The Political Theater of the Past Visits by State Leaders to Archaeological and Historical Sites

Abstract

As archaeologists, we have an interest in the signals being sent by politicians when they elect to appear with the Parthenon or the Pyramids as backdrops. It makes a difference as to how our work is received and interpreted by the public, but it may also determine how the site will fare afterward. In this article, the idea of the state visit as theatre is explored and archaeological and historical sites are discussed as backdrops against which texts are presented and subtexts are conveyed by performance.

Gathered under canopies at the base of the Gizeh Plateau, facing the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid, I and an ever-growing throng of Americans and Egyptians had waited for four hours for President Barack Obama to appear. Based on the size of our gathering, and the natural exuberance (some might say aggressiveness) of some of its constituents, it became increasingly clear to me that a mere glimpse and the possibility of a photograph that ended up, as my sister described it, looking like a Where’s Waldo? illustration, would be my only reward for an afternoon in the blistering June heat. Except for the lure of being near the celebrated monuments, which we were not allowed to approach, and some sense that this was possibly a historic occasion, I cannot think why I was doing this in order to see a man who lived scarcely three miles away from me in Washington, DC. Perhaps the answer was that there was nothing else to do in Cairo that day—the president’s visit had resulted in the closing of all of the city’s main streets.

Although the temporary shelters were wholly inadequate for shielding us from the Egyptian sun, it was a party atmosphere—minus the refreshments. No food or drink could be brought beyond the security checkpoints although, to avoid the unseemly collapse of any of the spectators, zealous United States embassy volunteers were on hand to pass out cold water bottles and encourage us to drink—one of the many details anticipated by the Department of State in preparation for President Obama’s visit to Cairo in 2009. As we waited, some of us wondered aloud what the president thought of the Pyramids and of his very public state visit to this last remaining wonder of the ancient world. No one bothered to speculate on his very private visit earlier that day with Egyptian officials to Islamic Cairo (Zeleny and Cowell 2009).

U.S. dollars had heavily subsidized the restoration of Cairo’s Muslim sites—a fact that has not escaped the notice of right-wing bloggers (“US Taxpayers Subsidize Overseas Mosques . . . And Maybe Terrorism” is one of the more polite examples, ThePatriotPerspective.wordpress.com 2012). The more paranoid pundits failed to note that the American contribution to the restoration came about partly because an ill-fated United States-funded water and sanitation project had flooded the site (USAID 2009). Regardless, neither the substantial investment in these impressive medieval monuments nor the purpose of the president’s visit to Egypt, to deliver a speech reaching out to the Muslim world, merited the hoopla and the ubiquitous photographers that appeared on the scene at Giza (Fig. 1).

President Obama finally appeared, descending the hill with his characteristically athletic gait. His tall figure was dwarfed by the vast entourage of guards and officials in vehicles and on foot descending the hill in formation. It was, in fact, reminiscent of what the first visit to the site by a state leader (Khufu) must have looked like (Fig. 2).

It was more than fitting that the ubiquitous then minister of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, accompanied the president. Nine years before, at the turn of the millennium, Hawass had planned an elaborate international celebration at the Pyramids that fizzled amidst a barrage of conspiracy theories and speculations. At that time, in defense of his event, Hawass had referred to the Great Pyramid as a national unity project and its builders as performing a patriotic duty that he equated with serving in the Egyptian military (Wynn 2008). Given the nature of the Egyptian government at the time—an autocracy that wholeheartedly supported his work—he deftly glossed over the association of the site with the leadership of a supreme ruler. Now Hawass was finally getting the nationalist global moment he had wanted over a decade before (Fig. 3).

Fig. 1.

President Obama’s greeters at the Pyramids in June 2009. (Photo by S. Scham.)

As for President Obama, the transient nature of pharaohs may or may not have been on his mind as he left the Great Pyramid but it was less than two years later that

Fig. 2.

President Obama touring the Pyramids—the procession of cars, guards, and Secret Service officers were reminiscent of pharaonic days. (Photo by S. Scham.)

Fig. 3.

President Obama, Zahi Hawass, and Rahm Emmanuel at the Pyramids. (Photo from the White House Photo Gallery.)

Egypt saw the last of its most recent incarnation of pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak. Some politicos on the Democratic side attributed the so-called Arab Spring to Obama’s Cairo speech, delivered on that day. This claim should probably be viewed with the same skepticism that many of us have had for Republican claims that Ronald Reagan’s “tear down that wall” speech in Berlin hastened the fall of communism in Eastern Europe (Ajami 2012). There is no doubt that these were both, in many ways, momentous occasions but how much did they echo, as opposed to stimulate, the dialogue that led to revolution?

