, which survived the fire The museum sheltered one of the largest exhibits of the Americas, prior to the fire, consisting of animals, insects, minerals,
aboriginal collections of utensils, Egyptian
mummies and South American archaeological artifacts,
meteorites, fossils and many other findings. One of the meteorites that was on display is the
Bendegó meteorite, which weighs over and was discovered in 1784.
Archaeology The collection of archaeology of the National Museum comprised more than 100,000 objects, covering distinct several civilizations that lived in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, since the
Paleolithic Age until the 19th century. The collection is subdivided into four main segments:
Ancient Egypt,
Mediterranean cultures,
Pre-Columbian archaeology, and Pre-Columbian Brazil last nucleus, systematically gathered since 1867, is the largest segment of the archaeological collection, as well as the most important collection of its typology in the world, covering the history of
Pre-Cabraline Brazil in a very comprehensive manner and sheltering some of the most important material records related to Brazilian archaeology. It was, therefore, a collection of considerable scientific value, and object of several works of basic research, theses, dissertations, and monographs.
Ancient Egypt With more than 700 items, the collection of
Egyptian archaeology of the National Museum was one of the largest of Latin America and one of the oldest in the Americas. Most part of the objects entered the museum collection in 1826, when the tradesman Nicolau Fiengo brought from
Marseille an assemblage of Egyptian antiquities that belonged to the famous Italian explorer
Giovanni Battista Belzoni, who had been in charge of excavating the
Theban Necropolis (modern-day
Luxor) and the
Temple of Karnak. This collection had
Argentina as the initial destination, and had probably been ordered by the president of that country,
Bernardino Rivadavia, creator of the
University of Buenos Aires and a noted enthusiast of museums. However, a naval blockade at the
La Plata River would impede Fiengo from completing his journey, forcing him to return from
Montevideo to Rio de Janeiro, where the pieces were offered at an auction. Emperor
Pedro I bought the entire collection for five million
réis, and subsequently donated it to the National Museum. It has been suggested that the action of Pedro I would have been influenced by
José Bonifácio de Andrada, a relevant early member of
Freemasonry in Brazil, perhaps driven by the interest that the organization had for the Egyptian iconography. The collection started by Pedro I would be expanded by his son, Emperor
Pedro II, an amateur Egyptologist and notable collector of archaeological and ethnographic artifacts. One of the most important additions to the Egyptian collection of the National Museum made by Pedro II is the polychromed wood sarcophagus of the singer of
Amun,
Sha-Amun-en-su, from the
Late Period, offered to the emperor as a gift during his second trip to Egypt, in 1876, by the
Khedive Ismail Pasha. The sarcophagus is distinguished for its rarity, since it is one of few examples that have never been opened, still preserving the
mummy of the singer in its interior. The collection of votive and funerary
steles is composed of dozens of pieces dated, in their majority, from the Intermediate Period and the Late Era. The steles of Raia and Haunefer, which are graved with titles of
Semitic origins present in the Bible and in the tablets of
Mari, stand out, as well as an unfinished stele, attributed to the emperor
Tiberius, of the Roman Period. The museum also had a vast collection of
shabtis,
i.e. statuettes representing funerary servers, including a group of pieces that belonged to pharaoh
Seti I, excavated from his tomb at the
Valley of the Kings. The rare artifacts included a limestone statue of a young woman, dated of the
New Kingdom, carrying a conic ointment vessel on the top of her headan iconography that is almost exclusively found among paintings and reliefs. The collection also includes fragments of reliefs, masks, statues of deities in bronze, stone and wood (such as representations of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris),
canopic jars, alabaster bowls,
funerary cones, jewels, and amulets. File:Estela de Raia 01.jpg|Stele of Raia. New Kingdom, XIX Dynasty, File:Esquife de Hori (tampa) 01.jpg|Sarcophagus of Hori. Third Intermediate Period, XXI Dynasty, . File:Estatueta egípcia MN-UFRJ 11.jpg|Bronze
statuette of Amun. File:Máscara dourada 01.jpg|Golden mask. Ptolemaic Kingdom, . File:Esquife de Harsiese (tampa, interior) 01.jpg|Harsiese
Sarcophagus interior File:Esquife de gato 02.jpg|
Cat Sarcophagus File:Vasos canopos MN-UFRJ 01.jpg|
