The Roman “Damnatio Memoriae” : How the Politics of Erasure Echoes in the Palestinian Experience

The Roman “Damnatio Memoriae” : How the Politics of Erasure Echoes in the Palestinian Experience

featured in The Open Letters | by Tala Alkuja

The open Letters

Oct 18, 2026

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Tala Alkuja

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Yes, we must be cautious about drawing direct parallels between the past and the present or presenting them as identical historical experiences. The social and political realities of Roman civic life, particularly when viewed through the perspective of the Roman elite, are not directly comparable to the modern Palestinian experience. The latter is shaped by distinct historical circumstances and multiple interconnected dimensions, including identity, culture, political aspirations, resistance, regional geopolitics, and the collective memory shared across much of the Middle Eastern world regarding the Palestinian cause.

That said, the past can still help us understand the broader implications of the Roman historical framework. By looking through the analytical Roman lens, we find that there are similar patterns, ideas and inner-workings of a people who are obsessed with preserving their collective memory, legacy, and their historical continuity.

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I was watching a panel called ‘

Femme Fatales at the Forum: Deadly Roman Women and their Legacy”

moderated by the talented ancient historian, known as cosi’s odyssey who produces fun historical content under Propylaea Productions. The discussion is intellectually engaging and poses some interesting questions about powerful women in Roman history. Joining the panel were historians Kaarina Parker , Dr. Dr Jess Venner , and classicist Honor Cargill-Martin , each bringing valuable perspectives drawn from both historical scholarship and historical fiction. At one point, the conversation turned to the Roman practice of

damnatio memoriae

—a latin concept of literally meaning “condemnation of memory”. Which entailed a deliberate attempt to erase an individual’s public memory after death. Although the discussion focused on powerful Roman women, the practice itself extended more broadly to emperors, senators, and other prominent figures whose memory was considered politically or morally undesirable within the Roman political sphere. Upon hearing this, my mind immediately wandered to the Palestinian experience—not because the two histories are identical, but because they raised a common question: what happens when power attempts to erase memory?

While of course, this phenomenon was primarily a practice directed at members of the Roman elite—emperors, senators, and other prominent public figures whose reputations were intertwined with that of the state. Nevertheless, I can’t help but look at this concept from a bird’s eye view and connect it to the broader conceptual level. The notion invites reflection on how communities respond to attempts to erase or suppress their historical memory. It is in this analytical sense that I find it significant to consider the Palestinian experience, not as an identical historical case, but as one that similarly places value on memory, continuity, and the preservation of identity across generations. I reiterate yet again, that I am not applying their modern situation onto the past. There lies a monumental historical difference between the two contexts.

Memory is never passive. As Jan Assmann argues, cultural memory is the mechanism through which societies preserve a sense of continuity across generations. Monuments, traditions, landscapes, rituals, and stories become repositories of identity. Attempts to erase or redefine these repositories therefore become more than acts of destruction, they become a violent form of eliminating an entire people and their ancestral history from posterity.

So, how did the Romans practice this erasure? Well, the most common action archaeologists come across is the chiseled out names in inscriptions. Some others would completely destroy or damage their statues and portraits. One example of this is

Geta—

Who after being murdered by his brother Caracalla in 211 CE, Geta’s images were removed from reliefs and inscriptions. One of these reliefs has his face literally carved away. And if we are looking at

Numismatics,

the minting of coins can be altered or removed from various issues. The most brutal of them all, I believe, is the rewriting of official records either to minimize or erase their achievements all together.

Source:

British Museum Collection Online – Museum no. 1979,0101.1914

Even after death, as if that’s not punishment enough, the purpose of denying them an honorable place in history is such a jarring tool to tarnish someone’s memory.

Now, if we look at the collective memory of Palestinians as well as their culture of resistance, we find out that both are deeply intertwined with their identity. It is not only an erasure of achievements or cultural contribution, it is the most dehumanizing form of an attempt to uproot Palestinian identity itself—its struggle, its lived experience, and the enduring traditions of Palestinian thought.

