Safeguarding Gaza’s Ancient Past

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/16/arts/international/safeguarding-gazas-ancient-past.html

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GAZA CITY — According to Greek mythology, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, came to earth from the sea, borne on a half shell by nymphs.

Gaza is not ancient Greece, but it has a history and civilization that date back to the Bronze Age. And it has its own Aphrodite: a marble statue from the second century B.C. salvaged from the Mediterranean Sea by a fisherman and donated to what is now the Gaza Museum of Archeology.

The museum is in a long room inside the Al-Mathaf Hotel, which sits along the sweeping Gaza coastline and the Mediterranean Sea toward the northern part of the Gaza Strip. It was founded in 2008 by Jawdat Khoudary, an entrepreneur and collector of art and antiquities. The museum was renovated recently under the direction of Mr. Khoudary’s daughter, Yasmeen.

Gaza has had four wars in six years — the latest this year, in which more than 2,000 people died. The northern part of Gaza, where the museum sits, was a dangerous area during the latest operation, with neighboring communities heavily targeted by Israeli ground forces.

Yasmeen Khoudary said the museum sustained minor damage from the latest fighting, with some broken windows from nearby blasts.

“We are O.K. and the museum is O.K.,” she said recently by telephone.

Scholars and local collectors have maintained a strong sense of identity with Gazan history.

Marc-André Haldimann, a researcher at the University of Bern in Switzerland and an expert on Mediterranean archaeology, said the popular image of Gaza — which he described as burned-out cars, collapsed houses and funeral processions surrounded by green, yellow and black flags — belied the country’s rich heritage. Gaza had 17 major archeological sites that were unknown to the outside world until Mr. Khoudary first began collecting antiquities in 1987, Mr. Haldimann said.

“Our Western perception does not imagine the fabulous archeological treasures that lie hidden behind this daily routine of death and destruction,” he said.

Mr. Khoudary built his collection with his own funds, with help from the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem and the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire of Geneva, Mr. Haldimann said.

And while travel restrictions have halted tourism from outside the country, there is still a domestic market of tourists, heading in particular to the seashore and historic sites. Mr. Khoudary’s museum is part of that experience.

“Now the Gazans can at last discover a significant selection of their cultural heritage,” Mr. Haldimann said.

The museum, which has free admission, is in a long narrow stone room to the right of the hotel’s reception desk. On display are 350 artifacts dating from the Bronze Age, or 3,500 B.C. The collection includes tools, columns, coins, glass items, beads, jars and pottery from the Islamic, crusader, Roman and Byzantine periods. An additional 800 items are in storage at six locations outside the country.

“We were such a civilized city at one time,” Mr. Khoudary said. “We had our own coins in the fifth century B.C. made in Gaza with the Gazan logo. We were like Alexandria — like any city on the Mediterranean Sea.”

A huge black-and-white photograph by the Swedish photographer Per-Olov Andersson hangs along one of the back walls, depicting the port of Gaza and fishermen in 1956. The men standing by their boats are the fathers and relatives of the many fishermen who have, since 1985, brought and sold artifacts — including the Aphrodite statue — to Mr. Khoudary.

“The fishermen find everything you could think of,” Mr. Khoudary, 54, said during a recent lunch in the restaurant of the hotel. “They often free dive just off the coast here.”

The sea is a recurring theme in the museum collection. Ancient anchors from the Roman times sit in displays decorated with local sand. A three-meter-high Corinthian marble column, with its capital intact, is one of the items salvaged by fishermen. Tests showed that it dated from the Byzantine period.

Mr. Khoudary also found many of the items in the collection through his construction company, Saqqa & Khoudary.

“Gaza has no rules about excavating prior to construction,” he said. “There are no resources or political will to preserve the history.” He added that he always checked for significant items before going ahead with construction projects.

Excavation in Gaza has suffered during the recent hostilities, and with it the work of scholars.

Moain Sadeq, a founder of the former Palestinian Department of Antiquities in Gaza, now lectures in history and archaeology at Qatar University. He left Gaza in 2007 and has been back three times, though not since the hostilities this year.

“I left Gaza because it’s a very critical situation,” Mr. Sadeq said. “We couldn’t excavate or do field work. As an archaeologist, I like working in the field and there was no way for me to do that in Gaza.

“It’s such an important place for archaeology,” he added. “It’s a melting pot of cultures, and it was located at a crossroads of important civilizations like Syrian and Egyptian.”

Mr. Khoudary acknowledges a weakness for old coins. One of his prized possessions is a hold of 22,000 bronze coins that came from the sea, dating from the third century B.C. He said Gaza was once an intersection of many cultures and currencies.

“At this time Gaza had its own seaport to the whole world and was connected to Cyprus and Afghanistan,” he said.

During the 2008 war, Mr. Khoudary said, Israeli tanks were stationed 300 meters from the hotel and missiles were fired into the museum. Ancient treasures were damaged in the attacks, include sun-dried clay pots and wine jars, mud-brick wall fragments and Egyptian alabaster plates, some 5,500 years old.

“We were so lucky, our loss was so limited,” he said. “Others had lost all their factories and all their houses were totally destroyed.”

The damaged items were later destroyed. When Mr. Khoudary was asked why he decided not to keep them on display, his face at first turned somber, and then he laughed. “We have to show encouraging things, something positive,” he said.