Canopic jar File:Leão reclinado 01.jpg|
Lion figure
Mediterranean cultures '' statuette, sculpted in marble. Greek civilization, . The collection of
classical archaeology of the National Museum added up to around 750 pieces and consists mostly of
Greek,
Roman,
Etruscan, and
Italiote objects, being the largest collection of its kind in Latin America. Most of the pieces previously belonged to the Greco-Roman collection of
empress Teresa Cristina, who had been interested in archaeology since her youth. When the empress disembarked in Rio de Janeiro in 1843, right after her
proxy wedding to
Emperor Pedro II, she brought an assemblage of antiquities found during the excavations of
Herculaneum and
Pompeii, the Ancient Roman cities destroyed by the eruption of
Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Part of this collection had also belonged to
Carolina Murat, sister of
Napoleon Bonaparte and queen consort of the king of Naples,
Joachim Murat. In turn,
Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, brother of empress Teresa Cristina, had ordered the excavations of
Herculaneum and
Pompeii, initiated in the 18th century, be resumed. The recovered pieces were sent to the
Royal Bourbon Museum of
Naples. Aiming to increase the number of classical artifacts in Brazil with a view to the future creation of a museum of Greco-Roman archaeology in the country, the empress established formal exchanges with the
Kingdom of Naples. She requested the shipment of Greco-Roman objects to Rio de Janeiro, while sending artifacts of
indigenous origins to Italy. The empress also personally financed excavations in Veios, an Etruscan archeological site located fifteen kilometers north of Rome, thus enabling a large part of the objects found there to be brought to Brazil. A greater part of those had been gathered between 1853 and 1859, but Teresa Cristina continued to enrich the collection until the fall of the Brazilian empire in 1889, when the
Republic was proclaimed and the empress left the country with all the royal family. The collection of Mediterranean
pottery comprised more than dozens of objects and is noted for the diversity of origins, shapes, decorations and utilitarian purposes. Several of the most important styles and schools of classical antiquity are represented, from the
Corinthian
geometric style of the 7th century BC to the Roman
terracotta amphoras of the Early Christian era. The museum houses examples of
kraters,
oenochoai,
kantharos,
chalices,
kyathos,
cups,
hydriai,
lekythoi,
askoi, and
lekanides. The groups of Etruscan
Bucchero pottery (7th–4th centuries BC), Greek
black-figure vases (7th–5th centuries BC),
Gnathian vessels (4th century BC), and the vast set of Italian
red-figure vases, with ceramics from
Apulia, Campania,
Lucania and
Magna Graecia, which also stand out. . Fragment of textile with representation of birds.
Huaca del Sol, Late Period, , mummified by the Ecuadorian-Peruvian
Jivaroan peoples The collection comprised mostly objects related to the
textile manufacturing,
featherwork,
ceramic production, and
stonecraft of the Andean cultures (groups of
Peru,
Bolivia,
Chile, and
Argentina) and, to a lesser extent, of the
Amazonian natives (including a rare assemblage of artifacts from the area of present-day Venezuela) and
Mesoamerican cultures (mainly from present-day
Mexico and
Nicaragua). Several aspects of the daily routine, social organization, religiosity, and imagery of the Pre-Columbian civilizations are addressed in the collection, which has items from common daily use (clothing, body ornaments, weapons) to more refined artifacts, imbued with notable artistic sense (measurement and musical instruments, ritual objects, figurative ceramic sculptures and vessels distinguished for their aesthetic features). The best represented groups, in the context of Andean cultures, include: •
Nazca culture, which flourished on the southern coast of Peru between the 1st century BC and 800 AD. The National Museum has a large set of fragments of Nazca textiles depicting animals (mainly
llamas), fantastic beings, plants, and geometric patterns; •
Wari culture, which inhabited the south-central Andes since the 5th century AD, represented by anthropomorphic ceramic vessels and textile fragments; •
Chimú culture, which flourished on the
Valley of the Moche River since the 10th century AD, represented by a group of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic pottery (characteristically dark, obtained through the technique of reducing burning, and inspired by stylistic elements of the Moche and Wari cultures), as well as textiles decorated with varying motifs; •
Chancay culture, which developed between the Intermediate and Late periods (from about 1000 to 1470 AD), on the valleys of the rivers Chancay and
