"Gaza" is written in full letters on the facade of the Arab World Institute in Paris. (Credit: AFP)
"We must not throw Gaza's heritage into the sea!" declared Jack Lang, president of the Arab World Institute, at the inauguration of the exhibition "Treasures Saved from Gaza, 5,000 Years of History," which will run until Nov. 2 at the L'Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris. "This exhibition is an act of resistance. More than ever today, especially since the massacre of Oct. 7 and the subsequent destruction, Gaza's rich history must come to light. Nothing is worse than neglect and oblivion ... The archaeological heritage nourishes the contemporary Palestinian identity, and its preservation is the indispensable corollary of respecting the human rights of Palestinians," said Lang.
In partnership with the Museum of Art and History in Geneva (MAH) and the Palestinian Authority, the IMA presents a selection of 130 archaeological masterpieces dating from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman era. Oil lamps, amphoras, bowls and terracotta figurines, funerary steles, architectural elements, statuettes of deities in bronze or marble, such as Aphrodite (Hellenistic period) unearthed at Blakhiya, as well as the spectacular fragment of Byzantine mosaic from Abou Barakeh (Deir al-Balah) dated 586 AD. These are testimonies of Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic civilizations that followed one another on the soil of Gaza, a land of plenty for caravan traders, a port of wealth from the Orient, Arabia, Africa and the Mediterranean. Gaza is full of archaeological sites from all eras that are now in peril.
69 severely damaged cultural sites
The exhibited relics come from the collection of Gaza businessman Jawdat Khoudary, who had offered them to the Palestinian Authority. Arriving in Switzerland in 2006 for a temporary exhibition at the MAH, these pieces could never be repatriated to Gaza due to successive wars in the enclave and the Israeli blockade. The Palestinian Authority requested that the MAH keep the objects until conditions for a "safe and undamaged" return are met. Thus, the IMA drew from the 529 items stored since 2006 in crates at the Geneva free port.
Additionally, a mapping of bombings shows a visualization of schools, hospitals and destroyed civilian buildings, but also cultural sites. Based on satellite images, UNESCO has counted "69 severely damaged cultural sites": ten religious sites (including the Greek-Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, destroyed on Oct. 19, 2024), 43 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, seven archaeological sites, six monuments including the Pacha Palace built in the 13th century, two storage places for movable cultural property and a museum. As for the monastery of Saint Hilarion, a complex recognized for its universal value, it was inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger on July 26, 2024.
Unpublished photographs, treasures of the Biblical School
Another room is dedicated to previously unpublished photographs of the city at the beginning of the 20th century. They come from the collection of the French Biblical and Archaeological School (EBAF). Founded in 1890, the institution has been located since its creation in the Dominican convent of Saint Stephen in Jerusalem. At its inception, it was a practical school of biblical studies. Its objective was simple: to study the Bible in the physical and cultural context in which it was written. That is, on site, to take into account the entire oriental environment. The clichés of the Dominican brothers-archaeologists were published in monographs or scientific journal articles, La Revue biblique. These are unique documents that show the quaint charm of the agglomeration surrounded by small gardens, the picturesque palm groves in the dunes and the fishing port. A landscape vanished with the Great War and the English bombings of 1917, which led to the loss of much of Gaza's architectural heritage. The arrival of displaced populations from 1947 and the creation of Israel, followed by the massive arrival of refugees after the first Israeli-Arab war (1948-1949), where nearly 200,000 "castaways of history" joined the 80,000 inhabitants of this coastal strip of 365 square kilometers, cut off from its hinterland.
An exhibition born out of urgency
The war was triggered by Hamas's attack, which resulted in 1,218 Israeli deaths. The military operations launched in retaliation by Israel killed more than 50,000 Palestinians. "The priority is obviously human, not heritage," exhibition curator Élodie Bouffard told AFP. "But we also wanted to show that Gaza was, for millennia, the culmination of the caravan routes, a port that minted its own currency, developed because it was at the meeting point of water and sand."
The genesis of these "Treasures of Gaza" is inseparable from the war in the Middle East. By the end of 2024, the IMA was finalizing an exhibition of relics from the archaeological site of Byblos in Lebanon, but the Israeli bombings of Beirut made the endeavor impossible. "It stopped dead, but we couldn't let that defeat us," recounted Bouffard. The idea of an exhibition on Gaza's heritage arose then, in haste. "We had four and a half months to put it together. That has never happened before."
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The exhibition design was entrusted to two talents of Palestinian architecture and design: Elias and Youssef Anastas, founders of the architecture and engineering firm AAU Anastas, and Wonder Cabinet, based in Paris and Bethlehem. Their work explores the connections between craftsmanship and architecture on scales ranging from furniture to territorial studies. Their works are part of permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the FRAC Centre-Val de Loire (in Orléans, France) and the Vitra Design Museum, a private museum dedicated to design and furniture, located in Weil am Rhein, Germany, near the Swiss border. Elias and Youssef Anastas received, notably, the grand prize of the jury as part of the 2024 edition of the Arab World Institute Design Award.
This article was translated from L'Orient-Le Jour.
