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With the rapid rise in the economic importance of the bourgeoisie beginning ca 1870, Europe and America witnessed the creation of private associations, funds, and societies to finance archaeological expeditions in the ‘Lands of the Bible’, complementing state-run institutions such as universities, museums, and academies of sciences and the humanities.
Research into the history of the ancient Near East, from the start, served to reflect ‘Western’ self-perception and provided the foundation for the projection of Weltanschauung. Against the background of increasing professionalization of archaeological disciplines, the learned societies also enabled laypersons, amateurs, and dilletantes to participate in scholarly debate and to promulgate certain frames of what was perceived as the ‘Ancient Orient’.
Behind the movement lay different motivations but also respective ‘national’ cultures in academia. In fact, while economic and strategic interests during this ‘Age of Empire’ played a pivotal role, the historian should not be blind to the other factors. Given the central importance of the ancient Near East as the ‘cradle’ of no less than three world religions as well as the earliest states, even empires, in world history, it became a matter of prestige for European and other ‘Western’ nations to fill their museums with objects from that distant past, which were related to the origins of their ‘own’ culture – as they perceived it.
Furthermore, the exotic appeal of ‘the Orient’ must not be forgotten, for it served as means of self-affirmation in contrast to the Oriental ‘other’, legitimizing the colonial exploitation and semantics of a ‘white man’s burden’ or a civilizing ‘mission’, but also defining a cultural responsibility. After the many upheavals caused by World War I, new forms of associations evolved to compensate for the loss of state-funding but also to remedy the loss of, until then, firmly established worldviews.
A systematic and transnational study of these associations – such as Palestine Exploration Fund (founded 1865), Deutscher Palästina-Verein (1877), Egypt Exploration Society (1882), Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (1898), American Schools of Oriental Research (1900), Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth (1923), Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Genootschap (1933) – remains a desideratum.
The workshop will bring together – for the first time – historians and archaeologists, along with representatives of other disciplines from different countries, to engage in a truly interdisciplinary discourse, focusing on Oriental Societies as a means of societal self-assertion.
Program
Wednesday, February 23rd
14:15 Greetings
EVA CANCIK-KIRSCHBAUM, DFG-Kollegforschungsgruppe 2615 „Rethinking Oriental Despotism”
14:30 Introduction
OLAF MATTHES & THOMAS L. GERTZEN
15:00 Coffee break
Panel 1: The many facets of an intricate topic
15:15 Between passion for antiquities and science - European aristocracy and archaeology
LARS PETERSEN (Karlsruhe)
15:45 Rise and Fall of the Società Asiatica Italiana
MARCO BONECHI (Rome)
16:15 The Many Faces of the Palestine Exploration Fund: Hidden and not-so hidden agendas at work in a learned society in the late 19th century
FELICITY COBBING (London)
16:45 Discussion
18:00 Keynote lecture:
Europa und der Orient. Bürgerliche Gelehrsamkeit und imperiales Sendungsbewusstsein im langen 19. Jahrhundert
CHRISTOPH JAHR (Humboldt Universität Berlin)
Thursday, February 24th
Panel 2: Discovering the ‘lands of the Bible’ – A vast area of research
10:00 The Assyrian Exploration Fund and the early exploration of ancient Mesopotamia
STEFANIA ERMIDORO (Venice)
10:30 Case studies in popularizing the Ancient Near East in the Netherlands: The Sichem Committee, Ex Oriente Lux
SEBASTIAAN BERNTSEN (Leiden)
11:00 Discussion
11:15 Coffee break
11:30 Oriental Societies and Hittite studies in Victorian England: Tracing the history of an entangled relationship
SILVIA ALAURA (Rome)
12:00 Babylon Society as a Japanese Private Association in the Early Twentieth Century
REIKO MAEJIMA (Vienna)
12:30 Discussion
12:45 Lunch break
Panel 3: Eternal Egypt?
14:30 The Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth in Brussels: Neutral little Belgium as the nucleus of Egyptology in the 1920–1940s.
JEAN-MICHEL BRUFFAERTS (Bruxelles) & MARLEEN DE MEYER (Leuven & Cairo) & JAN VANDERSMISSEN (Ghent)
15:00 Fundraising for Amarna: Evidence from the EES archive
STEPHANIE BOONSTRA (London)
15:30 Discussion
15:45 Coffee break
Panel 4: Issues and ‘-isms’
16:00 “The Aryan Orient”: The Research Institute for East and Orient in Vienna 1916–1923
PETER ROHRBACHER (Vienna)
16:15 Jews excavating in Egypt? – An Archaeological Endeavour of the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens
THOMAS L. GERTZEN (Berlin)
16:45 Discussion
Friday, February 25th
Panel 5: Stocktaking and Absences
10:00 Hungarian archaeological presence (and absence) in Egypt before World War I
KATALIN KÓTHAY (Budapest)
10:30 Bohemian absences
HANA NAVRATILOVA (Reading/Oxford)
11:00 Discussion
11:15 Coffee break
11:30 The Netherlands Institute for the Near East: the early years
WILLEMIJN WAAL (Leiden)
12:00 Overview of societies and initiatives in the Netherlands in the 20th century
CAROLIEN VAN ZOEST (Leiden)
12:30 Discussion
12:45 Lunch break
14:30 Die Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft als frühes Beispiel einer Public Private Partnership
OLAF MATTHES (Hamburg)
15:00 Looking back – closing discussion