Damascus - The National Museum

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Syria’s premier museum the National Museum contains a world-class archaeological and historical collection, collated from the country’s vast number of archaeological sites. There are two wings - east and west. The west wing contains pre-classical and Arab Islamic collections, and the east wing contains Classical and Byzantine collections. The façade of this museum is fragments of the dramatic twin-tower gateway of Qasr al Heir.

The west wing has rooms devoted to Ras Shamra (Ugarit) with small clay tablets of what is known to be the oldest alphabet in the world, the Ugaritic alphabet. It also contains the ivory head of an unknown prince, a collection of cylinder seals, and Mycenaean pottery imported from Greece. Another room is devoted to Mari, the Bronze Age sight on the Euphrates. Here are the 3rd millennium treasure of King Cansud. Further on, you will find a room concentrating on finds from Raqqa, the Abbassid city on the Euphrates. Another hall contains Islamic jewellery, coins and armour, and the final hall is the Damascus Salon, a wood-and-marble paneled room from an 18th-century palace.

As for the east wing, there are a few rooms exhibiting pottery, sculptures and glassware ranging from the Phoenicians to the classical periods. There are rooms concentrating on the Hauran and Jebel al Arab, where most objects are made of Basalt. Another hall contains classical statues carved in ivory, bronze, and marble, which were found at Palmyra. Further on lies the Palmyra room and adjacent to that is the Doura Europos room.

The most popular part of the museum is the 2nd century AD Synagogue that has been reconstructed. Its walls are covered with Talmudic injunctions and paintings of human figures that are in scenes from the scriptures.

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