Istanbul Archaeological Museums: A Tomb Was Opened — And Istanbul's Museum Changed Forever

There is an easy mistake to make when walking towards the Istanbul Archaeological Museums.

Topkapı Palace is just above you.

Gülhane Park is below.

Hagia Sophia is only a few minutes away.

You are surrounded by some of Istanbul's greatest historic landmarks.

Then, among the trees, you see a large Neoclassical building.

And you might think:

“Another museum.”

But before you walk inside, you should know something.

Some of the objects here were so important that a new museum building had to be constructed to display them.

And the most exciting part of that story did not begin in Istanbul.

It began in what is now Lebanon.

Beneath an ancient burial ground.

Before You Enter, Look at the Building

When you reach the main Archaeology Museum, stop for a few seconds.

The wide staircase.

The columns.

The triangular pediment.

It almost feels as though you are standing in front of an ancient Greek temple.

That is not accidental.

The architect was Alexandre Vallaury.

The museum was built through the efforts of Osman Hamdi Bey and opened to visitors on 13 June 1891. Additional wings were later completed in 1903 and 1907.

But to understand why this building was needed, we have to go back several years.

Because first came the discoveries.

Then came the museum.

1887: Osman Hamdi Bey Is Excavating Far From Istanbul

The place is Sidon, in present-day Lebanon.

One of the great cities of the ancient world.

The year is 1887.

The man leading the excavation is:

Osman Hamdi Bey.

Do not think of him simply as an archaeologist.

He was a painter.

Museum director.

Administrator.

And one of the most important figures in the development of modern museology in the Ottoman Empire.

He had become director of the Imperial Museum, the Müze-i Hümayun, in 1881.

Now he was excavating at Sidon.

And the team discovered a royal necropolis.

Beneath the ground were sarcophagi.

Not one.

An extraordinary group of them.

The Sarcophagus of Tabnit.

The Lycian Sarcophagus.

The Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women.

And one object that immediately stood apart.

Today, it is considered one of the most famous ancient sarcophagi in the world:

The Alexander Sarcophagus.

When You Reach the Alexander Sarcophagus, Do Not Let the Name Fool You

When you finally stand in front of it, your first thought may be:

“Was Alexander the Great buried inside this?”

No.

The sarcophagus is not believed to have belonged to Alexander the Great.

It is generally associated with Abdalonymus, King of Sidon.

So why is it called the Alexander Sarcophagus?

Because its extraordinary reliefs include a figure believed to represent Alexander the Great.

Now move a little closer.

Do not simply look at the whole object and walk away.

Study the reliefs.

Horses.

Warriors.

Shields.

Bodies in motion.

Hunting scenes.

Faces carved into stone.

Today, everything is silent.

But silence was not what the sculptor was trying to create.

The stone is full of movement.

A moment of battle has been frozen in front of you.

And remember:

All of this was created more than two thousand years ago.

Spend a little time here.

Because you are standing in front of one of the discoveries that helped transform Istanbul's museum history.

When the Sarcophagi Reached Istanbul, There Was a Problem

Osman Hamdi Bey did not return from Sidon with a few ordinary archaeological objects.

He returned with a collection important enough to attract international attention.

And that created a very simple problem:

Where do you put it?

The Ottoman Empire already had an imperial museum.

The roots of the Müze-i Hümayun reached back to 1869. Collections had first been gathered at Hagia Irene, while the Tiled Kiosk was later used as a museum.

But the enormous sarcophagi arriving from Sidon made something clear.

A larger building was needed.

A building actually designed to be a museum.

Osman Hamdi Bey pushed the project forward.

Alexandre Vallaury prepared the design.

A new building began to rise opposite the Tiled Kiosk.

In 1891, its doors opened.

So the Archaeology Museum you enter today owes part of its existence to ancient tombs opened hundreds of kilometres away only a few years earlier.

First, archaeology filled the museum.

Then archaeology forced Istanbul to build a bigger one.

This Is Actually More Than One Museum

Now the plural in the name Istanbul Archaeological Museums begins to make sense.

The complex consists of three principal museums:

The Archaeology Museum.

The Museum of the Ancient Orient.

The Tiled Kiosk Museum.

Together, their collections contain close to one million objects from different civilisations.

Do not try to see everything.

That is one of the easiest ways to ruin your visit.

After a while, Roman statues, Hittite tablets, sarcophagi and ceramics will begin to blur together.

Instead, choose a few objects and really look at them.

The goal here is not to consume as much history as possible.

It is to understand thousands of years of human history through a handful of things that survived.

In the Museum of the Ancient Orient, Time Moves Much Further Back

At some point, you leave the familiar aesthetics of Greece and Rome and enter a very different world.

Mesopotamia.

Anatolia.

Egypt.

The pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula.

And inside the display cases are small clay tablets.

At first glance, they may not look nearly as impressive as the Alexander Sarcophagus.

Look closer.

Notice the tiny marks pressed into the clay.

