An exhibition opened this month at Paris’s Insтιтut du Monde Arabe (IMA) that offers a glimpse of Gaza’s archaeological heritage against the background of relentless warfare and destruction in the region. тιтled “Rescued Treasures of Gaza: 5,000 Years of History,” the exhibition runs until November 2, 2025, and features over 130 artifacts that attest to the rich and complex history of Gaza as a crossroads of culture and commerce between Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean.

Roman colossal marble statue of Zeus from Gaza, Palestine, Roman Imperial period, 2nd c. CE. Credit: Dan Diffendale, Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

The artifacts—spanning from Roman oil lamps and terracotta amphoras to a sixth-century Byzantine church mosaic and a Greek-inspired statuette of Aphrodite—tell Gaza’s history from the Bronze Age to the Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods. The majority of the items were excavated in the 1990s during Franco-Palestinian joint archaeological missions, shortly after the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Most of the collection had been acquired by Palestinian collector and businessman Jawdat Khoudary, and he stored the artifacts in his private museum in Gaza. During 2006, some 260 of the items were dispatched to Geneva to be used in an exhibition, which had been sponsored by the Museum of Art and History (MAH). They were meant to return to a future museum in Gaza, but those plans were derailed when Hamas seized power in 2007 and Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade. The crates remained stored in Geneva for nearly two decades.

“Paradoxically, being locked up in a faraway storage facility has ensured the survival of part of Khoudary’s collection,” MAH curator Béatrice Blandin said. She added that the artifacts were only awaiting authorization to return home.

Mosaic from the ancient synagogue in Gaza. Credit: Dr. Avishai Teicher / CC BY 2.5

The current exhibition originated from a project that had been canceled for a show on Lebanon’s ancient site of Byblos due to Israeli bombing in Beirut.

The exhibition does not shy away from contemporary realities. A special section brings to the fore the devastating impact of the Israel-Hamas war, which began on October 7, 2023. According to UNESCO, as of March 2025, 94 cultural and archaeological sites in Gaza have been reported damaged, including the ancient Greek port of Anthedon, the 13th-century palace of al-Basha, and the Byzantine-era al-Omari mosque.

A coin from Gaza, fourth century BCE, the period of the Jewish subjection to the last of the Persian kings. Public domain

“The priority is obviously human lives, not heritage,” Elodie Bouffard, curator of the exhibition, told AFP. “But we also wanted to show that, for millennia, Gaza was the endpoint of caravan routes, a port that minted its own currency, and a city that thrived at the meeting point of water and sand.”

The exhibition serves both as a celebration of Gaza’s resilient cultural heritage and a sobering reminder of what can be lost.