Bagan Archaeological Museum is located in
Bagan
Bagan (, ; formerly Pagan) is an ancient city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Mandalay Region of Myanmar. From the 9th to 13th centuries, the city was the capital of the Bagan Kingdom, the first kingdom that unified the regions that wou ...
, Myanmar. It was established in 1904,
near the
Ananda Temple and was reconstructed in 1938. In the Second World War, the artifacts were buried in the earth to avoid destruction. In 1952, when Myanmar became independent, the Ministry of Culture started managing the museum. The three-story museum houses a number of rare Bagan period objects including the original
Myazedi inscriptions, the
Rosetta Stone of Burma.
History
In 1901, the Governor General of India arrived in the Bagan region to prevent the destruction of ancient art works and ancient religious buildings.
Emanuel_Forchhammer, a professor of Pali at
Rangoon College
The University of Yangon (also Yangon University; my, ရန်ကုန် တက္ကသိုလ်, ; formerly Rangoon College, Rangoon University and Rangoon Arts and Sciences University), located in Kamayut, Yangon, is the oldest univers ...
, was entrusted with the task of preserving it. In 1902,
Taw Sein Ko, head of the Department of Inscriptions and Stones (now the Department of Archaeology), collected ancient stone inscriptions and artifacts from around Bagan. To display them, a small museum was built in 1904 to the north of the Ananda Temple, where ancient stone inscriptions were displayed.
[Zan, Nu. (2016). Museums in Myanmar: Brief History and Actual Perspectives. 10.1007/978-981-10-0886-3_2.]
On October 14, 1994, the chairman of the National Peace and Development Council, General
Than Shwe, who visited Bagan region , guided the construction of a large museum in Bagan. The museum opened on April 17, 1998. At the time of the construction of the building, the previous eight-point museum was kept, and the office of the Department of Archeology next to it was dismantled. According to State media report, a total of 295,284 local and foreign travellers visited the Bagan Archaeological Museum in the 2018-2019 fiscal year.
Featured galleries
The galleries on display at the Bagan Archaeological Museum are
*Special gallery
*Pagan Art Gallery
*Pagan period architecture gallery
*Pagan life gallery
*Pagan period literature gallery
*Pagan period Buddha statues
*Pagan period mural art gallery
References
External links
*
{{authority control
1904 establishments in Burma
Archaeological museums
Bagan
Buildings and structures in Mandalay Region
Museums established in 1904
Museums in Myanmar