Western Scholarship, Ethnogeographies and Cultural Heritage in Israel/Palestine

Abstract

Modern Western culture perceives and understands ancient Near Eastern heritage (artefacts, landscapes, traditions, cultures, etc.) as an essential component of the foundational elements of Western civilization. Ancient Near Eastern scholarship developed in modern times notably after Napoleon Bonaparte's incursion in Ottoman Egypt and Syria (1798-1801), having as one of its main aims during the nineteenth century the scientific recovery of Biblical landscapes, scenarios and monuments, along with the study of the main ancient civilizations of the region. From then on, that part of the Levant, imagined and represented since Biblical and early Christian times as the "Holy Land" nowadays, essentially the State of Israel and the Palestinian Territories was subjected by means of the discipline of Biblical Archaeology and other related disciplines (topography, cartography, folklore studies) to a systematic and thorough analysis in order to reveal the historical links between Biblical stories, material culture and Western identity. Such an understanding of how the Western powers ideologically claimed for themselves the region of Israel/Palestine in the nineteenth century, forces us also to acknowledge the later development of different native ethnogeographies and cultural memories during the twentieth century namely, Israeli and Palestinian and their relationship to the cultural heritage and traditions closely related to the land. In sum, this paper reviews, considering recent post-colonial insights and criticism, the different and successive European/American, Zionist/Israeli, and Palestinian constructions of heritage in Israel/Palestine, from the perspectives of social anthropology and cultural geography, presenting also a final plea for an inclusive understanding of the many identities and cultural voices sharing the heritage of millennia in the land.