Caught in the midst of an event crying out for “thick description” (Geertz 1973), I was undoubtedly over-interpreting the multi-layered meanings of the Pyramids as a venue for Obama’s state visit. Nevertheless, upon reflection, I came to the conclusion that, as archaeologists, we have an interest in the signals being sent by politicians when they elect to appear with the Parthenon, the Pyramids, or Ephesus in the background. We may invest more meaning in such visits than was either intended or even thought of at the time, but political uses of archaeological sites affect how the public perceives our work and also how the site will fare when events overtake the leaders who use them. It is not just the past and present that are evoked by political events taking place at historical and archaeological places—it is the future as well.

There is the recent case of Babylon—a site that Saddam Hussein, who styled himself as a latter-day Nebuchadnezzar, habitually juxtaposed with his own image on currency and elsewhere (MacFarquhar 2003). Shortly after the United States invaded Iraq, American troops and their contractors caused major damage to the ruins of Babylon by digging, cutting, scraping, and leveling the site to meet military standards for a camp there, according to a UNESCO report (UNESCO 2009). It seems clear that the action of literally building a base on top of at least part of the site of Babylon was not intended to simply destroy its ancient past, which arguably should have been accorded some respect by military professionals. The site in fact could be seen to have strategic importance to the enemy and that importance, whether it was symbolic or real, would be enough to justify Americans making their mark there (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.

American soldiers at the reconstructed site of Babylon. (Photo from U.S. Department of Defense Photo Gallery.)

A less recent example of a site that suffered as a result of its modern political associations is that of Persepolis (Fig. 5), which the late sovereign Mohammad Reza Pahlavi chose as the backdrop for his celebration of 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy. In 1971, when this affair was held, the shah seemed to have little notion that the countdown to the end of his leadership of Iran had begun and would conclude scarcely eight years later. By 1979, he and his family were driven out and the new radically religious leadership of the country vilified the ancient Persian capital, allowing it to deteriorate. Not only was the site representative of a degenerate and godless past, the fact that it had been the scene of an elaborate party hosted by the deposed monarch was enough to annihilate its value in the eyes of the new revolutionary government.

Fig. 5.

Persepolis, site of the former shah of Iran’s lavish 1971 celebration. (Photo by I. Mlinaric.)

Perhaps, in retrospect, a glitzy tent city surrounding the majestic ruins of an almost forgotten pagan autocracy might not have been the wisest venue for a lavish social gathering in a country where the influence of Islam was growing as rapidly as its numbers of people living in poverty. Some leaders in the west, notably Queen Elizabeth II, were wise enough to recognize the dangers inherent in attending this affair and politely declined the invitation. The state leaders who did show up at the erstwhile “Devil’s Festival,” as the Ayatollah Khomeini later dubbed it, included a number of those whose swansong, like that of Reza Pahlavi, occurred thereafter with equal abruptness—among them Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Nicolae Ceauçescu of Romania, Joseph Mobutu of Zaire, and former Vice President Spiro Agnew (Grigor 2005).

Performing the State Visit

Beyond noting the politicization of archaeological sites during spectacles such as that staged by the now-deceased shah of Iran, one might contend that cultural heritage has become an instrument of foreign policy since that fateful party was held in the seventies. This phenomenon might be said to have had its roots in the politics of the Middle East.

Gamal Abdel Nasser, an Egyptian leader who had little use for pharaonic monuments and attempted to encourage a pan-Arab identity for the region, was determined to build the Aswan High Dam, which would flood most of the significant archaeological sites of Lower Nubia. The dam, which is widely acknowledged as having been of benefit to the Nubian Egyptians, became one of the major legacies of Nasser’s regime.

Another more surprising one, it might be argued, was the creation of the World Heritage site. The UNESCO Nubia Campaign to save the threatened antiquities resulted in the piecemeal movement of dozens of them, including the Abu Simbel temples, to safety above the shores of Lake Nasser or to museums in Europe and the United States. In 1972, partly as a result of this campaign, UNESCO adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. With the subsequent establishment of the World Heritage Committee, the first sites were inscribed on the list in 1978 (Hassan 2007). That many of the inscribed sites are of dubious “world” versus “national” interest has been noted before (Silberman 2010; Scham 2008). Thus, wealthier nations can support the conservation and maintenance of nationalist sites as a goodwill gesture, framed as supporting world heritage, in order to achieve specific ends which, undoubtedly, support their own national interest.

Gracing these sites with the physical presence of an exalted leader is another thing entirely. While throwing money at World Heritage sites is not likely to create much controversy, creating a forever memory through the magic of ubiquitous photography is something that politicians would do well to consider carefully. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton posed before a panorama of the Acropolis symbolically signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Greek government (Fig. 6) is the perfect image of international cooperation against the backdrop of the “birthplace of democracy.”