In relation to this point, the Roman concept finds its way in a familiar yet distinct form of erasure in which Nur-eldeen Masalha, who is a Palestinian writer and historian, has argued in his book called

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History

and

The Palestine Nakba

, that place names—such as towns and cities carry a deep shared memory of one’s historical past. And when these places are renamed, the essence of the landscape becomes unfamiliar, functioning as a form of cultural erasure. So is the destruction of entire villages and the uprooting of olive groves that have been passed down through generations. Many of these trees are over 2,000 years old and have become an integral part of the Palestinian people’s connection to the land.

One remarkable example of this enduring connection is

Al-Badawi

(“The Bedouin”), an ancient olive tree in

Al-Walaja (الولجة),

near

Bethlehem, believed to be around 5

,

000

years

old. Cared for daily by local resident Salah

Abu

Ali, who carefully tends its branches, the tree stands as a living symbol of the region’s deep agricultural heritage and continuity.

Because from a Palestinian point of view, they, (the indigenous people) are deeply embedded within the earth’s soil. This is also observed in the poetics of the Palestinian cultural identity where the great Mahmoud Darwish writes a beautiful analogy that ties in with the agricultural past of the Palestinian farmers.

“If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.”

The olive tree is part of the Palestinian collective memory of endurance and rootedness.

An Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe uses the term “memoricide”, a very fitting term to describe what’s been happening to the Palestinians since 1948 if not a little while back. He highlights the suppression of Palestinian historical memory through the mass destruction of Palestinian villages, the renaming of places, the control of archival documents, and the reshaping of public narratives that perpetuate misconceptions about Palestinian origins.

Palestinian literary scholar Edward Said notes that Palestinians are not only being ethnically cleansed and dispossessed, but are also experiencing narrative erasure.

“The permission to narrate.”

This phrase, from his 1984 essay

Permission to Narrate

, captures his argument that Palestinians have often been denied the ability to tell their own history in Western political and media discourse.

He wrote that the Palestinian story was often treated as if it did not exist independently but only in relation to Israel.

There is also the subject of culturcide and cultural appropriation. There have been various attempts at appropriating the cultural landscape through reinterpreting Palestinian heritage to suit a different historical narrative.

A case emphasized by the legal scholar Luma Zayad who argues that the Palestinian struggle is also marked by disputes over cultural heritage, in which elements of Palestinian identity—such as traditional embroidery (

tatreez

), cuisine, folklore, and other cultural expressions are detached from their indigenous context and re-presented within an Israeli national narrative. A purposeful reinterpretation that takes away the very cultural makeup of a Palestinian individual.

Village names, traditional cuisine, and cultural symbols have all become sites of contestation. Foods such as hummus, musakhan, maqluba, and knafeh (a dessert originating in the Palestinian city of Nablus, made from crisp shredded pastry, melted cheese, and sweet syrup) , are deeply rooted in Palestinian culinary tradition. Yet these and other Levantine dishes are often marketed internationally as exclusively “Israeli,” detached from the Palestinian communities that have preserved and developed them for generations. Hummus becomes Israeli hummus. Falafel, an Israeli invention. Likewise, the black-and-white keffiyeh, (originated from Kufa, Iraq) long associated with Palestinian farmers and later with Palestinian national identity and resistance, has at times been reimagined as an Israeli fashion trend. The modern revival of the sudra reflects an effort to match yet distinguish it from the Palestinian keffiyeh, even when there’s an attempt to imitate the keffiyeh’s iconic fishnet patterns that are deeply symbolic to Gaza’s fishermen. The Palestinian keffiyeh articulates a meaningful association with its wearers. The zigzag lines symbolize trade routes and the moving of goods across the Mediterranean. While the olive branch motifs, represent the olive tree—and the Palestinian cultivation of olive oil.

By adopting and reinterpreting these traditions, they have stripped away the Palestinian rights of self-determination. An apartheid state that holds the authority to define the past and whose history becomes visible in the public imagination.

