same year the Commission for the Protection of Antiquities was set up to deal
with the enforcement of the legislation protecting antiquities. A report on the
deplorable state of the palace of Topkapi was issued acknowledging that
‘Every nation makes the necessary provisions for the preservation of itsWne
arts and monuments and thus preserves the endless virtues of its ancestors as
a lesson in civilization for its descendants’ (in Shaw 2002: 212). As these words
make clear, the nationalist vocabulary had deWnitively been accepted in
Turkey’s policy towards archaeological heritage.
In addition to the re-evaluation of the Islamic past, at the start of the
twentieth century a fresh interest in the prehistoric past emerged. Interest-
ingly, it was promoted by a pan-Turkish ideology which proposed the union
of all Turkish peoples in Asia in one nation-state (Magnarella & Tu ̈rkdogan
1976: 265). The proponents of this ideology organized the Turkish Society
(Tu ̈rk Dernegi) in 1908, an association with its own journal,Tu ̈rk Yurdu
(Turkish Homeland). The society’s objectives were to study ‘the ancient
remains, history, languages, literatures, ethnography and ethnology, social
conditions and present civilizations of the Turks, and the ancient and modern
geography of the Turkish lands’ (in Magnarella & Tu ̈rkdogan 1976: 265). As in
Europe, the search for a national prehistoric past became a quest for the racial
origins of the nation identiWed in the Sumerians and Hittites. This would
feature in the discourse on the past adopted by Kemal Atatu ̈rk (1881–1938)
after his rise to power after the First World War.
POST-NAPOLEONIC EGYPT: PLUNDER AND NARRATIVES
OF EMPIRE AND RESISTANCEThe plunder of Egyptian antiquitiesThere had been a long tradition of interest in Egyptian antiquities even before
the studies undertaken in situ in the Napoleonic period (Chapters 2 and 3).
After the power struggle which followed the French and British invasions,
Muhammad Ali, an army oYcer of Macedonian origin, was conWrmed as
Egypt’s ruler in 1805. Under him, Egypt acted with increasing independence
from her Ottoman master. His period in oYce (r. 1805–48) was character-
ized by a state-led modernization towards the Western model. In this context,
some native scholars travelled to Europe. One of these was Rifaa RaWi
al-Tahtawi (1801–73), who spent some time in Paris in the late 1820s,
where he became aware of the European interest in Egyptian (and classical)
antiquities. One of his collaborators was Joseph Hekekyan (c. 1807–74), a
118 Archaeology of Informal Imperialism