President George W. Bush, ducking shoes thrown at his podium by a disgruntled Iraqi journalist, is quite the opposite (Raghavan and Eggen 2008). The latter type of “photo opportunity” might be less likely to occur in some venues than it would in others which may account for the predilection of politicians to be seen in historic locations.

Fig. 6.

Secretary Clinton, shown in Athens with the Parthenon as a backdrop, signs an agreement with Greek Foreign Minister Lambrinidis to protect Greek cultural heritage. (Photo from U.S. Department of State.)

Interpreting how and why the elites of nation-states choose certain places as representations of themselves to present to foreign elites has become a widely explored topic in anthropology and political science, which many theorists have characterized as political theater (Derix 2007; Edelman 1985; Kertzer 1988; Cohen 1979). This kind of performance at archaeological and historical places presents a particularly interesting conundrum to the archaeologist seeking to understand those sites. Is our interpretation of the site affected by the fact that the shah of Iran partied at Persepolis with a horde of international celebrities? Shanks, who along with Pearson, has explored the close relationship between theater and archaeology (Shanks and Pearson 2001) would answer, quite emphatically, yes.

Suggesting that public performances at sites become part of its archaeological record, Shanks explains in the introduction to their book that “[t]he active process of interpretation is to clarify or explain the meaning and significance of something, deciphering and translating the past in the present;” he concludes that “Interpretation is also about the performance of a work—acting out something to give it an intelligible life” (Shanks and Pearson 2001: 11). In further discussing archaeology as theatre, Shanks later added that “. . . the performed past never began or ended at some historical moment” (Shanks 2002). The act of interpretation, thus, involves seeing the past and present as continuous. So a modern performance at an ancient site emphasizes in a very real sense that the site is still being created—both physically and in memory. The age-old archaeological question of how certain features came into being and why is being answered, to some extent, before our eyes.

Beyond its visual aspects, what is it about the state visit that merits our interpretation? First of all, like all performances, the state visit has both text and subtext. The text of the state visit, as demonstrated by the journeys of diverse notables from the Empress Helena forward, may include validation of religious beliefs, expressions of political solidarity and reconciliation, a demonstration of power, and, as evidenced by President Obama’s visit to Gizeh, appreciation of the (preferably ancient) other. It is more often the subtext for the state visit that makes the dramatic backdrop of the archaeological site significant. By its nature, subtext is never fully within the control of the creator of the text. Famed actor and theatre director, Konstantin Stanislavski, whose name has become synonymous with the elevation of performance to a high art form, defined subtext as “the manifest, the inwardly felt expression of a human being in a part, which flows uninterruptedly beneath the words of a text, giving them life and a basis for existing . . . [i]t is the subtext that makes us say the words we do in a play” (Stanislavski 1950: 113).

The term subtext has clearly become part of the American political landscape [e.g., “Subtext: Germany Threatens Europe, Again” (Morris 2012)]. Most explorations of political psychology reference subtext (Greenstein 1992; Borgida, Federico, and Sullivan 2009) and it is ubiquitous in the literature on critical discourse analysis (van Dijk 2005; Bakhtin 1981, 1984). The state visit, as a performance with both text and subtext, regardless of how scripted it may be, has the potential like all performances to bring forward a subtext that may explicate, augment, subvert, or even directly contradict the text. Thus it may unintentionally confer legitimacy on regimes, inadvertently validate another’s history or religious beliefs, and unexpectedly affirm or reaffirm ideologies—in short, cause all of the general mayhem that may occur when a runaway subtext can spring unbidden from even the simplest of performances.

This is perhaps why state visits from the nineteenth century forward have involved fairly strict protocols that are designed to assure both the visited and the visitor that little of interest or note will happen. The schedule may include welcoming ceremonies, often consisting of a review of military honor guards, parades, and the playing of national anthems by a military band, an exchange of gifts between the foreign head of state and the head of state from the nation hosting the state visit, state dinners, visits to the national legislature, cultural events celebrating links between the two nations, and, most importantly for our purposes, high-profile visits to national landmarks and sites. At the end of a state visit, the foreign head of state traditionally issues a formal invitation to the head of state of the nation being visited who will, at another time in the future, pay a reciprocal call (Vestal 2011: 136). How all of this is done depends upon the agendas (which creates the subtext) of the guest and the host, including their past relationship, their stake in the outcome of the meeting, and the message that they wish to convey to each other and their respective citizens. What may be to one leader an expression of solidarity may be another’s undoing.

