Lahore Museum

Lahore Museum

Urdu: لاہور عجائب گھر‎
Entrance to the museum
Established	1865, later shifted to present site 1894
Location	The Mall, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Coordinates	31°34′06″N 74°18′29″E / 31.568226°N 74.308174°E
Type	Archaeology, art, heritage, modern history, religious
Collection size	statues of Buddha, old paintings
Visitors	250,000 in 2005[1]
Website	Official website

The Lahore Museum (Punjabi: لاہور میوزیم, Urdu: لاہور عجائب گھر‎), was originally established in 1865-66 on the site of the hall or building of the 1864 Punjab Exhibition^[2] and later shifted to its present site located on The Mall, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan in 1894. Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was one of the earliest and most famous curators of the museum.^[3] Over 250,000 visitors were registered in 2005.^[1] The current building of Lahore Museum was designed by the well-known architect Sir Ganga Ram. The Museum is the biggest museum of the country. A number of rooms have been under repair for a long time and others still show a rather old-fashioned and often rudimental display of objects, with Urdu captions only.

Collections

Fasting Buddha at museum

The Museum contains some fine specimens of Mughal and Sikh door-ways and wood-work and has a large collection of paintings dating back to the Mughal, Sikh and British periods. It includes a collection of musical instruments, ancient jewellery, textiles, pottery, and armory. There are important relics from the Indus Valley civilisation, Gandhara and Graeco-Bactrian periods as well as some Tibetan and Nepalese work on display. The museum has a number of Greco-Buddhist sculptures, Mughal and Pahari paintings on display.The Fasting Buddha from the Gandhara period is one of the most famous objects of the museum. The ceiling of the entrance hall features a large mural by renowned Pakistani artist Sadequain.

Scope Of Lahore Museum

The Museum displays archaeological material from pre-historic times to the Hindu Shahi period. It has one of the largest collections of archaeology, history, arts, fine arts, applied arts,ethnology, and craft objects in Pakistan.It also has an extensive collection of Hellenistic and Mughal coins. A photo gallery is dedicated to the emerging of Pakistan as a state.

Popular culture

• Rudyard Kipling's novel, Kim (pub. 1901), was set in the vicinity of the old/original Lahore Museum and the Mall areas.

Further reading

• Shaila Bhatti (2012), Translating museums: a counterhistory of South Asian museology, Walnut Creek, Calif: Left Coast Press, ISBN 9781611321449
• Whitehead, Richard Bertram (1914). Catalogue of Coins in the Panjab Museum, Lahore; Indo-Greek Coins : Volume 1. The Panjab Government at The Clarendon Press, Oxford.
• Whitehead, Richard Bertram (1914). Catalogue of Coins in the Panjab Museum, Lahore; Coins of Mughal Emperors: Volume 2. The Panjab Government at The Clarendon Press, Oxford.

See also

• List of museums in Pakistan

References

1. Areas of Attraction - Government of Pakistan
2. Which later became the Tollinton Market after the completion of the new/present museum building, see "Murray's Handbook of the Punjab", pub. 1883. Mention also made in Peter Hopkirk, "Quest for Kim", London, 1996, pp.46-47 ISBN 0-7195-5560-4
3. The old, original one prior to 1893

External links

• Lahore Museum Official Website
• Lahore Museum as it looked in 1900