The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, little was known of the ancient Near East except for what was preserved in the Bi¬ble and classical literature. By the end of the nineteenth cen¬tury, an amazing transformation had occurred: the basic out¬line of ancient Near Eastern history was understood and the mate¬rial culture of the region was recognizable to the general pub¬lic. This three-volume study explores the various ways that non-specialists would have encountered ancient Egypt, Mesopota¬mia, and the Holy Land and how they derived and con¬structed meaning from those discoveries. McGeough chal¬lenges the simplistic view that the experience of the ancient Near East was solely a matter of 'othering' and shows how differ¬ent people claimed the Near East as their own space and how connections were drawn between the ancient and contempo¬rary worlds.

Volume II examines the different ways that non-specialists encoun¬tered the materiality of the ancient Near East over the course of the nineteenth century. During this time, people col¬lected artifacts while traveling in the region or paid to see the col¬lections that others brought back. The public experienced the ancient world in museum exhibits that privileged 'real' arti¬facts in a new context or in hyper-real displays (like the Crystal Palace) where whole buildings from the ancient Near East were reconstructed. Men and women dressed as biblical charac-ters in travelling fairs or spent an evening unwrapping a mummy. Individuals bought Assyriological souvenirs and em¬ployed Egyptian styles in their design, first in higher quality de¬signer products and later in novelty items. Egyptian temples pro¬vided the architectural inspiration for buildings in London and the ancient use of colour was a strong argument for reimagin¬ing Victorian style. The adoption of Egypt, especially, in the world's-fair phenomenon linked the ancient Near East with a global future in which change was naturalized and consum¬ers were taught not to be afraid of the transformations brought by the industrial age.