Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin
Monday, 10 September 2018 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: European Union / Europäische Union Category/Kategorie: Berlin , Museums, Exhibitions , UNESCO World Heritage
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Ishtar Gate © Hnapel/cc-by-sa-4.0
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The Vorderasiatisches Museum (
Near East Museum) is an archaeological museum in
Berlin . It is in the basement of the south wing of the
Pergamon Museum and has one of the world’s largest collections of
Southwest Asian art. 14 halls distributed across 2,000 square meters of exhibition surface display southwest Asian culture spanning six millennia. The exhibits cover a period from the 6th millennium BCE into the time of the
Muslim conquests . They originate particularly from today’s states of
Iraq ,
Syria and
Turkey , with singular finds also from other areas. Starting with the
Neolithic finds, the emphasis of the collection is of finds from
Sumer ,
Babylonia and
Assyria , as well as northern Syria and eastern
Anatolia .
Excavations in historically important cities like Uruk , Shuruppak , Assur , Hattusha , Tell el Amarna , Tell Halaf (Guzana ), Sam’al , Toprakkale and Babylon built the foundation of the museum’s collection. Further acquisitions came from Nimrud , Nineveh , Susa and Persepolis . The museum shows finds from the cultures of Sumer , Akkad , Babylonia , Assyria , the Hittites and the Aramaeans . These finds often found their way to Berlin via the German Oriental Society . In 1899, the Middle East Department at the royal museums was created. In 1929, they were provisionally accommodated in the Bode Museum and the Pergamon Museum, where they have been accessible to the public since 1930.
Wall panels from the temple-palace at Tell Halaf © Miguel Hermoso Cuesta/cc-by-sa-4.0
During the
Second World War , there were hardly any war-related losses. The mobile exhibits, which were taken as
art spoliage to the
Soviet Union , were returned to
East Germany in 1958. The collection had already opened again as the Vorderasiatisches Museum in 1953.
Notable pieces of the collection are the
Ishtar Gate and Procession Way of Babylon, remainders of the ancient city of Babylon, parts of the
Eanna temple and
Karaindash ‘s temple to
Inanna in Uruk. The museum also has an important number of Southwest Asian
stamp and
cylinder seals , as well as
cuneiform texts. It has more than 200 of the
Amarna letters and the larger (“Meissner”) fragment of the
Sippar tablet from the
Epic of Gilgamesh , which includes
Siduri ‘s advice, unlike later editions of the epic.
Read more on
smb.museum – Museum of the Ancient Near East ,
museumsinsel-berlin.de – Museum of the Ancient Near East ,
museumsportal-berlin.de – Museum of the Ancient Near East and
Wikipedia Museum of the Ancient Near East (
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