Those who select archaeological and historical sites as a convenient backdrop for the public visits of dignitaries should keep in mind that the glorious settings of the past can also be a trap for the unwary. It is not just the actors or performers who evince subtext. As most modern theater critics would attest, the set plays an important part and contributes to the whole performance—text, subtext, and objective all at once constituting what Stanislavski called “scenic truth”—which originates “on the plane of imaginative and artistic fiction” (Stanislavski 1989: 140). Virtually all historical places are a palimpsest of many sometimes conflicting messages that the most thorough research may fail to uncover. For example, even that most universal of values, demonstrating respect for the dead by visiting monuments and cemeteries, is not always a gesture that will win praise.

President Ronald Reagan discovered this to his chagrin in 1984 when, in the company of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, he paid a visit to the Bitburg Military Cemetery in Germany—which, as it turned out, contained the graves of 49 members of the Waffen-SS. Outrage poured forth from the American Jewish community, as well as World War II veterans, and what began as part of a well-intentioned plan to observe the 40th anniversary of V-E Day became a painful ordeal for President Reagan. Kohl might well have counted on Reagan going through with the visit, despite his discomfort with it, because of his gratitude to Kohl for supporting the deployment of Pershing missiles in West Germany, but a German official later suggested that the president had been duped. He remarked that it was the responsibility of the president’s staff, not their German hosts, to “check on the history that is beneath the ground” (Trager 2007).

Fig. 7.

First Lady Michelle Obama informally greeting Queen Elizabeth II in the formal rooms of Buckingham Palace. (Photo from the White House Photo Gallery.)

Despite what may be seen as American historical obtuseness in this one instance, it is clear that state visits are almost always meticulously planned—if not necessarily well researched. Leaving little room for spontaneous acts on the part of political leaders on such occasions (Hedetoft 1998) does not guarantee that they will not occur. Often these subtexts emerge from the performances by supporting actors. First Lady Michelle Obama casually greeting and putting her arm around the Queen of England, in the formal public rooms at Buckingham Palace no less (Fig. 7), conveyed the opposite meaning of that evoked by the curtsey that First Lady Nancy Reagan bestowed upon that same monarch. In the one case, First Lady Obama appeared to be, to the irritation of the British press, casually expressing American egalitarian ideology. On the other, First Lady Reagan appeared, to the disapprobation of the American press, to be disavowing those values.

There are notable, if few, examples of seemingly impulsive performances by political leaders during a state visit that can create an unforgettable, or indeed iconic, subtext. When these moments do occur, they are usually wordless. Most of the eloquent speeches delivered by political leaders abroad will not be remembered. One indelible image can be fixed by photography in the minds of people all over the world to much more lasting effect. Turner discusses the process of how an extraordinary moment can transform an otherwise ordinary political ritual (Turner 1975). Based on Turner’s ideas, Christoph Schneider (2006) devoted an entire book to examining the meaning of German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s visit to Poland in 1970. Chancellor Brandt, who was in Warsaw to sign the Polish–West German bilateral agreement, included the Warsaw Ghetto Monument on his itinerary. On a grey winter morning, he had come to place a wreath to honor the close to half a million victims who perished there at the hands of German soldiers. Suddenly falling to his knees on the cold wet ground before the memorial, Brandt joined his hands as if to implore pardon (Borneman 1997) (Fig. 8). A visit intended to symbolize reconciliation became both a validation of a painful history and a dedication to a new ideology.

Fig. 8.

President Obama pays his respects at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial. (Photo from the White House Photo Gallery.)

Brandt’s history-making move aside, true mastery of the unexpected gesture is shown by those rare political figures who continually break with traditional protocols while abroad—and generally manage to get away with it. The late King Hussein of Jordan did this on several occasions and his skill at controlling his image during these dramatic departures was exceptional even for a monarch who had spent a lifetime in the public eye (Figs. 9, 10).

Fig 9.

King Hussein of Jordan shows his ability to change images to suit the occasion in these photos. In the first, he shares a cigarette with Yitzhak Rabin in Jerusalem. In the second, he is shown at Rabin’s funeral. (Photos from the Government Press Office, Israel; top photo by Y. Sa’ar, bottom photo by M. Milner.)

Fig 10.

King Hussein of Jordan shows his ability to change images to suit the occasion in these photos. In the first, he shares a cigarette with Yitzhak Rabin in Jerusalem. In the second, he is shown at Rabin’s funeral. (Photos from the Government Press Office, Israel; top photo by Y. Sa’ar, bottom photo by M. Milner.)

His extraordinary trip to Israel after the so-called Island of Peace Massacre is a stunning example of the state visit as political theater. Along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the king called on the families of seven schoolgirls, who had been shot and killed by a Jordanian soldier, during the traditional Jewish mourning ceremony known as shiva. The king was photographed sitting on a low stool, as visitors to a bereaved family generally do according to Jewish custom, engaged in close conversation with one of the grieving parents.

