Time which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things.

The line comes from Sir Thomas Browne’s prose meditation on mortality and the fragility of human memorials in *Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial* (1658). Writing in Norwich after the discovery of ancient funerary urns in Norfolk, Browne uses the archaeological find as a springboard for reflections on how time erodes monuments, names, and even the evidence of past civilizations. In mid‑seventeenth‑century England—an era marked by civil war, religious controversy, and intense antiquarian interest—Browne’s learned, baroque style blends classical allusion with Christian memento mori, emphasizing that neither art nor record can ultimately withstand temporal decay.

Browne personifies Time as an artist whose craft is destruction: it “antiquates antiquities” (making even the ancient itself old and obsolete) and reduces “all things” to dust. The paradox underscores a central theme of *Urn-Burial*: the futility of seeking permanence through monuments, fame, or material remains. What survives is contingent and partial, while oblivion is the default condition. The sentence also showcases Browne’s characteristic wit and cadence—turning a philosophical commonplace into a striking conceit—inviting readers to humility about historical knowledge and to a sober awareness that human achievements, like bodies, are subject to dissolution.