Testing the 

Canon of Ancient
Near Eastern Art and
Archaeology

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amy rebecca gansell and
Edited by
ann shafer
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018054338
ISBN 978–0–19–067316–1

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

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CONTENTS

List of Figures ix

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List of Plates xv
List of Tables xix
List of Maps xxi
Foreword
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Irene J. Winter xxiii
Acknowledgments xxix
List of Contributors xxxi
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List of Shortened forms xxxix
CHAPTER  1 Perspectives on the Ancient Near Eastern Canon: More
than Mesopotamia’s Greatest Hits 1
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Amy Rebecca Gansell and Ann Shafer

PART I | BOUNDARIES

CHAPTER  2 The Southern Levant and the Ancient Near Eastern

Canon 45
Rachel Hallote
CHAPTER  3 Archaeological Research in Pre-Classical Syria
and the Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Art and
Archaeology 66
Marina Pucci
CHAPTER  4 The Past, Present, and Future of the Canon of Ancient
Anatolian Art 90
Susan Helft
CHAPTER  5 The Canon of Ancient Iranian Art: From Grand
Narratives to Local Perspectives 111
Henry P. Colburn
 CHAPTER  6 “Classical” versus “Ancient” in the Near Eastern
Canon: The Position of Graeco-Roman Art from the
Levant, c. 330 bce–636 ce 131
Elise A. Friedland

PART II | TYPOLOGIES

CHAPTER  7 Defining the Canon of Funerary Archaeology in the

Ancient Near East 153
Nicola Laneri
CHAPTER  8 The Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Glyptic on a
Roll: Leaps, Hurdles, and Goals 172
Diana L. Stein
CHAPTER  9 The Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Palaces 195
David Kertai

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PART III | TECHNOLOGIES

CHAPTER  10 How Ancient and Modern Memory Shapes the Past: A

Canon of Assyrian Memory 217
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Davide Nadali
CHAPTER  11 Museums as Vehicles for Defining Artistic Canons: The
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Case of the Ancient Near East in the British
Museum 232
Paul Collins
CHAPTER  12 Conceptualizing the Past in Museum Exhibitions of
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Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Art 253

Rachel P. Kreiter
CHAPTER  13 The Ancient Near Eastern Canon in the University
Classroom, and Beyond: My Colleagues Speak 274
Ann Shafer

PART IV | HERITAGE PERSPECTIVES

CHAPTER  14 The Lucrative Business of the Cyrus

Cylinder: Commodification of an Iranian Icon 299
Kamyar Abdi
CHAPTER  15 Between Hazor and Masada: Canonical Archaeological
Sites as Symbols of Collective Memories in Modern
Israeli Identities 302
Gideon Avni

vi | Contents
CHAPTER  16 Past Resurrections: The Ancient in
Contemporary Art 305
Tamara Chalabi
CHAPTER  17 Earth, Rocks, and Blood: A Wandering Home 308
Sargon George Donabed
CHAPTER  18 6,000 Years 312
Maymanah Farhat
CHAPTER  19 Cultural Heritage Attrition in Egypt 315
Monica Hanna
CHAPTER  20 Crafting the Ancient Near Eastern Canon: A Personal
Reflection 319
Zena Kamash
CHAPTER  21 The Consequences of the Destruction of Syrian

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Heritage on the Syrian Identity and Future
Generations 322
Youssef Kanjou
CHAPTER  22 Contemporary Art and Archaeology in the Arab
World 325
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Salwa Mikdadi
CHAPTER  23 The Assyrians: Then and Now 329
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Ramsen Shamon
CHAPTER  24 Bringing the Past to a Living Room Near You: The
Archaeological Heritage of Anatolia on Glass 332
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Oya Topçuoğlu

Bibliography 335
Index 393

Contents | vii
 CHAPTER  19 Cultural Heritage Attrition in Egypt
monica hanna

historical objects are an integral part of our interpretation of the past, and they

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are an important facet of our financial, communal, political, and intellectual assets.1
The role these objects play in our knowledge of the past is paramount. Some would
argue that objects are more important than the archaeological context,2 and others,
including me, believe that the object alone loses its historical value and becomes
a mere artifact that even archaeometric analysis, 3D printing, and contemporary
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art can replicate. Objects also have a role to play in cultural heritage preservation,
which has a very clear impact on the consolidation of the identity of living peoples
and their archaeological spaces. Many modern Egyptians relate ancient Egypt to the
famous (and canonical) bust of Nefertiti, and they come to the Egyptian Museum
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in Cairo in search of the bust, only to find out that she left for Berlin in 1913, more
than a hundred years ago.3 The loss of historical objects thus creates a gap in the
production of culture in the present. Historical objects have a social value beyond
their aesthetic appreciation; looting destroys future chances of understanding how
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our past was created. This eventually leads to the loss of site context and to “cultural
heritage attrition” with its demise of identity and memory.

