Free admission to the museum... Sayinska zozulka, golden treasures and a recipe for Easter cake from the family of Mykhailo Hrushevsky... The end. Unexpected.
The clock shows 4:35 p. m. It's great, I still have time to look at the gold jewelry: museums are open until 6:00 p. m. , and visitors stop being admitted at 5:00 p. m. So there's still time.
Maybe it's my habit to start my tour from the right edge and then move in a circle to the left, or maybe because most visitors turned into the left wing of the museum, I went right and ended up at the exhibition of objects from the life of the Crimean Tatars "Miras. Heritage. " This is a joint project of the Museum of the History of Ukraine and the NGO "Alem", which is responsible for the protection and popularization of the Crimean Tatar intangible cultural heritage.
The exhibition features over 200 unique items, including kushaki (women's belts) and topeliky (tops of women's headdresses), Koran cases, men's amulets, gold embroidery samples, traditional clothing and coffee utensils. Most of the exhibits date from the 19th and early 20th centuries and demonstrate the sophisticated technique of Crimean Tatar filigree and ornamental compositions.
In the second hall of the exhibition – Friedrich Gross' lithographs depicting Crimea in the first half of the 19th century. These works convey the atmosphere of the traditional Crimean Tatar world, part of which was lost during Russian colonization.
Link to a short video from the Alem NGO about the exhibition
In the left wing of the building is an exhibition of historical jewels from the museum collection, among which the most famous is the gold pectoral from the Tovsta Mohyla mound. I will immediately disappoint those who hope to see photos from there in my story - there will be none. Firstly, there are many visitors near each cabinet, and you have to wait a long time to get closer. Plus, everything around is reflected in the glass, so the photos mostly turn out to be of human reflections.
Secondly, the information that some exhibits during the war are presented as copies (the originals were evacuated to a safe place) somehow nullified the desire to stay in these halls for a long time.
I gradually follow the flow of visitors to the door marked "Exit". Only behind the door is not a street, but steps leading down somewhere. And here a surprise awaits me.
The exhibition "Treasures of Crimea. Return".
These are the treasures of Crimea that were taken to Germany for an exhibition in 2013 to be exhibited at the Rhineland Museum in Bonn. And from there in February 2014 they were transported to the Netherlands to the Allard Pearson Museum in Amsterdam, where they were found by the occupation of the peninsula by the Russians.
These are over 2.000 museum items, the return of which was preceded by 10 years of legal wrangling over ownership rights between Ukraine and museums located in Russian-controlled territory, which are de facto controlled by the Russian authorities.
I am sure that most Ukrainians followed the events and were worried about the outcome of the trial.
In November 2023, the collection returned to Ukraine. And on July 5.2024, a permanent exhibition opened. "Before the Deoccupation of Crimea" - stated on the website of the National Museum of History of Ukraine.
Several halls present 565 exhibits from the Bakhchisarai Historical and Cultural Reserve, the Central Museum of Taurida (Simferopol), the Kerch State Historical and Cultural Reserve, and Tavrid Chersonesos (Sevastopol).
"Treasures of Crimea. Return" is an exhibition about a powerful victory in the struggle for the cultural heritage of Ukraine, evidence of our thousand-year history, which is revealed through the cultures of many peoples, and the establishment of the rule of law.
And again, many people. And the area for such a number of exhibits is quite small. It is not very convenient to take pictures, but I try.
In the center of the hall is an acroteria (sculptural decoration of the pediment of a building) with a double-sided image of a goddess. The stone figure of a woman turns into two plant sprouts - as if she has grown roots into the ground. It is believed that this sculpture represents the goddess of fertility and nature, and was also a symbol, a protector of the house on which it stood. The torso was found in 1883, and the head and part of the plants in 1891.
Among the exhibits are artifacts from the Scythian and Sarmatian times.
The first hall contains mostly ceramic or stone objects: various dishes, figurines, terracotta theatrical masks, large tombstones with plot images or only with symbolic designations of which person was buried under them.
In other halls there are gold and silver products inlaid with precious stones: earrings, buckles, brooches, bracelets, details of breastplates (dated to the 5th-7th centuries AD), gold funerary ornaments (1st century AD).
A part was found in the Dzhurga-Oba necropolis near Kerch. This burial ground is associated with the Goths or other Germanic peoples.
About diverse trade in the Northern Black Sea region is evidenced by Chinese lacquer boxes found in burials in the Ust-Alma necropolis, dating back to the 1st century AD.
The boxes are interesting not only because of their exotic origin, but also because, due to the climatic conditions in southern Ukraine, finds made of wood that are two thousand years old are very rare.
The boxes were made of wood, and then covered with black and red varnish. Such products were used, in particular, for storing cosmetics. Among the items found in the boxes from Crimea were various amulets and cosmetics.
The wood has survived time poorly, and by the time of excavation, the boxes had turned into hundreds of small fragments, but fragments of the varnish coating with remnants of the pattern were preserved.
The search for specialists who could restore them lasted ten years. In the end, it was done by a team of restorers from Japan led by Shosai Kitamura - they recreated one casket and reconstructed another one. That is, we have two caskets that are about two thousand years old, and there are no others like them anywhere else in the world.
The exhibition is ending.
I go outside incredibly satisfied. I saw more than I expected. Finally, I enter the Church of the Savior on Berestov...
The sun is still hanging in the sky. I am slowly walking through the Park of Eternal Glory… Past the monument dedicated to the Holodomor…
Finally, I take a few pictures and hurry to the metro…
