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Mary
Museum
There
are two major public museums in Turkmenistan, namely in
Ashgabat and Mary. The Mary museum was initially opened
in 1984 in a large brick building constructed in 1908
and said originally to belong to a Russian brick factory
owner. The upper floor boasts an extensive permanent display
of Turkmen ethnography with additional sections on the
Baluch and early Russian involvement in this region. Future
galleries will focus on flora and fauna, and the impact
of wars on local history
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 In
1998 the museum opened a new permanent exhibition
of archaeological material displayed in Turkish
cases paid through a grant from the United Nations.
Most of the displays derived either from Victor
Sarianidi's excavations at the Bronze Age sites
of Gonur-depe and Togolok 21, in the northern part
of the Merv oasis, or various Sasanian-Islamic discoveries
at Merv. Many of these objects are unpublished.
The Bronze Age displays include several small imported
south-east Iranian carved softstone bowls and bottles
(Gonur, Togolok 21), a curious metre-long softstone
sceptre with a hollow bronze head (Gonur), a square
bronze stamp seal and several clay figurines showing
two-humped camels, local ceramic copies of Iranian
sheet-metal spouted jars (Gonur), a lapis bead necklace
found around the neck of an eighteen-year-old girl
(Togolok 21) and an Indus etched carnelian bead
(Altyn-depe). Later Sasanian objects from Merv include
a spherical etched carnelian bead and an unpublished
decorated silver two-pronged fork fragment of a
type hitherto only known from Iran (Qasr-i Abu Nasr)
and Mesopotamia (Nineveh).
 Mary
museum is generally open seven days a week, 9.00-18.00,
with an admission charge currently set at US$1 per
foreigner. The museum is located in the city centre
at 1 Komsomoloskaya str., 745400 Mary.
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