The Social Value of Historical Objects

Historical objects are elements of the knowledge production created by
archaeologists and museum curators. Archaeology and cultural heritage preserva-
tion are today, in this postcolonial and post-processual era, seen as a social praxis.4
In this view, archaeologists and curators are not just keepers of collections, but also
must be conscious of their role in producing cultural knowledge.5 In order to con-
tribute responsibly to the production of knowledge, archaeologists and curators
need to revisit their ethical accountability and research designs, as many of their
projects primarily address the academic community, the educated elite, and the
Western tourist, while they speak very little to local Egyptian communities. This
particular form of knowledge production alienates many community members
and causes a huge gap in understanding between the people, the historical object,

Monica Hanna, Cultural Heritage Attrition in Egypt In: Testing the Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology.
Edited by: Amy Rebecca Gansell and Ann Shafer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190673161.003.0019
and its cultural context.6 Instead, scholars must acknowledge that the meanings of
objects transform through time. For example, when sexual harassment was used
to suppress the women’s rights movements under the Muslim Brotherhood reign
in 2013, many demonstrated against the regime by using the image of Nefertiti
wearing a gas mask on posters and street graffiti (on contemporary Egyptian graf-
fiti, also see Chapter 22, 325, this volume). Nefertiti thus became the symbol of
feminism and women’s rights. This new layer of cultural production created new
social and political interpretations of the bust, overlaying and temporarily over-
riding former concerns surrounding its repatriation and its authenticity. This new
historical layer for the object is tangible, accessible, and contemporary (for an ex-
ample the bust’s representation in contemporary art, see Chapter  12, 257, and
Figure 12.3, this volume).

Providing Shelter for the Orphaned

With the events of the Arab Spring, and the security withdrawal on January 28,

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2011, from many archaeological sites, the pandemic of looting and theft reached
unprecedented levels.7 Archaeological objects continue to be sold daily as
unprovenanced materials on websites and in auction houses—many times with
a fake history.8 Many collectors in the West believe or pretend that they are pro-
viding a shelter for these orphaned objects,9 and some scholars try to create a his-
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tory for these orphans through stylistic and material comparisons.10 This attempt
at salvaging orphaned objects creates a huge demand on the antiquities market,
and many of the illegal rings that sell these objects are tied with international
crime organizations, or sometimes fund radical militants of the Islamic State.11
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Not only does looting affect the integrity of cultural heritage, but it also
encourages land grabbers to wipe out archaeological sites post-looting.
Unfortunately, when a site is completely raided of its antiquities, sometimes
officials of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities regard it as of lesser historical
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value and easily give it up for official or unofficial urban projects. For example,
the rate at which archaeological sites are disappearing in the highly dense region
of the Nile Delta is alarming. I have called this phenomenon “cultural heritage
attrition,” in which a process of cultural heritage desiccation starts with neglect,
then transforms into looting, and finally results in the complete loss of the archae-
ological context.
The so-called housing of orphaned objects is really a commodification of the
past and resonates to a great extent with the antiquities fervor of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. With the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, scholars and
diplomats actively raided sites to take antiquities back to the West for prestige and
status, claiming, as well, that the indigenous people did not appreciate their value.12
Current collectors and scholars are not so different from those early explorers, and
they must re-evaluate the ethical impact of their activities, especially as those ac-
tivities relate to the attrition of the cultural heritage that collectors hypothetically
value.13 In Egypt, the human toll is also very real and well documented.14 Several
children employed by looting rings have died as a result of negligence and greed,
creating a very different view of these objects now, as blood antiquities.

316 | Monica Hanna

The Future Identity of the Past
Historical objects and their interpretation are seen by many as the foundation
of identity claims,15 and the role that objects play in the construction of modern
identities involves the actual material remains along with knowledge about the
layers of their cultural production.16 While the Rosetta Stone and the Nefertiti bust
might be part of the discourse on the construction of modern Egyptian identity, so
might also be the thousands of orphaned objects that leave the country every day.
The current discourse and debate on repatriation are focused on legal or historical
issues, but there is no real discourse on the people’s interaction with and interpre-
tation of the past and identity in a changing Egypt. This lack of discourse on how
material culture relates directly to the identity formation of spaces and people will
lead gradually to the loss of memory, which will further lead to the irreparable at-
trition of cultural heritage.

