How one Gazan is preserving Palestinian heritage in his basement

To protect Palestine's archaeological history, Marwan Shahwan has converted the basement of a Gaza house into a museum to hold the tens of thousands of artifacts he has been collecting for decades.
A friend of Marwan Shahwan, 55, displays relics from his collection stored in the basement of a relative's house in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis on March 2, 2014. Shahwan has been collecting artifacts over the past 30 years, which includes more than 10,000 ancient items representing various eras and civilizations. AFP PHOTO/ SAID KHATIB (Photo credit should read SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images)
A friend of Marwan Shahwan displays relics from his collection stored in a basement in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, March 2, 2014. - SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images
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Ahmed el-Komi
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KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — Palestinian citizen Marwan Shahwan has turned the basement of his Khan Yunis home into an archaeological museum. His private exhibit features 10,000 artifacts collected over 30 years that attest to the history of the seven civilizations that called Palestine home: the Pharaonic, Greek, Romanian, Byzantine, Islamic, Mamluk and Ottoman civilizations.

He bought his first archaeological find in the 1980s from a popular market. It is a copper teapot that an archaeologist later on told him was a valuable artifact dating back to the Ottoman era. A carpenter and interior designer, Shahwan designed and built a museum to house and display his artifacts.

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