#EOTalks 10: Archaeological Display and Omission: The 1936 Exhibition of Judith Krause-Marquet’s Finds from A-Tell (Biblical Ha-Ai) at the Crossroad of British, Palestinian, and Israeli Perspectives by LIAT NAEH (original) (raw)

Picture: Workers during the excavation of A-Tell (between Ramallah and Jericho), 1933. @Archives of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The Scientific Archive, 1918-1948, ATQ 55/6

Join us on zoom on October 9th for the tenth of our 2020 #EOTalks series! This event will feature Liat Naeh, who will talk about one the first displays of biblical archaeology in Palestine, and certainly one of the firsts to be curated by a local scholar: Judith Krause-Marquet’s 1936 exhibition of the sensational finds from her excavations at A-Tell, believed to be biblical Ha-Ai.

#EOTalks 10 by Liat Naeh

You can also watch the talk on our facebook page

by Liat Naeh

Abstract

Recent archival discoveries shed light on one the first displays of biblical archaeology in Palestine, and certainly one of the firsts to be curated by a local scholar: Judith Krause-Marquet’s 1936 exhibition of the sensational finds from her excavations at A-Tell, believed to be biblical Ha-Ai. At face value, this exhibition publicized the impressive scientific accomplishments of a trowel-blazing woman archaeologist, Judith Krause-Marquet, set in the days when Zionism evolved hand in hand with the formation of biblical archaeology. Baron de Rothschild, a key supporter of Zionist settlements, funded the excavation to expose evidence of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan as told in the Bible; the Baron’s portrait in the exhibition was said to be of “a conqueror who wanted to discover the ways of a previous conqueror.” Indeed, Jewish visitors to the exhibition were moved by what they perceived to be a material illustration of biblical daily life, set against the backdrop of renewed Jewish-led agriculture and evoking claim over the land. Yet the exhibition silenced the fact that the finds came from Arab-Palestinian land, and excavated by Arab-Palestinian workers. As documents reveal, the British Mandate Government supported the display of the excavation finds as relics of Jewish history long before any finds were ever discovered, and was considering the expropriation of the tell from its Arab-Palestinian owners. Following 1936, the exhibition’s objects were incorporated in archaeological museums around Jerusalem, reflecting British, Palestinian, Israeli, and Jordanian contention over ownership and archaeological interpretation.

Speaker

Dr. Liat Naeh is a scholar and a museum professional focusing on the art and archaeology of the ancient Middle East during the Bronze and Iron Ages. She is particularly interested in Levantine artistic practices and ideology in an age of global exchange with the Mediterranean, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. She has published extensively on Levantine bone and ivory carving and ritualistic furniture, and is the co-editor of a recent volume on thrones in the ancient world. Naeh is currently researching early 20th century displays of Biblical Archaeology within museum exhibitions in Israel and beyond. Prior to joining the University of Toronto Archaeology Centre as a Research Associate, Naeh was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Bard Graduate Center, both in New York.

In 2018, Naeh graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where her PhD dissertation, titled “Local Art in the Southern Levant: Middle Bronze Age Bone-Inlaid Boxes of the Geometric Family”, analyzed unique bone-inlaid boxes found in southern Levantine elite tombs during the Middle Bronze Age as a case study for Egyptian-Levantine cultural connections and the development of Levantine art. During her PhD studies, Naeh has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, New York, and Fribourg University, Switzerland. In 2017, her paper, “In Search for Identity”, revisiting Iron Age Levantine ivories, has won the Sean W. Dever Memorial Prize for best student paper in the field of Syro-Palestinian or biblical archaeology. Before that, her MA thesis, examining the use and manufacture of miniature vessels and seven-cupped bowls in the Middle Bronze Age cult site of Nahariya, Israel, was awarded with the Polonsky Prize.

When?

Oct. 9th 2020, 2pm EST. The whole event shall last about 1hour (c.30 min talk followed by q&a).

Accessibility

We recommend webcaptioner.com (using Google Chrome as a browser) or the smartphone app LiveTranscribe for closed captioning during the event. Notes from the speaker can be provided before the event for those who need it to follow along. Please get in touch with us if you have any concerns about accessibility. The session will be recorded and made available in the future.

Suggested readings

Video

A 1936 News Reel Featuring the Opening of the Exhibition (Yomani Karmel No. 45, The Exelrod Collection)

On Biblically-Oriented Archaeological Display in Palestine and Israel:

Cobbing, F. J., and Tubb, J. N., 2005. Before the Rockefeller: The First Palestine Museum in Jerusalem. Mediterraneum 5: 79-89.

Kletter, R. 2017. Regional and Local Museums for Archaeology in the first Years of the State of Israel. Pp. 77-115 in F.E. Greenspahn and G.A. Rendsburg (eds.), Lema‘an Zioni. Essays in Honor of Ziony Zevit. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock.

St. Laurent, B. and Taskömür, H. 2013. The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem, 1890-1930: An Alternative Narrative. In Art Faculty Publications. Paper 7.

On A-Tell / Ha-Ai Excavations:

Callaway, J. A., 1968. New Evidence on the Conquest of ‘Ai. Journal of Biblical Literature 87: 312-320.

Marquet-Krause, J., 1935. La deuxième campagne de fouilles à Ay (1934). Syria 16: 325-45.

Marquet-Krause, J., 1949. Les Fouilles de ‘Ay (Et-Tell), 1933–1935. Enterprises par le baron Edmond de Rothschild. La Résurrection d’une grande cité biblique (Bibliothèque archéologique et historique 45). Paris: Paul Geuthner.