Finding Antiquity, Making the Modern Middle East

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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. Since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 with a cadre of ‘scientific experts’, Western observers have repeatedly framed the Middle East as the origin of the world’s past: the place where civilization began, ancient history visible in its landscape—or ready to be made so through the right kind of labour. Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as empires fought for influence and control over this ‘cradle’ of civilization, empire, and monuments, local powers in the Middle East worked with and against the idea of their own region’s antiquity as uniquely relevant to world history, with implications for the future of emerging states and imperial projects. This edited volume brings together contributions by scholars of history, archaeology, and heritage to explore how historical consciousness about the Middle East was contested in the nineteenth and early twentieth century through excavation and exegesis of traces of past cultures. Contributors consider how the emerging disciplines of archaeology and ancient history shaped the modern region, and how they were in turn shaped by competing visions and agendas of empires and new nations. Contributions 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. Chapters provide insight into the history of archaeology, local labour and knowledge production, collecting and museums, politics and diplomacy, and competing theories of national origins. The volume addresses questions that continue to affect heritage politics and international relations today.