Empires of Antiquities is a history of the rediscovery of the imperial civilizations of the ancient Near East in a modern imperial order that evolved between the outbreak of the First World War and the decolonization of the British Empire in the 1950s. It explores the ways in which near eastern antiquity was redefined and experienced, becoming the subject of imperial regulation, modes of enquiry, and international and national politics. Billie Melman follows a series of globally publicized spectacular archaeological discoveries in Iraq, Egypt, and Palestine, which made antiquity material visible and accessible as never before. She demonstrates that the new definition and uses of antiquity and their relations to modernity were inseparable from the emergence of the post-war international imperial order, transnational collaboration and crises, the aspirations of national groups, and collisions between them and the British mandatories. This study uniquely combines a history of the internationalization of archaeology and the rise of a new 'regime of antiquities', under the oversight of the League of Nations and its institutions, a history of British attitudes to, and passion for near eastern antiquity and on the ground, colonial policies and mechanisms, as well as nationalist claims on the past. It points at the centrality of the new mandate system. Drawing on an unusually wide range of materials collected in archives in six countries, as well as on material and visual evidence, this volume weaves together imperial, international and national histories, and the history of archaeological discovery which it connects to imperial modernity.

Explores the problems for studying art and religion in Eurasia arising from ancestral, colonial and post-colonial biases in historiography.

Margarita Diaz-Andreu offers an innovative history of archaeology during the nineteenth century, encompassing all its fields from the origins of humanity to the medieval period, and all areas of the world. The development of archaeology is placed within the framework of contemporary political events, with a particular focus upon the ideologies of nationalism and imperialism. Diaz-Andreu examines a wide range of issues, including the creation of institutions, the conversion of the study of antiquities into a profession, public memory, changes in archaeological thought and practice, and the effect on archaeology of racism, religion, the belief in progress, hegemony, and resistance.

This book concentrates on the sometimes Greek but largely Roman survivals many travellers set out to see and perhaps possess throughout the immense Ottoman Empire, on what were eastward and southward extensions of the Grand Tour. Europeans were curious about the Empire, Christianity’s great rival for centuries, and plenty of information on its antiquities was available, offered here via lengthy quotations. Most accounts of the history of collecting and museums concentrate on the European end. Plundered Empire details how and where antiquities were sought, uncovered, bartered, paid for or stolen, and any tribulations in getting them home. The book provides evidence for the continuing debate about the ethics of museum collections, with 19th century international competition the spur to spectacular acquisitions.