scholarly journals Zeynep Çelik, About Antiquities: Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empi

Anabases ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 231-233
Author(s):  
Jorge Elices Ocón
Keyword(s):  
Politics Of Archaeology

Egyptian Antiquity, Imperial Politics, and Modernity

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-280
Author(s):  
Billie Melman
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Art Deco ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Politics Of Archaeology ◽  
First World

Chapter 8 draws the web of relations between Egypt’s antiquity, empire, modernity, and internationalism from the outbreak of the First World War to decolonization. It focuses on the era between Britain’s unilateral granting of formal independence to Egypt in 1922 and the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1936, and sets the imperial preoccupation with ancient Egypt in national and international contexts. The chapter fills a lacuna in the historiography of Egyptology and Egyptomania which has focused on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 and has largely overlooked the internationalist angles of the interwar obsession with ancient Egypt. The chapter maps the expansion of interest in Egypt beyond the pharaonic past and considers its extension to prehistoric Egypt. It relates Egyptology to the modernization of travel and speed technologies, and to popular representations of Egypt as a centre of globalized travel in a connective empire. The chapter further considers the roles of the global media in mediating between discoveries and transnational audiences. Following on the theme of the internationalization of Egypt’s past, it considers the presence of Egypt in material culture, particularly in eclectic styles and design which were associated with modernity, such as Art Deco architecture and fashion. One main argument of the chapter is that the interwar discovery of Egypt’s multiple pasts was characterized by an internationalization apparent in the politics of archaeology, the spread of the new regime of antiquities and cooperation between Egyptian nationalists and internationalist bodies, and in the mass production and consumption of Egyptiana.

Passions about Arkaim: Russian Nationalism, the Aryans, and the Politics of Archaeology

Inner Asia ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. A. Shnirelman
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Southern Urals ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
The Southern Urals ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Politics Of Archaeology ◽  
The City

AbstractArkaim is the name given to the site of an ancient town in the Southern Urals, dated to the 17th–16th centuries BC. Discovered in 1987, Arkaim rapidly became more than an archaeological site. It became the focus for an extraordinary congolmeration of ideas linked to ecological and political movements, in particular those of Russian nationalists. Threatened with flooding because of a dam project, Arkaim was made a ‘Museum Reserve’. Soon it became the focus for theories that this was a sacred place and furthermore the home of proto-Slavs. The break-up of the Soviet Union was followed by attempts by Russian nationalists to demonstrate the legitimacy of their domination of the former empire. The article shows how quasi historical claims expanded into myth and fantasy, linked to the emergence of new cults. Arkaim became the city not only of proto Slavs but of Zarathustra and the Aryans too. Such inventions are related to local politics and ethnic tensions as well as to wider Russian nationalism.

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