Istanbul Stories - travel stories told by the best local tour guide

Author:Stories, Wander [Stories, Wander]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Istanbul Stories
Publisher: WanderStories
Published: 2013-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

Story of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum

The archaeological tradition in the Ottoman Empire began during one of its most difficult and turbulent times, in which the one-time superpower was struggling, trying to stay afloat and keep its territory intact. Indeed, in the late 19th, early 20th century, many European powers had their eyes on Ottoman territory, waiting for the moment the empire would collapse, and its land could be divided.

Inside the empire, foreign diplomacy, internal and external power struggles, complicated reforms, and debt, each demanded attention. In the meantime the Ottomans themselves were struggling to define their land and their people in the new context of emerging nationalism in Europe.

People in Europe were starting to define themselves through a relatively new concept called the nation-state, which hung together through a mixture of language, culture, and a shared central government. But mostly, the idea of a nation-state had to live in the minds of its citizens.

The Ottomans also tried to unite their people in such a way by inventing and proposing the idea of Ottomanism, to inspire a kind of nationalism in the Ottoman people, and to breed identification with a secular empire with the sultan at its head. Furthermore, Ottomanism encouraged people to first be loyal to the Ottoman Empire, and only second to whatever different ethnic or cultural group they belonged. Ultimately, Ottomanism did not work out for various reasons. However, from this short portrait of the early 20th century, you can see how the Ottoman Empire was having, in essence, a crisis of identity.

Archaeology may at first seem to not have anything to do with this crisis, but it certainly played its part in this struggle. European and also American powers were not only exercising their influence on the Ottoman Empire through international trade and diplomacy, but also through archaeology. Teams of foreign archaeologists came to the Ottoman Empire to conduct archaeological research and then also take many of the different archaeological finds back to their home country, where they would be displayed in their museums. The fact was that the Ottomans did not, at the time, have anything that could compete with the museums of archaeology in Europe. The first Ottoman museum was a rather small and hasty affair. It was opened in the Hagia Eirene in 1846 by Fethi Ahmet Pasha, the Minister of War at the time, but the display was rather small and probably only meant to be temporary; in other words, it could not compare to the tradition of museums that had already been well-established in Europe.

In this way, it can be said that at this time, the Ottoman Empire had no real archaeological museum of its own, and furthermore, there were not really any Ottoman archaeologists. Therefore, the Ottomans at first did not see a reason to refuse to admit entry to foreign archaeologists. The Ottomans then saw their own history, and the history of the land they had lived on for generations, not only exhumed by foreigners but then taken away to distant lands, effectively becoming lost to them.

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