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This chapter assesses the protection of cultural heritage in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In their initial days of statehood, most postcolonial entities did not alter the basic institutional arrangements of colonial law and administration. In the MENA region, this resulted in the adoption of laws and policies related to the protection and preservation of cultural heritage, which included elements from earlier Ottoman laws and by-laws, British and French Mandatory laws and ordinances, and the legislative efforts of the colonial powers of France and Italy. Subsequently, in postcolonial MENA, nation states began adopting the 1970 UNESCO Convention with the aim of protecting their cultural resources and at the same time asserting themselves as legitimate States who care about culture. UNESCO efforts were also aimed at fostering greater parity between nations, with the intention of eliminating or at least ameliorating colonial legacies of inequality and misappropriation.

This article reveals the interplay between cultural heritage and identity formation. It discusses how considerations of cultural heritage and the interpretation of the past among local populations are understood vis-à-vis archaeological tourism, the looting of archaeological sites, and the daily interaction between local populations and archaeologists (foreign and national). Under this, the article presents an examination of the values attributed to looted artefacts by the assorted publics associated with illegal trade in antiquities. It reveals the values of a looted object to the looter, the local populace, the government employee, the archaeologist (both local and foreign), the dealer, the law-maker, the collector, the museum, and the tourist. This study addresses the ethnographic, criminological, and legal theory, based on which it provides an understanding of the values of looted objects and the competing demands for those contested items from the Middle East.