Taxila Museum

 

It is located on Khanpur Road, Taxila Museum is famous for its ancient literary culture. This place was once a  centre  of global excellence. The artefacts in the gallery are interesting and fascinating. If you are in the gallery, the atmosphere of the gallery forces you to go back to 700 BC and the human mind gets lost in the past . The gallery depicts a Gandhara civilization that has collapsed and its existence is fragmented into lifeless pieces adorning the gallery which forces the minds of the visitors to peer through half-opened windows of the past. People who are passionate about history and interested in knowing ancient civilization, are fond of historical items and rare artefacts then this place is perfect for them and they will always be excited to visit this place.

The Gandhara art from the first to the seventh centuries AD has a substantial presence in this museum. The majority of the items in this collection were discovered during excavations at the ancient Taxila ruins. The museum is closed to several historical sites. It is close to an ancient stupa and other ruins.

Historical Background.

Viceroy of India Lord Chelmsford laid the corner stone for the Taxila museum in 1918,when work on it officially began. Muhammad Habibullah, the education minister at the time, officially opened the museum to the public when the building was finished in 1928. Sir John Marshall was unable to complete his initial proposal in 1928 as he prepared to step down as Director General of the Archaeological survey of India. The Government of Pakistan built the Northern Gallery in 1998.

Assemblage an exposition

Around 4000 artefacts are on show, including semiprecious stones, stucco, terracotta, silver, gold and other materials. Most of the items on show are from the time between 600 B.C. and 500AD. Through these artefacts, which were uncovered from three ancient cities, more than two dozen Buddhist stupas and monasteries and Greek temples in the area, the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain religious are strongly represented.

Art from Gandhara

Stone Buddhist sculpture from the 1^st to the 7^th centuries, often known as Gandharan art, is one of the most significant and complete collection in Pakistan and it is housed in the Taxila museum. The Taxila valley's excavations, particularly those of Sir John Marshall, provide the majority of the collections material. Other artefacts originate from locations that have been excavated elsewhere in Gandhara, contributions like those from the Ramdas collection, or materials that law enforcement and customs officials have seized. There are more than 1400 items in the entire collection and 409 of them have been published.

Numismatic library/amazed numismatics.

A site museum, the Taxila museum is where most of the numismatic artefacts discovered during excavations in Taxila are kept. John Marshall, who was the Archaeological survey of India’s director at the time, started digging in 1917 and kept at it until 1934. Since those digs, labor has persisted up until this point. A sizable collection of coinage dating from the indo Greeks to the late Kushans may be found at the museum. There is currently work being done to publish the entire collection of these; some of them are already published in Marshall's initial  excavation reports.

Covered area

The gallery is surrounded by a very beautiful green garden. Green grass,  tall cypress trees and colorful vines of flowers make the environment more pleasant. Greenery is everywhere. There are benches to sit on the lawn. There are swings for children. Right next to the gallery, at the front, cultural shops attract visitors, where ancient and modern combination crafts display.