On this occasion, he enacted a gesture of peace and reconciliation that resonated in the West more profoundly than any formal visit could have done. The fact that Jordanians reacted negatively to it only reinforced the image of the king as a commanding ruler. No other head of an Arab nation would attempt such a performance (Gellman 1997).

King Hussein was one of many state visitors to the city of Jerusalem, but it is unique to his personal history that he assumed three different roles during those visits. Before 1967, when part of the city belonged to Jordan he came as a ruler, and on occasion, according to some reports, as a covert collaborator with the Israeli government. After the Six-Day War, his most famous visit was that made in 1996 to address the Knesset in Jerusalem following the signing of the peace treaty between his nation and Israel. The rare visit of any Arab leader to Israel is certainly an occasion for much speculation about subtext. There are, however, few historical sites so rife with multiple, and sometimes conflicting, meanings as Jerusalem.

Jerusalem the Golden

Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest, beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed: I know not, oh, I know not, what joys await us there; what radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare!

—Bernard of Cluny (Neale 1859)

The words of French medieval poet and cleric, Bernard of Cluny, translated into a famous hymn seven hundred years after they were first written by John Neale, were part of Bernard’s best known work De Contemptu Mundi (On Contempt for the World). Essentially a 3,000-verse diatribe against the venality and pointlessness of the world around him, Bernard’s work posits Jerusalem as an Eden, a paradise of blessings and spiritual sustenance. At the purported time of his completing this work, Jerusalem was a Crusader capital under the firm hand of Queen Melisende ruling on behalf of her fifteen-year-old son, Baldwin—later Baldwin III. The real Jerusalem, however, was not much on the mind of Bernard of Cluny and, indeed, he would have been distressed to find himself living there under the sovereignty of a representative of the sex he disparaged so fiercely in his poem. (“Woman is foul, burning to deceive, a flame of fury, our first destruction, the worst portion, the robber of decency” is among his milder criticisms [Peppin 2000: 108].) The fact that neither Bernard nor the hymnist Neale ever set foot in Jerusalem undoubtedly made it easier for both to place it so clearly beyond the bounds of corporeality.

The post-exilic biblical authors had previously brought elements of longing and sorrow into the various tropes associated with Jerusalem. It was only later that the qualities of beauty and perfection were added. The author of Revelation prophesied a “new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride” (Rev. 21:2). The writers of the Babylonian Talmud refer to it as a “city of gold” and extoll its splendor. It goes without saying that the various descriptions of the city throughout its history, from the psalmist’s anguished cry of “if I forget thee oh Jerusalem” to the well-known lyrics of super-Zionist Naomi Shemer (“Jerusalem of Gold”), have burdened it with the curse of forever raising expectations that it will not meet (Peppin 2000: 109–10).

For this reason, it might be assumed that political leaders might well want to avoid the site with its uncontrollable associations and, in fact, many of them have. Queen Elizabeth II has never been there, although her husband, Prince Philip, has made a private visit to the grave of his mother on the Mount of Olives (Hebblethwaite 2012). President Obama went to Jerusalem as a candidate, but not since taking his oath of office. Preferring Europe and the Western Hemisphere, President John F. Kennedy never went further east than Rome during his brief time as president. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, being much occupied with the war in Southeast Asia, favored travel to the Far East. Ronald Reagan, whose state visits, with the exception of Bitburg, seemed to have been meticulously planned, apparently never thought that going to the Middle East would yield any diplomatic gains. Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush were similarly inclined to steer clear of the region (Duncan 1990: 11–20). There are certainly as many reasons given by heads of state for not visiting Jerusalem as there are articulated for going there—among them, security concerns, cool relations with the current government, and fear of offending other allies. Nevertheless, many public leaders, mindful of the religious and historical connotations of the place, have chosen to go there.

One of the earliest recorded state visits to Jerusalem by a Western leader was that of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1898 to officially dedicate the completed Church of the Redeemer. Wilhelm II and his wife, Augusta Victoria, rode into the Old City with much fanfare (Fig. 11).

The top of the sixteenth-century Jaffa Gate, through which a road now runs, was removed for the visit of the kaiser so that his elaborate equipage could enter the city without encumbrance (Murre-van den Berg 2010). Apparently General Allenby was so put off by the pomp and ceremony of this visit that when he came to Jerusalem in 1917, he did so with little display by riding into the city on horseback and dismounting to greet the city’s notable citizens on foot (Aghazarian, Freij, and Batsh 1993) (Fig. 12).

Fig. 11.

In 1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II entered Jerusalem with his entourage through the Jaffa Gate to attend the dedication of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City. (Photo from the U.S. Library of Congress.)

Fig. 12.

In 1917 General Allenby made a far less ceremonious entrance into Jerusalem through the same gate as the kaiser had before him. (Photo from the U.S. Library of Congress.)

