The Glitter of Old Gaza

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In the Gaza strip today, history is trauma. Decades of war, occupation and sectarian strife have turned it into a seething refugee camp, crippled by internecine conflict and poverty. But while Gaza's future seems as uncertain as its present, there is little disagreement about the splendor of its past.

"Gaza at the Crossroads of Civilizations" at Geneva's Musée d'Art et d'Histoire is the first ever public show of Gazan antiquities. Its 530 artifacts, drawn chiefly from the vaults of private Palestinian collector Jawdat Khoudary and the Palestinian National Authority, depict a Gaza that was once at the nexus of trade routes and a meeting point of cultures. Today, at a time when rival Palestinian factions are gunning each other down, we learn that Gaza's early inhabitants were prosperous, practiced multiculturalists. On show are objects from several empires unearthed during the past two centuries, with some dating back nearly 5,000 years. Egyptian stone scarabs are displayed alongside Greek statues, Byzantine mosaics, Syrian oil lamps, French coins and Roman amphora jugs.

No wonder then that the exhibition's organizers aim, with the support of unesco (and, one presumes, violence permitting), to repatriate these treasures by 2016 to a museum they hope to build atop the ruins of the ancient Gazan port of Anthedon. Curator Marc-André Haldimann sees the project laying a foundation for a future of tolerance. "It reminds us that Gaza is not the deadlocked prison that it is today," he says, "but, as it was—the window of the world."