ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the inherently mythological structure of national museum narratives and addresses the possible ways to cure such pathologies by articulating potentially effective alternatives. The narratives crafted by modern museum institutions are universally indebted to a deeply disingenuous belief in the inherent power of objects to convincingly bear witness to the origins and evolution of state polities. Museums are uniquely powerful semiotic and epistemological instruments for the creation, maintenance, and dissemination of meanings by fielding together and synthesizing objects, ideas, bodies and beliefs. Any productive consideration of the problem such as the critical investigation of the phenomenon of 'national museum narratives' and how versions of them may or may not differ, must engage with its historical, philosophical, and religious foundations if it is to be more than superficial and disingenuously innocent academic taxonomy. Every political regime, both ancient and modern, has always been fundamentally devoted to managing and controlling collective memory.