The tradition of American presidents visiting Israel and Jerusalem began with, surprisingly, Richard Nixon. He included several visits to American allies, Saudi Arabia and Iran (then under the shah), as well as Syria and Jordan on his Middle East itineraries. Following Nixon, Jimmy Carter spent a lot of time in the Middle East, personally involving himself in brokering a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. Despite these precedents, Jerusalem presents a number of challenges to the global diplomatic community and heads of state visiting Israel. Tel Aviv is the internationally recognized capital of Israel but the prime minister’s office and the Israeli Knesset are in Jerusalem. Fortunately, in this tiny country, the two cities are a little less than an hour by car from each other—so a visit need not always seem like a capitulation (Genovese 2010).

For American presidents, and now presidential candidates, this has not been an issue for the past few decades due to the consistently close relations between the United States and Israel. Bill Clinton, who was president when the act was passed in 1995 to relocate the United States’ embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (a law that was never implemented), came to the city a number of times and his successor, George H. W. Bush, did the same. The second President Bush also visited as a candidate, as did President Obama, and both waxed poetic about their respective views of Jerusalem. Obama wrote “Those of you who have been here know the incredible magic of the city. As the sun rises over 2,000-year old walls . . . (Obama 2006: 322) and Bush, recalling his visit there in 1999, was similarly awed: “I remember waking up at the Jerusalem Hilton and opening the curtains and seeing the Old City before us, the Jerusalem stone glowing gold . . . ” (Bush and Herskovitz 2001: 136).

Jerusalem the Golden had another meaning for Mitt Romney whose remarks when he visited the city took a more pragmatic turn. “And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” adding that “as you come here and you see the GDP per capita [in Israel as opposed to Palestinian Areas] . . . you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” (Parker and Oppel 2012). While his comments enraged Palestinian officials, the rather backhanded “compliment” that Jewish culture was invariably linked with the ability to make money went largely unnoticed.

Between those political leaders who choose to avoid coming to Jerusalem and those that wholeheartedly embrace it are political leaders who visit Israel for various reasons but go to great lengths to assure that they are not tacitly recognizing Jerusalem as a capital city. French officials for a number of years have held official meetings in an unusual venue just inside the Lion’s Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City—the gate through which Israeli troops first entered the Old City during the Six-Day War. A brass plaque on the wall of an imposing stone building there, known as Saint Anne’s Church, reads Domaine National Française République Française. In other words, the French state has claimed that this building is part of France. According to Christian tradition, Mary was born in a house on this s pot. Saint Anne’s was a Crusader church 850 years ago, then a Muslim school. After the Crimean War in which Britain and France defended the Ottoman Empire against Russia, the sultan of the day gave the Saint Anne’s site as a reward to his Catholic European ally, Napoleon III (Millgram 1990: 149).

Since the nineteenth century the French have continued to assert that Saint Anne’s is French sovereign territory—Un morceau de notre pays en Terre Sainte (a piece of our country in the Holy Land), as Jacques Chirac put it when he addressed an audience at the location during his visit in 1996 (Chirac 1996). Prevented by the Israeli government from meeting with Palestinians at their East Jerusalem Orient House Headquarters, Chirac demanded that Israeli troops guarding him on his official visit to Jerusalem evacuate Saint Anne’s. Not being a consulate or an embassy, the site should not be accorded diplomatic extra-territoriality but the Israeli Army apparently conceded to Chirac’s ultimatum. In addition, it can only be assumed that it would be hard to count on any degree of enthusiasm from that quarter for guarding him (Pardo and Peters 2010: 14–15).

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin’s visit to the Old City to meet with Faisal Husseini in 2000 was less tendentious than that of Chirac. Jospin did not consider venturing in to East Jerusalem and, like his predecessor, chose Saint Anne’s rather than Orient House. By the time of Jospin’s visit, relations between the French government and its Jewish community had deteriorated to the point that the socialist leader Jospin, who had generally been considered a friend of Israel and of French Jews, stood accused of abandoning them to Muslim terrorists. Unwilling to forgo his meeting with the relatively moderate Palestinian leader, Jospin nevertheless did not want to offend the Israeli government and his own Jewish constituents by recognizing the Palestinians’ claim to Jerusalem. The meeting went well, creating little or no public outcry, but Jospin’s later denunciation of Hezbollah’s “terrorist attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilian populations,” earned him a stone-throwing demonstration by Palestinian students at Birzeit University, resulting in a minor injury and a hasty return to France (Litvak 2006: 265).

