Finding Antiquity, Making the Modern Middle East

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).

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.

• List of IllustrationsList of ContributorsList of AbbreviationsAcknowledgementsForeword (Zeynep Çelik, Columbia University, USA)Introduction (Guillemette Crouzet, European University Institute, Italy, and Eva Miller, UCL, UK)Part One: Travellers and Takers1. 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 Internationalism5. 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 Antiquities9. 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 Antiquities12. 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)NotesBibliographyIndex