New Gaza archaeology exhibit opens in Paris, as most sites in enclave severely damaged
Artifacts on display include findings from Franco-Palestinian excavations initiated in Gaza in 1995, as well as items from the collection of Gazan real estate magnate Jawdat Khoudary
Rossella Tercatin is The Times of Israel's archaeology and religions reporter.
A new exhibit showcasing Gaza’s archaeological and historical heritage opened in Paris on Thursday.
Titled “Rescued Treasures of Gaza: 5000 Years of History,” the exhibition is hosted by the Institut du Monde Arabe (Institute for the Arab World) and organized in partnership with the Museum of Art and History of Geneva (MAH) and the Palestinian National Authority.
Running from April 3 to November 2, 2025, the Institut du Monde Arabe is exhibiting what it calls “an exceptional collection featuring 130 archaeological masterpieces, each bearing witness to the vibrant and millennia-old history of this Palestinian enclave,” in a statement provided to The Times of Israel (the Institute did not respond to multiple requests for an interview with one of its representatives).
The artifacts on display include findings from the Franco-Palestinian excavations initiated in Gaza in 1995, as well as items from the private collection of Gazan real estate magnate Jawdat Khoudary, which were sent to Switzerland for an exhibition 20 years ago and never repatriated.
The ongoing war in the Gaza Strip is highlighted in a “dedicated section,” which also addresses “the urgent challenges of heritage preservation in times of war, as more than two-thirds of Gaza’s built environment has been destroyed in recent months,” the institute said in the statement.
“This segment will feature an updated assessment of Gaza’s heritage, conducted by various research groups, alongside a survey of recent archaeological discoveries and previously unseen photographs of Gaza in the early 20th century, drawn from the collection of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem,” it added.
The new “Rescued Treasures of Gaza: 5000 Years of History” exhibition opened at the Institut du Monde Arabe (Institute for the Arab World) in Paris on April 3, 2025. (Benoit Ducrocq / AFPTV / AFP)
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) states that as of March 2025, it has verified damage to 94 cultural and archaeological sites, including 12 religious sites, 62 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, three depositories of movable cultural property, nine monuments, one museum and seven archeological sites.
One of the exhibit’s highlights is a Byzantine mosaic from a church in Abu Baraqeh in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah. Other artifacts on display include ancient oil lamps, amphoras, a 12th-century funerary stele and architectural decorations.
“Today more than ever, especially since October 7 and the ensuing destruction, Gaza deserves to have its history told,” the institute’s president, Jack Lang, a former French minister of culture, said in a statement on the website. “Because the raging war is destroying, sometimes erasing, entire swathes of the identity of this once flourishing land, a true crossroads of civilizations between Asia, Arabia, Africa and the Mediterranean.”
The museum noted that many of the objects were saved from destruction because they were already outside of the Gaza Strip.
The war in Gaza started on October 7, 2023, when some 5,600 terrorists entered Israel, massacred some 1,200 people, and took 251 hostages to Gaza. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 50,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
Most of the archaeological sites in Gaza were excavated in the 1990s, in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords.
Collector Khoudary was very involved in the work and developed a personal friendship with the archaeologists from the Jerusalem-based École Biblique, one of the driving forces behind the excavations. He also accumulated a treasure of hundreds of artifacts in his private collection, which he eventually displayed in a private museum.
“I wanted to show our roots, the proof of our existence on this earth,” he told Le Monde, speaking from Cairo, where he and his family fled in December 2023.
At the end of 2006, around 260 objects from Khoudary’s collection left Gaza for Geneva to be showcased at the MAH. In 2007, Hamas seized power in Gaza. Despite several attempts to return the artifacts to the Palestinian territories with the involvement of the Palestinian Authority, the conditions to do so never materialized.
Speaking with Le Monde, Khoudary noted that this turned out to be vital to save at least part of his collection since his museum was destroyed during the war.
“It’s a miracle,” he said.
AFP contributed to this report.
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