Finally there are religious leaders who visit Jerusalem on what may be described as latter-day pilgrimages. Notwithstanding the confusion over whether the Vatican represents a city, a state, or a religion, visits made by popes are like visits by state leaders in some respects, but not in all. As with most state visits, the host country foots the bill for the ceremony’s attendant and all of his security, regardless of whether or not that nation is considered Catholic. The pope, however, is given latitude to dispense moral guidance or chide host country officials—which would be a clear breach of international comity if any other leader did so. Pope John Paul II during his long period in office was particularly known for his visits abroad and made over one hundred such trips—including a much vaunted trip to the “Holy Land” in the year 2000 (Landau and McGarry 2005).

Part of the subtext that is Jerusalem are the walls that figure so prominently in political discourse surrounding it. As indicated by the remarks of both Bush and Obama quoted above, they are the most prominent objects of the tourist gaze upon the city. It is not surprising that the backdrop of Jerusalem’s walls has been favored by many political leaders over the years as they submit to photographs with various counterparts (Fig. 13).

Fig. 13.

Secretary of State Clinton and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak photographed in front of a panoramic view of the sixteenth-century walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. (Photo from the U.S. Department of State.)

Creighton (2007) has characterized walled towns and cities as a particularly ‘dissonant’ form of heritage where the past is contested or disputed in the present. Describing Jerusalem as the “archetypal contested city,” Creighton suggests that the historical narrative of the city is circumscribed by its walls. Built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, they might be taken as representative of the Ottoman past. Within the enclosed Old City, however, there are many other walls, including so-called Israelite defensive walls and towers that were uncovered by archaeologists in the Jewish Quarter and often used by tour guides to embody the narrative of sieges withstood and the looming threat of national destruction (Abu el-Haj 1998: 178, 2001: 208–9)

Fig. 14.

The Iron Age defensive walls in Jerusalem. (Photo from Creative Commons/Rusticus.)

Fig. 15.

The Kotel. (Photo from the Creative Commons/aocrane.)

(Fig. 14). Most importantly, there is Jerusalem’s definitive “wall.” The Kotel, the Western Wall in English, is actually a retaining rather than freestanding wall dated to the time of the Second (Herodian) Temple in Jerusalem (Fig. 15).

About a year ago, The Washington Post exhibited an online slideshow depicting numerous dignitaries, including John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin looking solemn while standing before the Kotel. Pope Benedict XVI, who also came to Jerusalem, is shown, like his predecessor John Paul II, inserting a note containing prayers between the stones of the Kotel—a scene that is affecting despite being unoriginal. The destruction of the Moroccan Quarter that enabled the Western Wall Plaza vista that has become such an essential part of the tourist itinerary would not be a conscious thought in the minds of today’s visitors. An action long forgotten by most Western leaders, the Israeli government, not long after asserting sovereignty over the area, paid what was largely an act of archaeological homage to the “Wall of Walls”—without question the holiest site in Judaism. Clearing a large space to offer an expansive view of the Kotel, as well as excavating a number of contemporary and earlier structures adjacent to it, seemed to be ample justification for destroying a crowded eight-hundred-year-old neighborhood in the southeast corner of the Old City.

On the one hand this act provided space for those who considered the monument to be sacred to pay their respects. An old photograph from 1921 of British soldiers at the Western Wall indicates the somewhat claustrophobic nature of the site, with the houses of the Moroccan Quarter closing in (Fig. 16).

Fig. 16.

British soldiers stand in front of the Kotel in 1921. (Photo from the U. S. Library of Congress.)

On the other hand, the clearing of the quarter removed a significant context for the Kotel, a part of its history that can never be restored or recovered (Abu el-Haj 2001: 164–66; Dumper 2002: 78–80). The destruction of the Moroccan Quarter, in addition to the well-known fact that former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made a proposal (soundly rejected by his government) to tear down the walls of the Old City, was the impetus in 1981 for UNESCO to allow Jordan to formally propose that Jerusalem “and its walls” be listed as a World Heritage site (UNESCO 1981: 6–15) (Fig. 17). Jerusalem is today, like the Vatican, placed in a stand-alone stateless category by UNESCO, but is still described as a “site proposed by Jordan” (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/.)

Fig. 17.

The sixteenth-century walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. (Photo by S. Scham.)

Walls and the identities they represent, and exclude, are clearly an active form of architectural heritage and, as such, have a more powerful political subtext as a set for the performance of state visits than almost any other kind of historical site. From Ronald Reagan in front of the Berlin Wall to presidents and popes bowing their heads in front of the Kotel, inherent in these performances is something, in the words of Robert Frost, “that doesn’t love a wall.” Thus, while the text of a visit to the Old City may be one of reconciliation and spiritual submission, a subtext of division, containment, and exclusion can easily emerge. The subtext of a state visit to this most complex of sites will inevitably reverberate regardless of whether the visiting dignitary looks affable or discomfited in the presence of Israeli government officials. Those state leaders who come to Jerusalem and are photographed against the backdrop of its walls mostly do not acknowledge this on a conscious level but surely must be aware that the very physical nature of this city, in addition to its history and modern political standing, will virtually guarantee that what happens in Jerusalem, won’t stay in Jerusalem.

