The Australian Museum was targeted by a pro-Palestinian campaign which made them "succumb" to a changing of the wording on their Egyptian exhibition, the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) claimed earlier this month.
The wording change in question was on a panel description of the exhibit of Rameses the Warrior.
“As a very young army captain, Ramses escorted his father, Seti, into the battle. In his teens, Ramses was second in command, fighting alongside Seti in Libya and Palestine,” the panel then read after the change. The AJA accused the museum of "rewriting history."
“According to them, the Pharaoh Ramses fought in Palestine, a name that wasn’t invented until thousands of years later,” AJA said on social media.
“As a very young army captain, Ramses escorted his father, Seti, into the battle. In his teens, Ramses was second in command, fighting alongside Seti in Libya and Palestine."
The panel of the exhibition
Australian Museum's response
The Australian Museum responded to the AJA's complaints and agreed to implement the necessary changes, saying that they "have conferred with the creators of the exhibition and they have agreed that, to avoid confusion and to focus on the story of Ramses himself, we will remove any non-historical geographic references besides the use of the common term Egypt.”
The CEO of the Australian Jewish Association, Robert Gregory, said that the museum nonetheless "succumbed to the activists’ harassment. The new labeling is patently incorrect and misleads visitors. The Australian Museum appears to be wading into foreign policy independently of the Australian Government, by declaring parts of Israel, within its 1948 borders as “what is today known as...Palestine.”