ABSTRACT
A. Megill presents history 'as a model of honesty and intelligence in the investigation of the human world'. However, history is a discursive representation of "reality" that has extraordinary social authority. Archaeology as a scientific endeavour and academic subject arose as part of the process of nineteenth-century colonialism and nation-building. The British approach to non-Jewish Palestinian education in Mandate Palestine was that of reinforcing traditional norms and values; education was not seen as a means for social and political change. Modernist-era museums were designed as sites of entertainment and instruction: spaces in which works of high culture were treated as instruments of social management for rapidly expanding populations in the industrial era. The inclusion of the image of Ayatollah Khomeini in many of the murals, juxtaposed with symbols recalling the martyrdom of Hussein and images of martyrs from the revolutionary struggle and the Iran-Iraq war, conflates the finite and political with the sacred and the infinite.