Conclusion

Politically, socially, and culturally, the state visit is invested with far more meaning than that usually accorded it in the daily news cycle. It has become highly structured theater in recent years—partly because of efforts by leaders and their entourages to discourage spontaneity and more carefully control the performance. The set may be accorded as much, or more, significance than the dialogue and should be as carefully chosen as the timing and roles. The importance of such staging was recently emphasized during the presidential debates of last fall when President Obama compared the “picture” of his pre-presidential visit to Jerusalem, framed as a pilgrimage to the Holocaust Memorial of Yad Vashem and the Western Wall, to Candidate Romney’s photographed appearance in front of a crowd of potential financial supporters there. Romney actually visited the same sites that Obama did, but the contrast between the “optics” of their two visits had already been drawn.

The long tradition of state visits to archaeological and historic places suggests that the remains of the ancient past (the more ancient the better) are usually considered non-controversial, not to mention crowd-pleasing. As evidenced by Reagan’s visit to Bitburg, however, this is not always the case. Research alone is not sufficient to ensure the success of the state visit to an archaeological site. Sites, like performances, have nuances that may transcend their histories. Jerusalem remains a unique, and rather extreme, example of a historical place that literally exudes subtexts. For that reason, it is also a place that is selected in order to display the drama of the state visit to its best advantage. Earnest poses before the Kotel, grave-faced visits to Yad Vashem, or smiling portraits before the Old City walls will be interpreted as either deep respect and complete cooperation or hypocrisy and collusion. There is no neutral ground to be had here—the state visit to Jerusalem will always be interpreted as a declaration.

There is no evidence to support the view that President Obama has avoided going to Jerusalem as president for precisely those reasons. Nor, returning to the introduction to this article, is there any indication that his decision to downplay his tour of the Islamic buildings of Cairo was a recognition of the subtext that might have been conveyed by a more public visit to these sites. In retrospect, it looks like prescience, however. The growth of the so-called Birther movement, which was accompanied by a groundswell of doubt about Obama’s religious affiliation, gained momentum following his visit to Cairo (Sears 2011). The image of President Obama in the Sultan Hassan Mosque, accompanied by the First Lady and Secretary of State Clinton, both tastefully sporting headscarves, appears in only a limited number of photos (Figs. 18) while his visit to the Pyramids was a media event immortalized in many images of the president juxtaposed with the pyramids (Fig. 19). The visit to the mosque might have represented an occasion for winning over Egyptian Muslims, but the repercussions of the visit for the president’s image back home could have been critical if the press had been given greater leeway to cover it.

Given the United States government’s current unease about the future of Middle East politics with the admixture of panic in Israel about the future posed by a nuclear Iran, it is interesting to speculate on what archaeological sites the president would choose to visit were he to go to the region today. This time around, Jerusalem, which was considered a notable omission on his last visit, might well be included. If he went to Cairo, the Sultan Hassan Mosque, built by a leader who led a dramatic but politically unexceptional life and sufficiently monumental as to be almost impossible to ignore, might certainly still be on the itinerary; Gizeh—perhaps not. Like the Moroccan Quarter and the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Pyramids today represent a contentious heritage and one that does not resonate with current Egyptian leadership. Like the walls and the Dome of the Rock in post-1967 Jerusalem, pharaonic antiquities are being threatened but eventually, as was the case with Jerusalem, it is hoped that the damage will be limited by common sense and the need for tourist revenues.

In the unlikely event that a visit to the region by a president of the United States should take place in the near future, he would be wise to avoid the fourteenth-century Al-Rifa’i Mosque in Cairo, just opposite the Sultan Hassan Mosque, or the thirteenth-century complex of Sultan al-Nasir. The former is the resting place of the former shah of Iran (Fig. 20) and the latter was built with architectural elements stolen by Mamluk conquerors from the destroyed Church of St. Jean d’Acre in Israel (Folda 2005: 266).

Fig. 18.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton were subdued and respectful while visiting the Sultan Hassan Mosque. (Photos from the White House Photo Gallery.)

Fig. 19.

President Obama’s media moment in the shadow of the Great Pyramid. (Photo from the White House Photo Gallery.)

Fig. 20.

The tomb of the former shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, friend of the Sadat government, lies next to that of King Farouk (the shah’s former brother-in-law) in the Al-Rafa’i Mosque, Cairo. (Photo by C. S. Rose.)

In either of these of places, the historical subtexts of hostile Christian-Muslim relations on the one hand, or a fairly prominent reminder of the United States government’s long and much debated support for an acknowledged dictator on the other, could well mar what might otherwise be a flawless performance.