Afrasiab Museum in Samarkand

Samarkand is a major tourist attraction place in Uzbekistan. Its history dates back thousands of years. Samarkand is a city of majestical buildings, enchanting, ancient atmosphere, and mysteries. Samarkand itself is a museum under open skies. Despite Samarkand being a city-museum, there’s one museum that must be visited.

Afrasiab Museum is located near ancient town Afrasiab in the northern part of Samarkand. The museum was created in 1970 by Armenian architect Baghdasar Arzumanyan. Establishment of the museum coincided with 2500th anniversary of Samarkand. All exhibits in Afrasiab Museum are results of archaeological excavations of 1894.

The area around Afrasiab was examined and many artifacts were found. Afrasiab used to be a center of ancient Markanda or Samarkand, but was destroyed by Genghis-Khan’s horde in 14th century. All findings belongs to different eras in history; such variety helped historians and archaeologists were able to restore history of occurence of the city, everyday lifestyle, and some major events.

The original look of ancient Samarkand was also rebuilt. Ancient city had a lot of crossing roads and districts, it was protected by massive walls.  Afrasiab Museum tells a story about culture and traditions of settlements in those surroundings.One of the most ancient cities in Uzbekistan has trails of Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, the Sogdian era, and the Middle Ages.

The museum is full of exhibits like arrows, pottery, terracotta figures, knives, household items, and pieces of art. Archaeologists even found fragments of painitings from Samarkand Palace. The paintings illustrate life of monarchs during Ikhshidid dynasty. Today Afrasiab Museum is one of the most popular tourist attraction places in Samarkand. No wonder, the museum displays development of Samarkand from days of Alexander the Great.