Notes

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1. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, translated by Richard Nice,
Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 16 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977).
2. Richard Leventhal and Brian Daniels, “‘Orphaned Objects,’ Ethical Standards,
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and the Acquisition of Antiquities,” DePaul Journal of Art, Technology and Intellectual
Property Law 23, no. 2 (2013): 334.
3. Salima Ikram, “Collecting and Repatriating Egypt’s Past:  Toward a New
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Nationalism,” in Contested Cultural Heritage:  Religion, Nationalism, Erasure, and
Exclusion in a Global World, edited by Helaine Silverman (New York: Springer, 2011),
141–54.
4. Randall H. McGuire, Maria O’Donovan, and LouAnn Wurst, “Probing Praxis
in Archaeology: The Last Eighty Years,” Rethinking Marxism 17, no. 3 (2005): 355–72.
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5. Lynn Meskell and Peter Pels, Embedding Ethics (Oxford: Berg, 2005); Yannis
Hamilakis, “From Ethics to Politics,” in Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to
Politics, edited by Yannis Hamilakis and Philip Duke (New York: Routledge [2007]
2016), 33.
6. Meskell and Pels 2005; George Nicholas and Julie Hollowell, “Ethical
Challenges to a Postcolonial Archaeology: The Legacy of Scientific Colonialism,” in
Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics, edited by Yannis Hamilakis and
Philip Duke (New York: Routledge [2007] 2016), 59.
7. Monica Hanna, “What Has Happened to Egyptian Heritage after the 2011
Unfinished Revolution?,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage
Studies 1, no. 4 (2013): 371–75; Salima Ikram and Monica Hanna, “Looting and Land
Grabbing: The Current Situation in Egypt,” American Research Center in Egypt Bulletin
202 (2013): 34–39; and Monica Hanna, “Documenting Looting Activities in Post-2011
Egypt,” in Countering Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods: The Global Challenge of Protecting
the World’s Heritage, edited by ICOM (Paris: ICOM, 2015), 47–63.
8. Colin Renfrew, Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership: The Ethical Crisis in Archaeology
(London:  Bristol Classical Press, 2000); Neil Brodie, Jennifer Dool, and Colin

cultur al heritage attrition in egypt | 317

Renfrew, eds., Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction of the World’s Archaeological
Heritage (Cambridge: Oxbow, 2001); Neil Brodie and Kathryn Walker Tubb, eds., Illicit
Antiquities: The Theft of Culture and the Extinction of Archaeology (London: Routledge,
2002); and Neil Brodie et al., Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade,
with Foreword by Paul A. Shackel (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006).
9. Leventhal and Daniels 2013.
10. Brodie, Dool, and Renfrew 2001.
11. Aymenn al-Tamimi, “The Evolution in Islamic State Administration,”
Perspectives on Terrorism 9, no. 4 (2015): 117–29.
12. Hamilakis (2007) 2016, 17.
13. Renfrew 2000.
14. Owen Jarus, “Blood and Gold:  Children Dying as Egypt’s Treasures Are
Looted,” Live Science, August 8, 2016, https://www.livescience.com/55687-children-
dying-in-egypt-looting.html, accessed August 31, 2019.
15. Reinhard Bernbeck and Susan Pollock, “‘Grabe Wo Du Stehst!’ An
Archaeology of Perpetrators,” in Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics,
edited by Yannis Hamilakis and Philip Duke (New York: Routledge [2007] 2016), 216.

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16. Susan Pollock and Reinhard Bernbeck, eds., Archaeologies of the Middle
East: Critical Perspectives (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005).
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318 | Monica Hanna

 CHAPTER  20 Crafting the Ancient Near
Eastern Canon
A Personal Reflection
zena kamash

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as a british iraqi archaeologist, I have spent a lot of time thinking about and
interacting with the archaeology and cultural heritage of the Middle East. My
recent work, in particular, has focused around trying to find ways for people of
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Middle Eastern origin to have a voice for, and make a connection to, their cultural
heritage.1 In this essay, however, I want to reflect upon my own connection to my
cultural heritage and some of the ways in which that is changing.
I grew up in the United Kingdom while hearing stories and seeing pictures of
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a faraway place that was also home. Family trips to the Neo-Assyrian galleries in
the British Museum were the closest I came to that distant home (on the display
of ancient Near Eastern art at the British Museum, see Chapter 11, this volume).
These trips shaped the pictures in my mind of this semi-imagined place:  tow-
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ering lamassu, protective, but also fierce; gods, genies, and kings wearing elabo-
rate costumes; creatures of all shapes and sizes hidden in the carved undergrowth
and waters (Figures 1.1 and 1.2; Plate 1.2). These images have stayed with me ever
since:  an essential part of how I  have constructed and come to understand my
complex identity.
In the wake of the recent destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria,
my heart has broken many times over as I watch my heritage, real and imagined,
crumble and explode. As a consequence, I have felt a pressing need to do some-
thing to try to heal my heart and the broken hearts of others. I have found crafting
relaxing and therapeutic for some time, so I have looked to craftivism—the gentle
act of protest through crafting—as a way forward in this mission. Combining
craftivism with my role as a professional archaeologist seemed a fitting way for me
to respond both to the conflict and to the numerous calls for reconstruction in the
aftermath. Many, though not all, of these reconstructions have felt to me to lack
heart and to focus more on objects than on the people to whom those objects are
connected. I wanted therefore to find ways that people could express themselves
through alternative, craftivist reconstructions.

Zena Kamash, Crafting the Ancient Near Eastern Canon In: Testing the Canon of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology.
Edited by: Amy Rebecca Gansell and Ann Shafer, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190673161.003.0020