ARCE Missouri: Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology

Lecture Information

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, the building and heightening of the Aswan Dam under the oversight of British engineers radically altered the relationship of the region of Nubia to Egypt. Imperial engineering, national development, and archaeological survey created a region in which the contemporary population became disaggregated from its ancient past and a touristic gaze shaped all in its image. UNESCO’s “International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia” was promoted as a universal good. It not only rested on earlier colonial intervention, however, but also made possible the elision of Nubians from the cross-border region forever.