Billie Melman’s masterful Empires of Antiquities brings new perspectives and significant knowledge to the entangled relationships between empire building and antiquities, a theme that although enjoying some scholarly attention over the past few decades has remained understudied. Melman’s focus is on the British Empire between 1914 and 1954, specifically its politics of archaeology interlaced with modernizing endeavors in Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. Melman states at the outset that the importance British imperialists placed on antiquities is evident in the foundational texts of their mandates in the region, since the latter included clauses related to antiquities monitoring. She suggests that understanding this as the “recovery” history of antiquities casts much light on the postwar British imperial order and argues that the process was part of a wider preoccupation with antiquity intertwined with international politics. Indeed, as illustrated clearly in the Versailles Treaty (1919) and the Sèvres Treaty (1920), “peace” agreements dedicated sections to archaeological practices. Antiquities hence served as one of the mechanisms that engraved the mandate system onto the new world order. Melman identifies here an “attempt at collaboration” that cut across “nations,” turning historical monuments and antiquities into “national patrimony,” albeit one “guarded by the mandating powers” (31). With the last phrase, however, she gives complete agency to the mandates at the expense of both earlier and later local political attempts to manage antiquities. Her intriguing statement is nevertheless open to further consideration.Melman asserts that the encounter between ancient civilizations and imperial modernity drew a straight line between the past and the present. At the same time, because they evoked the importance of life in the city, a central concept for modernity, the urban nature of the antique settlements themselves carried implications for modern urban planning. Perhaps, but the validity of these premises are not uniquely symptomatic of mandate eras, as Melman suggests. It also hold true for the pre-mandate imperial positions and nation-states.The bulk of the book is organized neatly into three sections, each centered on the essence of the essential argument that a particular civilization had been sustained during the British Mandate: the biblical past in Palestine, modernity in Mesopotamia, and technology in Egypt. Melman keeps the widely studied Greco-Roman heritage out of her scope, rationalizing that it had not “engender[ed] the popular outbursts of excitement” (20) during the post–World War I era as did the other civilizations she studies. Her position is well taken, although it could have been worthwhile to situate the new “excitement” in reference to the fervor of earlier debates, as registered most famously around the Elgin marbles. A short section toward the end of the book (chap. 12), dedicated to scrutinizing the discourse that endowed Greco-Roman civilization with greatness and modernity, as opposed to the “wildness” of the Nabatean, whets the appetite for more.Before delving into her case studies, Melman draws a useful picture of the new Imperial legal system in part 1. She outlines different antiquities ordinances and underlines their reliance on comprehensive Ottoman antiquities laws, especially those of 1884 and 1906. From the adoption of a hierarchical concept of antiquities (valuing the old over new monuments) to administrative details about the responsibilities of inspectors and local government officers, British regulations borrowed heavily from their Ottoman counterparts. All while the political discourse was peppered with claims of bringing civilizational salvage to the region. Melman establishes the main distinction from the Ottoman system as “internationalization,” which aimed to regularize and standardize research practices. Although she takes great pains to show that political voices outside the powerful European center (such as Greek, Iraqi, and Egyptian) participated in this project, this is another proposition that opens itself to further debate given post-mandate and postcolonial orientations in the aftermath of World War II.Part 2 addresses biblical valorization of antiquities in Palestine. If the idea went back to the early nineteenth century and to the increase in religious travel, it crystallized under the British Mandate, spearheaded by the Balfour Declaration that committed the land as the national home of Jewish people. Modern technologies facilitated travel and “the map of mechanized travel [was] superimposed on the biblical topography” (72). Railways, initiated in the late Ottoman era, were expanded. Aviation radically changed not only the travel experience, but also depictions of the land itself. Archaeology acquired further importance. Biblical archaeology did more than interpret civilizations: it also corroborated texts and canons. Investment in the creation of museums, begun under the patronage of the Pro-Jerusalem Society, gave antiquities public visibility. Melman gives due weight to the prominence of museums and the social, cultural, and political roles they played in driving more attention to antiquities. Given her attention to the continuities between Ottoman and Mandate legal practices, however, I