Antiquities Exhibits

The Medes were an ancient Iranian people who spoke the Median language and who inhabited an area known as Media between western and northern Iran. Around the 11th century BCE, they occupied the mountainous region of northwestern Iran and the eastern region of Mesopotamia located around Hamadan (Ecbatana). Herodotus reports the Medes played a determining role in the fall of the Assyrian Empire and "could" have  formed an empire at the beginning of the 7th century BCE that lasted until the 550s BCE. It was originally thought they competed with the kingsoms of Lydia and Babylonia for hegemony.  However, the Medes left no written account of their history.  Archaeologists have had to rely upon foreign sources such as the Assyrians, Babylonians and Greeks for Median history, instead, as well as a few Iranian archaeological sites, which are believed to have been occupied by Medes. Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest a Median kingdom as a political entity never existed a...

Pre-Achaemenid, Greek, Roman, Egyptian and ancient Asian art at the Miho Museum in Sigaraki, Japan. The Miho Museum is located southeast of Kyoto, Japan, near the town of Shigaraki. Among the objects in its 2,000-piece permanent collection are more than 1,200 objects that appear to have been produced in Achaemenid Central Asia. Some scholars have claimed these objects are part of the famous Oxus Treasure, lost shortly after its  discovery in 1877 and rediscovered in Afghanistan in 1993, although both the Miho and British Museum's material from this period point to unique findspots. In addition to the Persian objects, the museum houses Roman, Greek, and Egyptian antiquties as well as art from ancient China, Japan, and southeast Asia. Image: 1 ) Vessel with Bull Attacked by a Lion Pre-Achaemenid Period 8th-6th centuries BCE. The wounded bull is extremely serene, looking more as though the lion was embracing him. This vessel symbolizes the order of the cosmos, as the t...