The issue is therefore not simply one of ownership, but of historical visibility. When a people’s cultural expressions are disconnected from their origins, their place in history becomes obscured.

The logic of memory erasure finds a modern resonance in the indiscriminate and systematic bombings on the Gaza strip.

Already having destroyed major monumental structures that go back many centuries. UNESCO has verified damage to at least 164 cultural heritage sites in Gaza since October 2023, including mosques, churches, archaeological sites, museums, monuments, and historic buildings.

There is a certain irony in all of this. The very civilization that gave us the concept of

damnatio memoriae

also left behind some of Gaza’s most important archaeological treasures. Gaza’s ancient sites have all sustained significant damage.

Particularly symbolic is the Roman Cemetery in Gaza City—a Roman-period necropolis dating to the first century BCE that was only recently discovered and excavated before the war, offering rare insight into Gaza’s rich classical past.

On a far more melancholic note, I have seen videos circulating on social media by journalists who documented children in Gaza writing their names on their arms and legs so they can be identified when they are killed. There have also been reports of families writing names on walls and on personal belongings, fearful that even in death they might otherwise go unnamed. In the occupied West Bank, graffiti on the separation wall declares,

“To exist is to resist.”

And if that’s not an act of rebellion on

damnatio memoraei,

I dont know what is…

Why do Palestinians keep resisting? To preserve their memory. For the world to acknowledge that they were there. That they exist. That their struggle was real. But most importantly, that they are not defined by their deaths. They are people with thoughts, dreams, ambitions and they are a people who love life and want to live it to the fullest. And to quote Mahmoud Darwish yet again, he’s my favorite poet if you can’t tell…

“ We have on this land, what makes this life worth living”.

If

damnatio memoriae

sought to erase an individual from history, modern realities of oppression and occupation—remind us that entire peoples can find themselves struggling to preserve the memory of their culture, their heritage, and their existence to endure, against all odds.

P.S - I highly recommend reading the works of these Palestinian authors for those who wish to understand the Palestinian cause. Their literature offers one of the most profound windows into Palestinian memory, identity, and the desire to be remembered.

About

Ghassan Kanafani

—

Men in The Sun

Mahmoud Darwish

—

Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

Mahmoud Darwish

—

Memory for Forgetfulness

(1987)

Raja Shehadeh

—

Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape

(2007)

Mourid Barghouti

—

I Saw Ramallah

(1997)

Susan Abulhawa

—

Mornings in Jenin

(2010)

Edward Said

—

After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives

(1986)

Refaat Alareer

—

Gaza Writes Back

(2014)

Mosab Abu Toha

—

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear

(2022)

References :

Varner, Eric R.

Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture

. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

Masalha, Nur.

Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History

. London: Zed Books, 2018.

Masalha, Nur.

The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory

. London: Zed Books, 2012.

Darwish, Mahmoud.

Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems

. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Pappé, Ilan.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

. Oxford: Oneworld, 2006.

Pappé, Ilan.

Ten Myths About Israel

. London: Verso, 2017.

Said, Edward W. “Permission to Narrate.”

Journal of Palestine Studies

13, no. 3 (1984): 27–48.

Zayad, Luma. “Systematic Cultural Appropriation and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law

28, no. 2 (2018).

Hawari, Mahmoud. “The Citadel of Jerusalem: A Case Study in the Cultural Appropriation of Archaeology in Palestine.”

Palestine Exploration Quarterly

.

UNESCO. “Damage Assessment in Gaza.” 2025.

Assmann, Jan.

Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination

. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Flower, Harriet I.

The Art of Forgetting: Disgrace and Oblivion in Roman Political Culture

. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

About the Author:

Tala Alkuja is a History master’s student at the University of Birmingham with a passion for the ancient world, particularly the Levant. Through Levantine History, she explores the civilizations, poetry, traditions, and cultural heritage that have shaped the region, bringing its layered past to life through stories and historical reflections.

Substack ID:

Tala Alkuja

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