Chillon, presented in the collection by a set of anthropomorphic pottery (characteristically dark, decorated with light-colored engobe and brown painting) and sophisticated textiles depicting animals and vegetablesnamely a large mantle, with three meters of length; •
Inca civilization, which flourished around the 13th century AD and became the largest empire of the Pre-Columbian Americas in the following century. The National Museum possesses a set of figurative pottery and vessels decorated with geometric patterns ("Incan aryballos"), miniature figures of human beings and llamas, made with alloys of
gold,
silver, and
copper, miniatures of Inca ceremonial
clothing,
featherwork,
quipus,
mantles,
tunics, and several other examples of textiles. The collection of Andean mummies of the National Museum allows a glimpse at the funerary practices of the cultures of the region. The mummies of the collection were preserved either naturally (as a result of the favorable geo-climatic conditions of the Andean Mountains) or artificially, in the context of religious and ritualistic practices. Originating from
Chiu Chiu, at the
Atacama Desert, northern Chile, there is a mummy of a man with an estimated age of 3,400 to 4,700 years, preserved in a seated position, with the head resting on the knees and covered by a wool cap. This was the position which the Atacaman cultures used to sleep, due to the cold climate of the desert. It was also the position in which they were buried, together with their belongings. A second mummy in the collectionan
Aymara man, found in the surroundings of
Lake Titicaca, between Peru and Boliviais preserved in the same position, but involved in a funerary bundle. The collection of mummies also include a boy, donated by the Chilean government, and, illustrating the techniques of artificial mummification of Pre-Columbian cultures, an example of a
shrunken head, coming from the
Jivaroan peoples of equatorial Amazon, of ritualistic purposes. File:Cerâmica Moche MN 01.jpg|Peruvian
Moche civilization. Head-shaped ceramic vessel, File:Civilização Inca - Aríbalo MN 01.jpg|
Inca civilization.
Ceramic vase ("Inca Aryballos"), File:Múmia pré-histórica de indivíduo do sexo masculino 01.jpg|Mummy of a Chilean
Atacaman man, years before present. File:Cerâmicas amazônicas - Museu Nacional 02.jpg|
Amazonian
Ceramics File:Cerâmicas pré-colombianas MN 02.jpg|
Ceramics File:Acessório plumário - Acari 02.jpg|
Plumes File:Acessório plumário - Acari, Costa Sul 01.jpg|
Plumes File:Adornos - Arqueologia Pré-Colombiana MN 06.jpg|
Accessories Brazilian archaeology . Anthropomorphic funerary urn, 400–1400 AD The collection of Brazilian archaeology of the National Museum brought together a vast set of artifacts produced by the cultures that flourished in the Brazilian territory during the pre-colonial era, with more than 90,000 objects. It was considered the largest collection in its typology worldwide. Gradually assembled since the early 19th century, the collection started being systematically gathered since 1867 and has been continually expanded until the present day, through excavations, acquisitions and donations, also serving as basis for a large number of research projects conducted by the academics of the museum, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and other institutions. It was composed of objects coming from all regions of Brazil, establishing a timeline spanning more than 10,000 years. In the segment regarding the Sambaqui people,
i.e. the fishing and gathering communities which lived in the south-central coast of Brazil between 8,000 years before present and the early Christian era, the National Museum holds a large number of vestiges originating from deposits constituted of agglomerated lime and organic materialthe so-called
Sambaquis, or
middens. Two fragments of Sambaquis are preserved in the collection, in addition to a group of human skeletal remains found in these archaeological sites, as well as several cultural testimonies of the Sambaqui people, encompassing utilitarian objects used in routine tasks (vessels, bowls, pestles and mortars carved in stone), ceremonies and rituals (such as votive statuettes). Among the highlights of the Sambaqui collection, there is a large set of zoolites (stone sculptures of votive use, with representation of animals, such as fish and birds, and human figures). •
Santarém culture (or Tapajós culture), which inhabited the region of the
Tapajós River in the state of
Pará, between the 5th and the 15th centuries, known for their ceramic work of peculiar style and high technical quality, produced with the techniques of modeling, incision, dotted lines, and
appliqué, imbued with aesthetic features that suggest the influence of the
