The Istanbul Archaeological Museums in Istanbul, Turkey

*WS 140: the Istanbul Archaeological Museums in Istanbul, Turkey*

The Istanbul Archaeological Museums is a group of 3 museums located next to the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. The original archaeological museum was founded as an imperial museum in 1891. There are over a million items collected in this museum, including a large collection of Turkish, Hellenistic and Roman artefacts gathered from the vast Ottoman Empire. We visited this museum twice, in 2001 on a “hurrying” group tour and 2017 on our own easy-n-lazy schedule. The photos are of course from the 2017 visit.  

The 1st photo shows the main neoclassical building completed in 1908. The 2nd shows artefacts in the courtyard. The most famous artefacts are a group of 4 sarcophagi from the necropolis of Sidon, a city in present-day Lebanon, dating to the late 4th century BC. The 3rd and 4th photos are images of the most prized possession here: the Alexander Sarcophagus, the stone coffin for Alexander the Great, with the bas-relief carving depicting him (on the far left) slaying the Persians. Another contemporary sarcophagus is the Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women, with aesthetic carving, 5th photo. 

The 6th photo shows the glazed brick panel taken from the way to the Ishtar, the 8th gate in the inner city of Babylon (in present day Iraq), dated to 575 BC. The 7th shows the double sphinx sculpture found in west Turkey, dated to the 9th century BC. Please note that the figure in the middle is too young to be a museum piece. 

The 8th photo shows the famous exhibit from the Museum of Ancient Orient: the limestone statue of Lugal-Dalu, the King of Adab in central Iraq dated to around 2,500 BC.  The last 2 photos show the exhibits from the Museum of Islamic Art, highlighting the use of the famous ceramic tiles produced in the town of Iznik (140 km south of Istanbul) in Turkey during the Middle Ages.