Israel Antiquities Authority - History

History

The Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums (IDAM) of the Ministry of Education was founded on July 26, 1948, after the establishment of the State of Israel. It took over the functions of the Department of Antiquities of the British Mandate in Israel. Originally, its activities were based on the British Mandate Department of Antiquities ordinances.

IDAM was the statutory authority responsible for the Israel's antiquities and for the administration of small museums. Its functions include curation of the state collection of antiquities, storing of the state collection, maintaining a list of registered antiquities sites, inspecting antiquities sites and registering newly discovered sites, conducting salvage and rescue operations of endangered antiquities sites, maintaining an archaeological library (the state library), maintaining an archive.

It published the results of excavations in three journals:

• Booklet of the Department of Antiquities --now defunct
• 'Atiqot --still published
• Hadashot Arkheologiyot --still published, online.

IDAM also funded and managed the Archaeological Survey of Israel and published the results of its work in maps covering 10 km² of the State of Israel.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) was created from the IDAM by the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in a 1990 statute. Amir Drori became its first director. The IAA fulfilled the statutory obligations of the IDAM and in its early days was greatly expanded from the core number of workers in IDAM to a much larger complement, and to include the functions of the Archaeological Survey of Israel. The period of expansion lasted for a number of years, but was followed by a period in which diminished fiscal resources saw large cutbacks in the size of its work force and its activities.