Spanish Archaeology in the Near East in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Unlike other Western European countries, Spain played no part in the archaeological discovery of the Near East1 in the nineteenth century. In fact, not only was it absent from that discovery, but the country’s main academic institutions showed very little interest in it. Only a handful of scholars and men of the cloth made the effort to announce the archaeological findings at sites such as Nineveh, Kalhu, Dur Sharrukin, Ashur, Babylon, and others. These were people such as Teodor Creus i Corominas, Josep Brunet i Bellet, Francisco García Ayuso, Pelegrí Casades i Gramatxes, Bernardino Martín Mínguez, Pedro de la Madre de Dios, Ramiro Fernández Valbuena, and so on. In contrast, Spain’s universities created no chairs related to the history, philology, or archaeology of the Near East, nor did they promote the training of specialists in the study of those subjects.