The centrality of the gift shop reached new elevated heights at the most recent Tutankhamun global blockbuster exhibition in London. A large statue of the so-called boy-king, which would have traditionally represented the grand-finale of an exhibition, had been unceremoniously demoted. As attendees exited room five that housed the statue, they were met with a sign “Continues in Tutankhamun Shop and Exit”. The “continues” sign represented a clear shift in the centrality of the modern day museum gift shop. The gift shop was not a separate entity, a place to buy a souvenir commemorating attendance to an exhibition showcasing an ancient civilization of the world. Rather, the gift shop was an extension of the collection. If museum exhibitions are primarily a method of education and showcasing objects, then what did the sign at the exit of room five communicate? By continuing the exhibition through the gift shop, ancient heritage was commodified and presented at the gallery as equal to “Tut” headgear, poorly crafted clay scarabs and “authentic Egyptian sand” sold in genie shaped jars. As Suzy Mirgani (2018) has argued in the case of Qatar, modern museum merchandise represents a new stage in national identity formation. Souvenirs narrating the nation are no longer traditional but rather constructed to be internationally recognizable and commodifiable. I argue that the global blockbuster “Treasures of Tutankhamun” tours of the 1970s marked the genesis of the modern museum gift shop. During the tours to the UK, US and Germany, reproductions, of varying quality, catered to consumer demand, and modern notions of museum exhibition design. The gift shop became integral to the experience of exhibition-goers. Interaction with “objects” provided a kinesthetic intimacy whilst also providing a memento or souvenir. It was also the beginning of Egypt’s relationship with commercial artifacts for the sole purpose of new nationalist goals. The gift shop had long existed, however with the blessing and active involvement of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, Ministry of Building and Construction and Ministry of Tourism, souvenirs and “Tut tat” were actively sold and promoted during the international tours. This commodification of heritage was central in the Egyptian governments vision to promote heritage, tourism and international investment more broadly. The profits of the sales provided an income, which would be used towards the renovation of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and promote investment in new urban and heritage-site developments.

Although counter to rentier theory, the UAE requires a unified, supportive populace to achieve its domestic and foreign policy agenda—whether that is insulating itself from Iranian or Saudi expansion or pursuing its role in the Yemeni Civil War. Vision 2021 recognizes this and articulates a path to this unity through the idea of heritage. In this way, heritage is foundational to the UAE’s domestic and international agendas. Vision documents are proliferating in the Arabian/Persian Gulf. The official United Arab Emirate’s federal vision, from which emirate and industry-specific visions emerge, is Vision 2021 which was announced in 2010 with the slogan “United in Ambition and Determination.” This document guided development in the last decade outlining goals for economic, social, and political development in the country. These documents aim to create a stable society, rooted in a diversified economy yet, much of the analysis of these types of documents focuses on their economic goals, rather than the way these documents mobilize heritage (Olver-Ellis 2020). Museums constructed an aspirational identity for the UAE citizens since federation in 1971, but the expression of heritage in these museums could be mulitplicitous and conflicting (Penziner Hightower 2014). Heritage and history museums opened after Vision 2021’s announcement have an additional burden—to promote unity within, between, and beyond the emirate-level. The recently opened (2017) Ettihad Museum with galleries oriented around the idea of unification, culminating in the UAE—One Nation, One Future and the universality presented in the Sharjah Heritage Museum are great examples of how these ideas have been incorporated into the institutions. These museums contribute directly to the domestic agenda creating the appearance pf internal unity, and assert the UAE’s place within the regional and global heritage narratives. The first exhibitions in Manarat al Saadiyat celebrated “Treasures of the World” and the “Splendors of Mesopotamia” and recently a 1,400 year old Nestorian Church site was opened to the public, connecting the UAE with global Christian heritage. These exhibits direct connect the UAE to global history and heritage but also reinforce and legitimate the UAE’s increasingly involved foreign policy agenda. This paper analyzes publicly available statements, newspaper reports, material culture, and other historical sources to argue that heritage is fundamental to the aspirations, both at the emirate and federal level, and the elusive idea of unity of the UAE identity is foundational to not only the UAE’s domestic goals, but their international agenda as well.

From 1960 until 1980, archaeologists, architects, and hundreds of labourers worked to define, excavate, and preserve archaeological sites and monuments in the contiguous regions of Egyptian and Sudanese Nubia. The construction of the Aswan High Dam caused flooding that would submerge both those remains and the homes of the Nubian population who lived among them, and this vast effort--conducted under the banner of UNESCO’s International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia--constituted one of the responses to the threat. Promoted by the organisation and the countries involved as a global response, the Nubian campaign became tied to the universalist notion of ‘world heritage’ that the spectacle of this massive preservation project helped to bring about. Recent work has started to unpick this universalist narrative, not only emphasising that much of the Nubian campaign’s funding derived from the US government and mapped directly onto Cold War political goals, but also illustrating more broadly that the making of world heritage was subject to rather less universal--and considerably more Eurocentric--agendas than UNESCO liked to claim. This complex set of political strategies did, however, constitute the conditions in which other interests of the period could assert themselves. And considering that context makes it possible to decentre the narrative of the development of heritage as a Euro-American pursuit and to investigate the different ways in which that development overlapped with the formal end of colonialism. In this paper, I will discuss these other interests, placing the Nubian campaign and the development of world heritage within pan-Arab and non-aligned networks. Such relationships have otherwise gone unremarked upon, but they were both constitutive of the campaign’s success and are able to help emphasise the different ways in which the end of colonialism played into heritage’s fluorescence as a global phenomenon. Discussing the role played in Nubia by newly independent Kuwait (as a sponsor of monument preservation) and India (as a participant in archaeological excavations), I will show how pan-Arab ‘dinar diplomacy’ and non-aligned cultural politics worked to constitute a campaign--and a vision of heritage--that was sometimes more in tune with the concerns of the decolonising world than scholars have believed. Whether through top-down diplomatic action or in the grounded act of excavation and artefact registration, the development of heritage could draw together postcolonial interests in novel ways.