Article ID: CBB638958110

Visualizing a Monumental Past: Archeology, Nasser’s Egypt, and the Early Cold War (2017)

unapi

This article examines geographies of decolonization and the Cold War through a case study in the making of archeological knowledge. The article focuses on an archeological dig that took place in Egypt in the period between the July 1952 Free Officers’ coup and the 1956 Suez crisis. Making use of the notion of the ‘boundary object’, this article demonstrates how the excavation of ancient Egyptian remains at the site of Mit Rahina helped to constitute Nasserist revolutionary modernity and its relationship to wider, post-Second World War political geographies. The dig took place as a result of an Egyptian–American collaboration designed to institute the possibility of archeology taking place along the lines of the Point Four modernization program promoted by the United States. The article discusses how this situation not only engendered contention surrounding the role of the international ‘experts’ appointed to run this excavation work, but also – and as a result – helped to constitute the monumental visual and material shape that archeological evidence relating to the Egyptian past could now take. Egypt’s revolution sat within wider Cold War political struggles, yet the ‘ground-up’ realities of this relationship helped to constitute the sort of past (and future) monumentality proposed by Nasser’s government.

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Associated with

Article William Carruthers; Stéphane Van Damme (2017) Disassembling Archaeology, Reassembling the Modern World. History of Science (pp. 255-272). unapi

Article Mirjam Brusius (2017) Hitting Two Birds with one Stone: An Afterword on Archeology and the History of Science. History of Science (pp. 383-391). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB638958110/

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Authors & Contributors
Sheppard, Kathleen L.
Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalonilla
Bini, Elisabetta
Boldyrev, Ivan
Olessia Kirtchik
Ioana Popa
Concepts
Cold War
Science and politics
Decolonization
International relations
Archaeology
Egyptology
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, late
18th century
Places
Egypt
United States
France
Asia
Soviet Union
Africa
Institutions
University College, London
United Nations
Congress for Cultural Freedom
Institut Pasteur d'Iran
International Red Cross
World Health Organization (WHO)
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