Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building themodern nation state of Oman. Amal Sachedina analyses the relations with the past that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadishari'a Imamate (1913-1958) to a modern nation state from 1970 onwards.Since its inception as a nation state, material forms in the Sultanate of Oman-such as old mosques and shari'a manuscripts, restored forts, national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger (khanjar), and archaeological sites-have saturated the landscape, becomingincreasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman's expanding heritage industry, exemplified by the boom in museums, exhibitions, street montages, and cultural festivals, shapes a distinctly national geography andterritorialized narrative.But Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern demonstrates there are consequences to this celebration of heritage. As the national narrativeconditions the way people ethically work on themselves through evoking forms of heritage, it also generates anxieties and emotionalsensibilities that seek to address the erasures and occlusions of the past.