Because you are standing before one of the greatest revolutions in human history:

Writing.

Human beings are no longer only speaking.

They are recording.

Debts.

Agreements.

Orders from rulers.

Trade.

Wars.

Prayers.

One reason we know anything about people who lived thousands of years ago is because someone pressed these marks into wet clay.

The museum's cuneiform tablet collection contains tens of thousands of documents.

A tiny clay tablet is easy to overlook beside enormous statues.

But sometimes the smallest object in a museum represents the biggest change in human history.

Then You Enter the World of the Treaty of Kadesh

One of the museum's most important treasures is not a magnificent statue.

It is a text.

The 13th century BCE.

The world of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II and Hittite King Hattusili III.

Two major powers had been confronting one another.

Then diplomacy entered the story.

Cuneiform tablet versions of what we know as the Treaty of Kadesh are among the great treasures associated with this collection.

It is commonly described as one of the earliest surviving written peace treaties.

Do not let the size of the tablet fool you.

The idea represented by it is enormous:

Agreeing instead of fighting.

States writing down their obligations to one another.

Words becoming permanent.

A distant ancestor of the international treaties governments still sign today.

Suddenly, a piece of clay behind museum glass feels surprisingly close to the modern world.

Then Look at the People Again

It is easy to remember the names of kings inside an archaeological museum.

But sometimes the most powerful objects are not really about kings.

As you walk through the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, look at the faces.

Faces on statues.

People carved into sarcophagi.

Figures on tombstones.

Soldiers in reliefs.

Mourning women.

Expressions created by artists thousands of years ago.

Because archaeology is not simply about saying:

“This object was made in this century.”

Eventually, you encounter a much simpler truth.

These people actually lived.

They loved.

They had children.

They were frightened.

They became ill.

They fought.

They died.

We do not even know the names of most of them.

But some of the things they created are still standing in front of us.

That is one of the moments when an archaeological museum becomes truly powerful.

When you stop seeing dates and begin seeing people.

Then Look at the Tiled Kiosk

There is another building inside the complex.

And it is much older than the others.

The Tiled Kiosk.

It was built by Sultan Mehmed II in 1472.

That makes it roughly four centuries older than Osman Hamdi Bey's Archaeology Museum.

It is one of Istanbul's oldest surviving examples of Ottoman secular architecture.

It once formed part of the outer gardens of Topkapı Palace.

Centuries later, it became one of the centres of the Ottoman Empire's early museum activities.

In 1880, the Imperial Museum began operating here.

Think about how strange and beautiful that transformation is.

A pavilion built during the reign of Mehmed II...

centuries later becomes a place for displaying objects from ancient civilisations.

Today, it houses collections of Seljuk and Ottoman tiles and ceramics.

Even the museum complex itself begins to resemble Istanbul.

One building changes purpose.

Another building from another century appears beside it.

Another collection is added.

Different centuries continue living in the same garden.

Do Not Leave Without Remembering Osman Hamdi Bey

Before you finish your visit, return to the man from the beginning of the story.

Osman Hamdi Bey.

Today, many people know him as the painter of The Tortoise Trainer.

But here, you encounter another side of him.

Archaeologist.

Museum director.

Administrator of excavations.

A major figure in the development of arts education and museum culture.

He became director of the Imperial Museum in 1881.

He went to Sidon.

The sarcophagi were discovered.

They were brought to Istanbul.

He worked to create a new museum building capable of displaying them.

And there is another connection.

The building that became the Museum of the Ancient Orient was originally constructed in 1883 as the Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, the School of Fine Arts, another institution closely associated with Osman Hamdi Bey's efforts.

So when you walk around this complex, you are not only looking at ancient history.

You are also watching the birth of modern museum culture in Istanbul.

Before You Leave, Look at the Building One More Time

By the end of your visit, you will probably be a little tired.

That is understandable.

You have travelled through thousands of years in only a few hours.

Mesopotamia.

The Hittites.

Phoenicians.

The Greek world.

Rome.

Byzantium.

The Seljuks.

The Ottomans.

But when you reach the steps outside, do not leave immediately.

Turn around.

Look at the main building again.

Now you know why it is there.

Once, Osman Hamdi Bey travelled hundreds of kilometres away and entered an ancient royal necropolis.

Sarcophagi were discovered.

They were brought to Istanbul.

There was not enough space to display them properly.

And eventually, this museum rose.

Today, you walk through its doors.

You stand before the Alexander Sarcophagus.

You look at writing created thousands of years ago.

You walk among objects left behind by civilisations that no longer exist.

And eventually you realise something:

This museum is not really about dead civilisations.

It is about the human desire to leave something behind.

A king did it with an enormous stone sarcophagus.

A scribe did it by pressing a few lines into clay.

An artist shaped stone.

A potter fired earth.

A state recorded an agreement in writing.

Osman Hamdi Bey tried to make sure that these things would not disappear.

Centuries later, you arrived.

And looked.

Perhaps that is exactly what museums are for.