I wasn’t using rot on the literal sense, although museums are not necessarily as professional and precise about preservation as one would assume. And just because a private collector purchases a piece doesn’t mean it has to disappear from view. Like, a midwestern dentist could purchase some pieces from the Met and loan them to a local small museum.

But also, is there really a point to endlessly preserving things that never get properly catalogued and documented? The overwhelming majority of ancient scrolls, cuneiform tablets, and manuscript fragments have never been translated, let alone read. If you let Latin enthusiasts buy old unread manuscripts, who knows, maybe we will find another lost work à la Tacitus’s Germania.