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A history of the rediscovery of the imperial civilizations of the ancient Near East in a modern imperial order that evolved in the early twentieth century, which explores how near eastern antiquity was redefined and experienced through the lens of imperial regulation, modes of enquiry, and international and national politics.
Sommario
- Introduction
- Part I
- 1: Mandated Pasts: War, Peace, and the New Regime of Antiquities
- Part II
- 2: Illustrating the Bible: Travel, Archaeology, and Modernity in Mandated Biblical Lands
- 3: Cities of David: Planning and Excavating Jerusalem
- 4: Lachish: Excavation, Land and Violence -Tell ed-Duweir, Circa 1932-1945
- Part III
- 5: Ur: Modernity and the Matter of Antiquity between Two World Wars
- 6: Murder in Mesopotamia: Antiquity, Genres of Modernity, and Gender in the Popular Crime Novel
- 7: Prehistories for Modernity: Stone- Age Humans and Others-Palestine and Mesopotamia
- 8: Egyptian Antiquity, Imperial Politics, and Modernity: Tutankhamun and After
- 9: Nefertiti Lived Here: Tell el- Amarna-- Imperial Crisis and Domestic Modernity, c. 1920-1939
- 10: The Road to Alexandria, the Paths to Siwa-Hellenism, the Modern World, and the End of Empires, 1915-1956
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
Info autore
Billie Melman is Professor of History and Henri Glasberg Chair in European Studies at Tel Aviv University. She is a cultural historian of Britain and has written extensively on colonialism and orientalism, on uses of the British and imperial past, on memory and on gender.
Riassunto
A history of the rediscovery of the imperial civilizations of the ancient Near East in a modern imperial order that evolved in the early twentieth century, which explores how near eastern antiquity was redefined and experienced through the lens of imperial regulation, modes of enquiry, and international and national politics.
Testo aggiuntivo
Billie Melman's exploration of the "regime of antiquities" (p. 9) and the internationalisation of the (material) past offers an important contribution to a wide range of fields, including the history of the interwar period, the history of archaeology and mandate politics and mechanised technology... Overall, this book demonstrates the author's considerable research skills and her eminently readable style... The strength of Melman's volume lies in her elucidation of the entangled and manifold connections between archaeology, imperial and colonial politics and modernity. The result is an important contribution to understanding the complexity of the internationalisation of the material past and the role of archaeology in that process.
