Australian Museum removes Palestine from Ramses exhibition

See lead item below the UPDATE announcement

UPDATE: Success! Response from Australian Museum following complaints about Ramses Exhibition

Following an email and letter writing campaign by AFOPA, APAN and Palestine supporters around Australia, the CEO of the Australian Museum sent the following message to AFOPA, today, 28 December 2023 (all emphases theirs):

Dear Australian Friends of Palestine Association

Please see the following statement in response to your letter to Kim McKay AO, Director and CEO received on 26 December 2023.

Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs exhibition is currently on a 10-city world tour. Produced by World Heritage Exhibitions, the exhibition is now in Sydney at the Australian Museum providing an insight into the rule of Ramses II and Ancient Egypt some 3000 years ago.  

To provide both historical and modern geographic context for visitors, text panels refer to both ancient geographic locations such as the site of the Battle of Kadesh and modern geographical context referencing Ramses’ battles in what is known today as Libya and Palestine.   

For clarity in the exhibition the text panel will be updated to read:

Ramses was second in command, fighting alongside Seti I in what is today known as Libya and Palestine.

The terms Libya and Palestine are not being removed from the text panels. In the context of this exhibition, we are adding the words “what is today known as” to provide current geographical clarity. 

Australian Museum 1 William Street Sydney NSW 2010 Australia

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See also Wikipedia on this topic: Australian Museum

AFOPA thanks all our members and supporters for responding to this campaign and writing to the Australian Museum

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Australian Museum removes Palestine from Ramses exhibition

Post from Australian Jewish Associations' social media announcing their discovery at the Australian Museum

We have just written to the Director & CEO of the Australian Museum in Sydney, Ms Kim McKay AO about our dismay at the Museum removing the word Palestine from part of the Museum's exhibition, Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs. 

The screenshot above is from the Australian Jewish Association's (AJA) Facebook page, highlighting the use of the word Palestine in part of the exhibition. It appears that the AJA then wrote to the Museum complaining about this. You can see in the screenshot below that, astonishingly, the Museum, via their own Instagram page, told the AJA that the Museum would, in the next couple of weeks, remove the word Palestine from the exhibition.

This attempt to rewrite history for politically motivated reasons cannot go unchallenged. I urge you to write to the Museum about their decision and their dismissive attitude towards the Palestinian community, with whom it appears, the Museum has not consulted about this matter.

This is not an insignificant issue. To let this rewriting of history go unchallenged amounts to cultural genocide, the ideological expunging of cultural identity from history. You can access AFOPA's letter here. An email or letter in your own words would be best. 

Contact the Australian Museum:

Kim McKay AO
Director & CEO Australian Museum
1 William Street
Sydney NSW 2010
Australia
c/- feedback@australian.museum

(yes it is an unusual email address)