This chapter aims to explore modernity from a paradoxical perspective, drawing on archaeological artifacts and nineteenth-century museological practices as its foundation. It also seeks to expand the conceptualization of translation by engaging with Maria Tymoczko’s seminal work on translation as metonymy, viewing translation as a partial process that emphasizes specific aspects (Translation in a Postcolonial Context, St. Jerome, 1999, 282). In this context, Wendy Shaw’s analysis of the relationship between modernization, metonymy, and Ottoman curatorship is also examined (Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire, University of California Press, 2003). These perspectives prove especially relevant for analyzing modernity and its association with “turning Western” (Ferguson, Civilization. The West and the Rest, Allen Lane/Penguin, 2011, 218). In a transdisciplinary approach combining Translation Studies and museum studies, this chapter focuses on the Istanbul Archaeology Museums complex (formerly known as Müze-i Hümayun, “the Imperial Museum”), a key symbol of the Late Ottoman Empire’s modernization. It is claimed that it was not a coincidence that the Tanzimat period, which was a basis for the “reorganization” and the transition to a modern state (Telli and Yılmaz, Liberal Düşünce [Liberal Thinking] 25 (100): 9–35, 2020), was on par with the evolving views on museology and historical artifacts, marked by a shift from the concept of kadim to atîk (Serbestoğlu and Açık, Akademik Bakış [Academic View Journal] 6 (12): 157–172, 2013). Remarkably, the museum displayed Ancient Greek, Byzantine, Commagenian, and Phoenician artifacts alongside Turkic and Islamic ones. The curational choices reflect an attempt to translate the “other”—both the ancient and the Western—into the Ottoman-Islamic cultural self, and vice-versa, hence encapsulating a dynamic process of metonymy as cultural transmission within the museum context.