The Sustainable Management of Cultural Heritage Sites: Tourism and the Politics of Archaeology at Petra

Jordan is a country rich with history, both modern and ancient, and its ancient past is best reflected by the thousands of archaeological sites peppered within its borders. Tourists travel from all over the world to visit Jordan and see its antiquities first-hand, contributing significantly to the ever-important Jordanian tourism industry. The interaction between tourism and archaeology is such that the two subjects share a department at the University of Jordan and a ministry in the Jordanian government. This study explores the political relationship between tourism and archaeology through the lens of Jordan’s largest tourist attraction, the ancient city of Petra. In particular, the study asks how archaeologists and tourism experts evaluate the management plans of Petra, whether these two groups find themselves in conflict or not, and whether the relationship between tourism and archaeology has squandered the many attempts at implementing a management plan at the Petra site. This study used both qualitative data in the form of interviews with academics, businesspeople, and government officials, and quantitative data in the form of a survey of faculty at the University of Jordan. The result revealed that respondents are split between those who think tourism and archaeology are destined to clash, and those who think that archaeology should adapt to the needs of tourism.

Egyptian Antiquity, Imperial Politics, and Modernity

Chapter 8 draws the web of relations between Egypt’s antiquity, empire, modernity, and internationalism from the outbreak of the First World War to decolonization. It focuses on the era between Britain’s unilateral granting of formal independence to Egypt in 1922 and the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1936, and sets the imperial preoccupation with ancient Egypt in national and international contexts. The chapter fills a lacuna in the historiography of Egyptology and Egyptomania which has focused on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922 and has largely overlooked the internationalist angles of the interwar obsession with ancient Egypt. The chapter maps the expansion of interest in Egypt beyond the pharaonic past and considers its extension to prehistoric Egypt. It relates Egyptology to the modernization of travel and speed technologies, and to popular representations of Egypt as a centre of globalized travel in a connective empire. The chapter further considers the roles of the global media in mediating between discoveries and transnational audiences. Following on the theme of the internationalization of Egypt’s past, it considers the presence of Egypt in material culture, particularly in eclectic styles and design which were associated with modernity, such as Art Deco architecture and fashion. One main argument of the chapter is that the interwar discovery of Egypt’s multiple pasts was characterized by an internationalization apparent in the politics of archaeology, the spread of the new regime of antiquities and cooperation between Egyptian nationalists and internationalist bodies, and in the mass production and consumption of Egyptiana.