About the Book
This volume presents innovative studies of how the emerging disciplines of archaeology and ancient history shaped the modern Middle East, and how they were in turn shaped by competing visions and agendas of empires and new nations. The Middle East was a region constructed through its putatively unique relationship to the whole world's past-and its special relevance for the destiny of empires and nations. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European empires fought for influence and control over this 'cradle' of civilization, empire and monuments, and local powers and people in the Middle East worked with and against these historical and heritage frameworks in their own quests for self-determination.
In this volume, contributors from the fields of history, archaeology and heritage explore how historical consciousness about the Middle East was contested in the nineteenth and early twentieth century through excavation and interpretation of the past. Chapters span West Asia and North Africa, covering Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Tunisia, and the imperial history of Britain, France, Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The result is an original contribution to our understanding of the origins and influence of Middle Eastern archaeology, which resonates today in contemporary discussions on heritage discourses and practices.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Foreword (Zeynep Çelik, Columbia University, USA)
Introduction (Guillemette Crouzet, European University Institute, Italy, and Eva Miller, UCL, UK)
Part One: Travellers and Takers
1. Housing the Mausoleum: British Travellers and Excavation in Bodrum c.1760–1870 (Debbie Challis, Manchester University, UK)
2. Austen Henry Layard and the Cadi's Letter: The Multiple Pasts and Futures of Nineteenth-Century Mosul (Daniel Foliard, University Paris Cité, France)
3. Who Owns the Phoenician Past? German Orientalism and the Politics of Time and Space Across the Mediterranean (Nora Derbal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
4. Near Eastern Studies in Germany and the Complex Involvement of German Jews with 'the Orient' (Thomas Gertzen, Free University of Berlin, Germany)
Part Two: Nationalism and Internationalism
5. Antiquities for 'A' Mandate: Internationalism, the Emergence of a 'Regime of Archaeology' and the Reorganisation of the Middle East, c. 1914–1939 (Billie Melman, Tel Aviv University, Israel)
6. Antique Nationalism: Archaeology and the Construction of the Nation in Egypt, Lebanon, and Israel (Erin O'Halloran, University of Cambridge, UK)
7. Who (or What) is a 'Phoenician'? The Complex History of an Ancient People in a Modern Society (Marwan Kilani, University of Basel, Switzerland)
8. Between Archaeology and Nationalism: The Iran Bastan's Appropriation of the Imperial Museum Paradigm (Solmaz Kive, University of Oregon, USA)
Part Three: Valuing Antiquities
9. The Traders: Archaeology, Family and Fortune between Saïda and Paris (Sarah Griswold, Oklahoma State University, USA)
10. Subjects of Destruction: Preservationism, Extractivism and Cultural Property in Egypt (1882–1939) (Amany Abd el Hameed, Helwan University, Egypt and Robert Vigar, University of Pennsylvania, USA)
11. Who is an Archaeologist? Deconstructing Archaeology in Palestine (Nicole Khayat, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
Part Four: Living with Antiquities
12. Excavating Iraq's Past within the Pages of Lughat al-?Arab, 1911–1931 (Laith Shakir, New York University, USA)
13. Dismantling Nablus: the Samaritans, Orientalism and the Mandate Department of Antiquities (Sarah Irving, Staffordshire University, UK)
14. Destructing Middle Eastern and North African Archaeological Practices: An Indigenous Egyptian Counter-Narrative (Heba Abd el Gawad, UCL, UK)
Epilogue (Lynn Meskell, University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Guillemette Crouzet is a Postdoctoral Fellow in History at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Her research interests include European empires and the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean World. She is the author of the award-winning book Genèses du Moyen-Orient. Le Golfe Persique à l'âge des impérialismes (c.1800-1914) (2015), which also published in English as Inventing the Middle East: Britain and the Persian Gulf in the Age of Global Imperialism (2022).
Eva Miller is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in History at UCL, UK. She is the author of Early Civilization and the American Modern: Images of Middle Eastern Origins in the United States, 1893–1939 (2024).
Review :
Finding Antiquity, Making the Modern Middle East is an innovative and timely contribution to the history and politics of Archaeology. This volume investigates the close relationship between imperial conquest and the field of archaeological exploration, offering new archival information and innovative approaches that expand the historiography of archaeology and opens new directions of research.
