The Uşak Museum of Archaeology () is an

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

museum in

Uşak Uşak () is a city in the interior part of the Aegean Region of Turkey. It is the seat of Uşak Province and Uşak District.Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

. Founded on May 23, 1970, the museum is best known for its exhibitions of

Karun treasure Kârun Treasure is the name given to a collection of 363 valuable Lydian artifacts dating from the 7th century BC and originating from Uşak Province in western Turkey, which were the subject of a legal battle between Turkey and New York Metro ...

. In the museum, items on display include sculptures, pitchers with beaklike spouts and

stone axe Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistoric cultures and in particular those of the Stone Age. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone, the latter fashioned by a c ...

s from the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

, earthen dishes and glassware from the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

and

Ancient Roman In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...

Period, and

stelae A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

from the nearby Roman ancient ruin site of Blaundus. The most interesting items are of the so-called Karun treasure belonging to the

Lydia Lydia (; ) was an Iron Age Monarchy, kingdom situated in western Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey. Later, it became an important province of the Achaemenid Empire and then the Roman Empire. Its capital was Sardis. At some point before 800 BC, ...

n Period.

Karun treasure

The artifacts, making a collection of 363 pieces, date back to the 7th century BCE. They were illegally excavated by villagers in 1966 from the tomb of a Lydian noble woman, smuggled outside the country and sold to the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

(The Met) in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

, USA. After their discovery in a catalogue of the museum in 1984, Turkish journalist

Özgen Acar Özgen is a Turkish surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Abdulkadir Özgen Abdulkadir Özgen (born 8 September 1986) is a Turkish- German professional footballer who plays as a forward. Career Özgen began his career with ...

informed the Turkish government, which launched a judicial case against The Met. After a legal battle, the collection was returned in 1993 to Turkey.

Museum theft case

In 2006 two items in the Karun Treasure (Lydian Hoard) were discovered to be fakes, with the originals having been stolen. The pieces were a coin and a golden brooch in the form of a

hippocamp The hippocampus, or hippocamp or ''hippokampos'' (plural: hippocampi or hippocamps; , from , and Museum of Anatolian Civilizations The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations () is located on the south side of Ankara Castle in the Atpazarı area in Ankara, Turkey. It consists of the old Ottoman Mahmut Paşa bazaar storage building, and the Kurşunlu Han. Because of Atatürk's ...

, before being returned to the Uşak Museum of Archaeology.

References

External links

Karun Treasure Book

{{DEFAULTSORT:Usak Museum Of Archaeology Archaeological museums in Turkey Museums established in 1970 Buildings and structures in Uşak Museums in Uşak Province