Archaeologists, Tourists, Interpreters

This book is a fascinating read from beginning to end. It comes at a time when a post-colonial approach has finally begun to be applied to early archaeological work and not only to non-professional travellers. This new interest, however, has never taken the linguistic issue into account, and thus this book comes to complement the work of scholars engaging with early archaeological colonialism. This interesting and accessible book presents both new and little-known information on the social history of dragomans and interpreters in Egypt and Mesopotamia in the late 19th to early 20th centuries and casts light on and the Anglo-American aversion to learning Arabic and Turkish that made them necessary. Mairs and Muratov excavate new archival sources: a diary and curated testimonial book to discover the voice and agency of two individuals who shaped westerners' experience of the Holy Lands, thereby rescuing them from the anonymity of a client-based perspective. In this well-written and good-humoured book, Mairs and Muratov examine the relationship between dragoman and client, and investigate the ways in which dragomen both reinforced and confronted Western perceptions of the East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ... While the book presents a fresh and inclusive social history of formative archaeological work and, especially, early tourism in Egypt and the Near East, its greatest strength ultimately lies in the detailed biographies of its two key protagonists. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review *