CSAI
Collection of the objects from the European museums

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Collection of the objects from the European museums

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the political presence and scientific expeditions of Europeans in the Arabian Peninsula inaugurated the establishment of European private and public collections of ancient South Arabian material, which constantly increased during the following decades.

The Collection of objects from European museums in DASI is intended to digitally gather and display the South Arabian inscriptions and artifacts of the most important physical collections of Near-Eastern objects housed in museums throughout Europe.
The 500 epigraphic and anepigraphic objects catalogued by the MENCAWAR project of the University of Pisa in the British Museum and the collection of around 100 South Arabian antiquities of the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale in Rome, inventoried in September 2013 within the activities of the MEDINA project, are available in DASI.

Collections by Deposit

Collection of the objects from The British Museum

The British Museum’s Department of Middle East houses a rich South Arabian collection, one of the most important outside Yemen. It includes over 800 antiquities from Yemen: inscriptions on stone blocks and metal plaques, sculptures, funerary stelae, altars and incense burners, silver and bronze coins, gold jewellery, seals, metalwork and pottery.

Collection of the objects from the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale in Rome

The origins of the collection of South Arabian artifacts and inscriptions in the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale (MNAO) in Rome date back to the 1930s with the pieces brought to Rome by the Italian officers in Yemen and has grown thanks to the donations by Italian personalities like doctors and scholars working in the so called Arabia Felix in the following decades. Before the establishment of the Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale, most of these pieces formed part of the collection of the Museo Nazionale Romano.

Collection of the objects from the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien

The ancient South Arabian collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien is one of the biggest in Europe, next to the ones in Paris, London and Berlin. The most beautiful and important objects are on display in room VIa of the Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection. All the other objects (mostly fragments) are kept in storerooms. The history of this collection is closely connected to two Austrian South Arabian scholars: David Heinrich Müller (1846-1912) and his student Eduard Glaser (1855-1908).