Editing Openai/680fb62a-7c94-8002-8f67-b9a2a8c7c7ef (section)

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Although thousands of artifacts were unearthed at Tell el-Ajjul, very few remain in Gaza today. Decades of removal have created an artefactual diaspora. The three famous gold hoards, for example, were split between London and Jerusalem. Most of Ajjul’s finds are held in foreign museums or storage: the British Museum holds jewelry, scarabs, and pottery; the Rockefeller Museum (Jerusalem) holds additional pieces; other objects filtered into private collections. Even the finds from the 1999–2000 Palestinian-Swedish dig were exported for analysis and ended up in university labs abroad. This means that locally, Palestinian researchers and the public have had limited access to their own Bronze Age heritage. Many important artifacts remain unpublished in detail – sitting in museum depots waiting for comprehensive study. For instance, dozens of intact Cypriot pots from Petrie’s tomb excavations have yet to be fully catalogued or photographed in publication. Likewise, the full report on Ajjul’s scarabs and seals (started by Petrie in 1933) was never completed, leaving gaps in the context of those inscriptions.

To address this, scholars are pushing for digital repatriation. High-resolution 3D scans and photography can create a “virtual collection” of Ajjul’s finds accessible in Gaza and globally. For example, the British Museum recently digitized select Ajjul gold jewelry pieces (including a star-shaped pendant and gold diadem) and released them as open-access images. Efforts are underway to compile these into an online database in Arabic and English, allowing students in Gaza to study their heritage virtually. The notion of a Notion-based digital museum is proposed, where each artifact has a page with its images, data, and a context narrative. This dossier’s accompanying Notion package includes prototypes: e.g., an entry for an Astarte gold pendant (MB IIC, c.1600 BCE, found by Petrie) with a 3D model viewers can rotate. Such steps mitigate the physical loss of artifacts by at least returning their knowledge and likeness to the source community.

Another category of “hidden” finds are those still buried on-site. Rescue excavations in the 1990s had to stop early, leaving parts of a probable palace and additional tombs unexcavated. Ground scans suggest a large warehouse area with storage jars remains under a depositional layer. Those could contain residues or records (perhaps sealed wine jars, or clay tablets as seen in contemporary harbor cities like Ugarit). Local authorities face the dilemma of wanting to excavate these treasures for knowledge, but also fearing further destruction or looting in the current unstable climate. For now, they remain safely underground – a hidden archive for a future peacetime.

===== Digital initiatives aside, there is a strong desire in Palestine to physically repatriate key artifacts one day. International conventions and bilateral agreements could facilitate the return of at least a representative collection to a Gaza museum. Until then, collaboration is key: lending artifacts for special exhibitions in Gaza, or setting up traveling exhibits, could let local people experience these antiquities firsthand. Another strategy is “in-situ preservation” through replicas – for example, using high-end 3D printing to create replicas of the Ajjul gold hoards that could be displayed in Gaza while the originals remain secure abroad. While not the same as true repatriation, such replicas (clearly labeled as such) can inspire community pride and educational engagement. =====

Crucially, documentation is a form of repatriation. Publishing site reports, photographs, and analyses in open-access formats ensures that the information extracted from Gaza’s soil is available to all. The 1930s excavators published only summary reports (and some detailed tomb inventories by Olga Tufnell), but never a final site report. Modern scholars have taken up that mantle – for instance, a forthcoming volume by a Palestinian archaeologist compiles all tomb pottery from Ajjul in one reference, effectively “reuniting” this dispersed corpus on paper. Each such effort, while academic, is also a political act of reclaiming Gaza’s past.