Introduction : archaeology and empire / Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, and Edhem Eldem -- Interlude : a late nineteenth-century Ottoman painting and novella -- Indigenous archaeologies in Ottoman Greece / Yannis Hamilakis -- "An inconsiderate love of the arts" : the spoils of Greek antiquities, 1780-1820 / George Tolias -- Interlude : an Egyptian historian observes British archaeologists -- The Layard enterprise : Victorian archaeology and informal imperialism in Mesopotamia / Shawn Malley -- Untold tales of Mesopotamian discovery / Zainab Bahrani -- Archaeological travels in Greece and Asia Minor : on the good use of ruins in nineteenth-century France / Sophie Basch -- The rediscovery of Constantinople and the beginnings of Byzantine archaeology : a historiographic survey / Robert Ousterhout -- Ernest Renan's expedition to Phoenicia / Henry Laurens -- Interlude : Osman Hamdi and Ernest Renan -- The Venus de Milo : genesis of a modern myth / Philippe Jockey -- The "rediscovery" of Baalbek : a metaphor for empire in the nineteenth century / Ussama Makdisi -- From blissful indifference to anguished concern : Ottoman perceptions of antiquities, 1799-1869 / Edhem Eldem -- Archaeology and cultural politics : Ottoman-Austrian relations / Hubert Szemethy -- Interlude : the stories behind a letter -- Ernst Herzfeld and the excavations at Samarra / Filiz Çakir Phillip -- A fin-de-sìecle reconnaissance of Seljuk Anatolia : Friedrich Sarre and his Reise in Kleinasien / Oya Pancaroğlu -- Interlude : Halil Edhem on the museum of pious foundations -- From mausoleum to museum : resurrecting antiquity for Ottoman modernity / Wendy M.K. Shaw -- Defining empire's patrimony : late Ottoman perceptions of antiquities / Zeynep Çelik -- Interlude : the museum as a civic tool.