wondered why she did not trace the origins of museology in Jerusalem to the small but ambitious branch of the Imperial Museum of Antiquities (in Istanbul), housed inside a new high school (mekteb-i idadi, also known as Mamuniye) according to common practice in the empire at the turn of the century.Jerusalem became the center of the Mandate’s administration of antiquities and the place where “heritage, monuments, and antiquity were internationalized” (96). Many projects to restore its monuments (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) were undertaken, accompanied by a drive to modernize the city in an attempt to merge the old core with the new quarters outside the walls, without damaging the character of the former. Arts and crafts architects, among them Charles Robert Ashbee, were particularly drawn to the medieval image of the city and developed schemes based on their careful survey and study of Jerusalem’s built fabric. Browsing through these documents gives the impression that the biblical past faded in the background as British architects became seduced by Jerusalem’s multiple layers of history, casting some doubt on Melman’s claim that “their vision was dominated by the biblical past” (107), which does not come across as highly convincing. In contrast, although not well financed, archaeological work on Mount Ophel was closely linked to the City of David. In her analysis of the expedition in Lachish, a site with strong textual links to the biblical past (especially through the “Lachish letters”), Melman highlights the interdisciplinary nature of archaeology. She shows its intersections with physical anthropology, anthropometrics, and eugenics, as well as their alleged demonstration of human progress. The modernity of excavations methods was accompanied by the representation and dissemination of archaeological knowledge through new means (such as aerial photography and film).In part 3, centering on Ur, Melman traces the fascination with Mesopotamia to the abundance of artifacts already in British (and North American) museums and explains the parallels between materiality and the forms of city life displayed by archaeology with the modernity of urbanism in the aftermath of World War I. This assertion again reveals the problem with the book’s clean chronological framework, since the kind of modernity in city planning to which Melman refers actually goes back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, her substantial larger arguments remain powerful, among them the valorization of Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations as comparable to that of Egypt. An engaging aspect of her discussion of Mesopotamian antiquities revolves around Agatha Christie’s “archaeological-historical mystery novels” (194), which linked the archaeologist to the detective and archaeology to contemporary politics beyond imperial borders. Melman’s close reading of Christie’s work displays at the same time the latter’s opinions about local material culture and its associations with prehistoric artifacts, showcasing how Christie dehistoricized ethnic culture while seeming to praise its aesthetics.Melman’s analysis of the “rediscovery” of Egypt is framed by democratization and modernity in the form of tourism, travel, and transportation technology, and the fast and wide dissemination of knowledge. She begins part 4 by demystifying Egypt’s complex legal system. As Egypt was not a Mandate regime, a cohort of international and colonial agents oversaw the management of its antiquities before World War I, although legal and administrative power had remained in the hands of Egyptians since the 1830s (going back to the Ottoman era). In the postwar period, this shifted to an international platform under the auspices of the League of Nations, along the way leading to debates on the merits on preserving antiquities in situ. Meanwhile, the continuing popularization of ancient Egypt, through museums, international exhibitions, and publications, found its way into contemporary designs from architecture to fashion.One of the great contributions of Empires of Antiquities to the growing literature on the history of archaeology is its expansion of the actors in the field. While the majority of the main figureheads were still European men, some more familiar to the readers than others, women emerge on the scene from the 1920s onward. Local workers, both men and women, are also included to highlight the collective labor involved in archaeological work, thereby acknowledging the urgency to complicate our understanding of what happened on the ground and whose hands-on experience, expertise, and knowledge were instrumental in the “discoveries” attributed to a few men. Melman’s contribution is essential to recent inquiries along this line that are beginning to revise the discipline.Despite my minor reservations, I consider Empires of Antiquities to be an important book for many reasons. It makes innovative arguments, asks difficult questions, presents fascinating case studies, and is based on critical readings of documents accumulated through years of meticulous research. Melman’s insistence on the political significance of antiquities and their multiples uses in the service of politics makes Empires of Antiquities an indispensable addition to literature on the history of archaeology.