders, or an acrobat. Although I can’t perform wonders, at least not in an acrobatic sense, I will pledge to experience more thaûma and to help bridge the accessibility to thaûma for others.