Abstract
THE Palestine Archæological Museum in the newly erected buildings at the north-eastern corner of the city of Jerusalem was opened to the public on January 13, the ceremony, which was to have taken place on January 11 in the presence of the High Commissioner, having been cancelled, owing to the murder of Mr. J. L. Starkey on the previous evening, when on his way to Jerusalem in order to be present. The cost of erecting the buildings has been met in part by a gift of two million dollars to the Government of Palestine by the late Mr. John D. Rockefeller. The site of ten acres, of which the buildings occupy one quarter, was provided by the Government. The architect was Mr. Austen St. B. Harrison. The Museum consists of a central rectangular block, flanked on north and south by buildings around open courts. In addition to the exhibition halls, open to the public, which will house the more striking and important exhibits, galleries are provided for the material which will be accessible to students, while in the basements provision has been made for housing archæological material from excavations and other sources, pending its allocation and distribution. Provision is also made for staff accommodation and library, the latter already consisting of ten thousand volumes, and space being reserved for a further thirty thousand. The Museum will cover the pre-, proto-and historic periods, including the Roman, Byzantine and Arab antiquities of Palestine down to A.D. 1700. Among the antiquities now on view are the Galilee skull, the first Neanderthal skull to be found in Palestine, the remarkable collection of prehistoric pottery dating from the Stone Age to the close of the Canaanitish period, and the ivories from the palace of Ahab in Samaria, discovered in the excavations of 1933–35, which are among the most striking objects of æsthetic interest as yet found in Palestine.
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Palestine Archæological Museum. Nature 141, 155 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141155a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141155a0