Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

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Since this project was first conceived, the political situation in the Middle East has been dramatically and drastically altered, and with it the future of scholarship on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. That is not to say that heritage at risk is a totally new problem. The protection of ancient sites and monuments fell within the remit of the famous explorer Gertrude Bell when she was appointed Director of the Department of Antiquities in Iraq in 1923. In the 1990s and again in 2000 large international rescue operations were undertaken in Zeugma when the ancient town at the Euphrates crossing was threatened to be submerged due to the construction of a modern dam (Kennedy 1998b; Aylward 2013). But needless to say, when it comes to the archaeological remains from the world of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, the past years have seen more, and more serious, destruction than ever before. As a result, new projects have been set up by various academic teams in order to address the manifold issues that are at stake. The EAMENA (Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa) project (https://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk) uses satellite imagery, like its key forerunner the Fragile Crescent project (https://www.dur.ac.uk/fragile_crescent_project). High-resolution imagery can make major contributions in the assessment of damage to archaeological sites, especially in comparison with “ground-based observations of damage by civilians, media, and often politicized government reports” (thus Casana 2015: 142) – perhaps most notoriously in the well-documented looting in 2012 and 2013 in Apamea on the Orontes, done with heavy machinery and seemingly involving many people (Figure 15.3). A book published by the Swedish Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, on cultural heritage at risk, has focused on the role of museums in war and conflict, key as they are for “capacity building, advocacy and passing a strong message on the urgent need to put a stop to illicit trafficking” (Almqvist and Belfrage 2016). A document created in 2012 by Emma Cunliffe and the Global Heritage Fund assembled and cataloged information about what was referred to as “Damage to the Soul: Syria’s Cultural Heritage in Conflict” (https://ghn.global​heritagefund.com/uploads/documents/document_2107.pdf).