Description

This book tells the story (stories) of the archaeologies of one small land, promised by the greatest twentieth-century Empire on earth to two peoples. It tells of the archaeology of the rulers, western and colonial, and of the three ‘local’ archaeologies, religious and nationalistic, which formed beside it.
The book tells how the British High Commissioner could keep a desolate and barren field – the place of Golgotha – but not prevent the tenant from placing manure there before ploughing; he could only expropriate that field by publicly declaring it was not a holy place. It speaks of excavators who caught eels and fought baby-goats eating their tackle, while their labourers bathed naked in the sea – were fifty yards from the path crossed by the village women to fetch water a respectable distance? It recounts how the elder of the biggest churches in Dublin had a darn afternoon at the Ophel, Jerusalem, when he just uncovered a huge bastion; the Dominicans who saw it got tremendously excited, but the landlord warned him that unless he paid for the new kushan (land deed), a blood feud would exist between them. The book also recalls honest finders of antiquities vs anonymous denunciations from “faithful reporters” and “true informers”; follows humble stone thieves, billionaire donors and Nazi members on an Advisory Board; praises the new gospels of the Danish holy man of Shiloh, who was guarding the sun at night; and reports on a pleasant old lady who staged a materialistic struggle for land at Megiddo as a spiritual, Armageddon war on the filths of sex.
Once, the High Commissioner arrived too early to a luncheon at Tell ed Duweir (Lachish): hors d’oeuvres, cold turkey, Charlotte Russe. The labourers had their lunch break curtailed and were working away “with the utmost enthusiasm”. This book’s readers will arrive on time, and join many tables thanks to the variety of sources and voices.