Mesoamerican civilizations. Among the highlights of the collection were the anthropomorphic statuettes of naturalist style (characterised by the closed eyes, shaped like coffee beans), the anthropomorphic and zoomorphic vessels, vases for ceremonial use and, above all, the so-called "caryatid vases" – complex ceramic vessels, endowed with bottlenecks, reliefs and pedestals decorated with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines and fantastic beings. The museum also possesses several examples of
Muiraquitãs,
i.e. small statuettes carved in green gems, shaped like animals (mainly frogs) used as adornments or amulets. • Trombetas River culture, which inhabited the lower Amazon, in the state of Pará, near the region of
Santarém. This culture, still largely unknown, was responsible for producing rare artifacts sculpted in polished stone and objects imbued with stylistic elements common to the Mesoamerican cultures. The museum collection preserves lithic artifacts of ceremonial use, as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic statuettes (zoolites representing fish and jaguars). • Miracanguera culture, which flourished on the left bank of the Amazon river, in the region between
Itacoatiara and
Manaus, between the 9th and the 15th centuries. The museum preserved several examples of ceremonial pottery, mainly anthropomorphic funerary urns characterized by the presence of bulges, necks, and lids, used to store the ashes of the deceased, and other vessels related to funerary rituals. The Miracanguera pottery is distinguished for the presence of
tabatinga layers (clay mixed with organic materials) and the eventual painted decoration of geometric motifs. The plastic composition frequently outlines specific details, such as human figures in a seated position, with the legs represented. . Zoolite in the shape of a fish, w/d • Maracá culture, which lived in the region of
Amapá between the 15th and the 18th centuries, represented in the collection by a group of typical funerary urns depicting male and female figurines in hierarchic position, with head-shaped lids, as well as zoomorphic funerary urns depicting quadrupedal animals, originating from indigenous cemeteries located in the outskirts of the
Maracá River. The Maracá pottery was frequently adorned with geometric patterns and polychromed with white, yellow, red, and black pigments. Ornaments in the members and the head of the figures expressed the social identity of the deceased. •
Tupi-Guaraní culture, which inhabited the Brazilian coast when the Portuguese arrived in the 16th centurysubdivided into the group of the
Tupinambá people (in the
North,
Northeast, and
Southeast regions of Brazil) and the group of the
Guaraní people (in the
South region of Brazil and parts of
Argentina,
Paraguay, and
Uruguay). The collection is predominantly composed of ceramics and lithic artifacts of daily use (such as
pans,
bowls,
jars, and
dishes) or ritual nature (mainly funerary urns). The Tupi-Guaraní pottery is characterized by its distinct polychromy (with predominance of red, black, and white pigments) and drawings of geometric and sinuous patterns. The National Museum held the oldest known examples of indigenous mummies found in the Brazilian territory. The collection consisted of the body of an adult woman of approximately 25 years of age, and two children, one located at her feet, with an estimated age of twelve months, involved in a bundle, and a new-born, also covered by a mantle, positioned behind the head of the woman. This mummified set is composed of individuals that probably belonged to the group of the
Botocudos (or Aimoré) people, of the
Macro-Jê branch. They were found at the
Caverna da Babilônia, a cavern located in the city of
Rio Novo, interior of the state of
Minas Gerais, in a farm that belonged to Maria José de Santana, who donated the mummies to emperor Pedro II. As an act of gratitude for this favor, Pedro II awarded Maria José with the title of Baroness of Santana. File:Ponta de projétil MN 01.jpg|Hunter-gatherer groups. Projectile point. File:Escultura de pedra em forma humana MN 01.jpg|
Sambaqui culture. Stone
sculpture of a human figure File:Cultura Santarém - Muiraquitã MN 01.jpg|
Santarém culture.
Muiraquitã in the shape of a
frog, 1000–1400 AD File:Cultura Maracá - Urna funerária antropomorfa MN 01.jpg|
Maracá culture. Anthropomorphic funerary
urn, 1000–1500 AD File:Cultura Marajoara - Urna funerária MN 02.jpg|Marajoara
urn File:Cerâmicas no acervo de arqueologia brasileira MN 01.jpg|
Ceramics File:Cerâmicas amazônicas - Museu Nacional 03.jpg|
Statuettes File:Cultura Marajoara - Tangas MN 02.jpg|Marajora items File:Cultura Santarém - Cerâmicas MN 01.jpg|
Santarém items == Gallery ==