Historic artifacts return to Bodrum
Güncelleme Tarihi:
Chris Drum Berkaya
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Nisan 09, 2009 00:00
BODRUM - After a brief stint on display at New York’s famous Metropolitan Museum, more than 100 unique Bronze Age artifacts, which belong to Bodrum’s Museum of Underwater Archaeology, return home. An archaeologist at the Bodrum Museum says that the precious objects are expected to be back in place in the next few days
The unique Bronze Age artifacts belonging to Bodrum’s Museum of Underwater Archaeology have returned home after a stint on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.
Museum and conservation-laboratory staff spent the weekend unpacking the precious objects under the supervision of the archaeologists on duty and with the assistance of the transport company. Metropolitan Museum conservator Lisa Pilosi accompanied the objects back to Bodrum after having originally traveled with them to New York. Bodrum museum archaeologist Bahadir Berkaya said he expected all the objects would be back in place in the next few days.
Blank spaces
The Uluburun Shipwreck Hall in the Bodrum museum has had blank spaces in its display cases since 103 pieces were sent to New York in September 2008.
The loaned objects formed a significant part of a large exhibition, "Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.," that ran at the esteemed Metropolitan Museum of Art from Nov. 15 to March 15.
The exhibition gathered 350 high-quality art objects from around the eastern Mediterranean, many of them displayed abroad for the first time, and put them in the context of their astonishingly culturally rich era, 4,000 years ago, when trade by sea and land linked distant civilizations to one another.
The 1983 discovery of the shipwreck, named Uluburun after the cape where it was found near Kaş on the southern coast of Turkey, was critical to showing how sophisticated the trade and international networks of the era had been. During 11 summers of excavations, the shipwreck yielded objects and art pieces that had been gathered from Egypt, Syria, Cyprus and Anatolia and were of great value even then, displaying highly advanced techniques.
Valuable pieces
The fragile hippopotamus ivory, carved ostrich eggshells, the ceramic ramshead, the precious tiny bronze goddess statue, the wooden hinged "book" and the heavy stone anchors have all made the great journey safely across the Atlantic and back to Bodrum. They will be displayed once again in the Uluburun hall of the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, where the permanent exhibition was opened in 2000.
Along with the treasures from Bodrum, the Turkish Ministry of Culture loaned 11 pieces from Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, seven from Çorum, two from Konya, two from Kayseri and two from Istanbul to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York conservator Pilosi said that interest in the exhibition was high and that a series of seminars examining different aspects of the exhibition’s theme had been well attended.
Museum and conservation-laboratory staff spent the weekend unpacking the precious objects under the supervision of the archaeologists on duty and with the assistance of the transport company. Metropolitan Museum conservator Lisa Pilosi accompanied the objects back to Bodrum after having originally traveled with them to New York. Bodrum museum archaeologist Bahadir Berkaya said he expected all the objects would be back in place in the next few days.
Blank spaces
The Uluburun Shipwreck Hall in the Bodrum museum has had blank spaces in its display cases since 103 pieces were sent to New York in September 2008.
The loaned objects formed a significant part of a large exhibition, "Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.," that ran at the esteemed Metropolitan Museum of Art from Nov. 15 to March 15.
The exhibition gathered 350 high-quality art objects from around the eastern Mediterranean, many of them displayed abroad for the first time, and put them in the context of their astonishingly culturally rich era, 4,000 years ago, when trade by sea and land linked distant civilizations to one another.
The 1983 discovery of the shipwreck, named Uluburun after the cape where it was found near Kaş on the southern coast of Turkey, was critical to showing how sophisticated the trade and international networks of the era had been. During 11 summers of excavations, the shipwreck yielded objects and art pieces that had been gathered from Egypt, Syria, Cyprus and Anatolia and were of great value even then, displaying highly advanced techniques.
Valuable pieces
The fragile hippopotamus ivory, carved ostrich eggshells, the ceramic ramshead, the precious tiny bronze goddess statue, the wooden hinged "book" and the heavy stone anchors have all made the great journey safely across the Atlantic and back to Bodrum. They will be displayed once again in the Uluburun hall of the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, where the permanent exhibition was opened in 2000.
Along with the treasures from Bodrum, the Turkish Ministry of Culture loaned 11 pieces from Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, seven from Çorum, two from Konya, two from Kayseri and two from Istanbul to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York conservator Pilosi said that interest in the exhibition was high and that a series of seminars examining different aspects of the exhibition’s theme had been well attended.