The invasion of the nomad horde of the Israelites on the high civilization of the
Amorite kings must have seemed a crushing blow to all culture and advance in the arts;
it was much like the terrible breaking up of the Roman empire by the northern races; it
swept away all good with the evil; centuries were needed to regain what was lost.
(Petrie 1891 in Silberman 1999b: 73–4).Anti-Semitism also had an impact on Mesopotamian archaeology. At the turn
of the century, with the increasing opposition to Jews spreading all over the
Western world, biblical archaeology was also used as a weapon against them.
The German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch (1850–1922), for example,
argued that the Mesopotamian origin of the biblical tradition released Chris-
tianity from its links with the Jewish heritage and converted it to theWrst ‘true
universal religion’ (Larsen 1987). Anti-Semitism also clearly aVected Phoe-
nician archaeology. From a positive feeling about the industrious ancient
Phoenician merchants (especially in favour in capitalist Europe, Britain, and
Ireland in particular (Champion 2001)), at the end of the century things
changed. Beyond the original Phoenician area archaeological remains were
now described as Greek. Also, interest in the archaeology of Phoenicians in
the core area of Lebanon and Syria clearly diminished (Liverani 1998: 13).
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN EGYPT AND TURKEYThe archaeology of Egypt and Turkey has been discussed in the previous
chapter, although its connection with biblical archaeology needs further
explanation. As argued in Chapter 6, the attraction exerted by the Pharaohs’
land was principally connected to its ties with the classical world—mainly the
move of obelisks to Rome in the early centuries of the era—, the presence of
spectacular remains like the pyramids and the romanticism of its association
with the exotic. Although Egypt’s link with the biblical past was not a key
issue for the earliest interest in Egyptian antiquities, scholars did not ignore
the fact that Egypt had been mentioned in the Old Testament, mainly in
Genesis and in Exodus. In Genesis it was explained how Joseph was sold into
slavery in Egypt by his brothers. Exodus narrated the adoption of Moses by an
Egyptian princess as a baby, how as an adult he discovered his origin,Xed
from Egypt and came back after God ordered him to save his people from
slavery. It continued to describe how Moses had tried to convince the Pharaoh
to let the Israelites worship in the desert, and how the Pharaoh’s refusal had
led to the ten plagues that had devastated Egypt. The story ended with the
Israelites’Xight from Egypt. In contrast to archaeology in Mesopotamia and
Biblical Archaeology 137