ARCHEOLOGICAL MUSEUM OF THE REGION OF SOURKHAN DARIA

Certainly one of the most interesting museums in the country for lovers of ancient history and archaeology, fed by the many excavations carried out in the region. In several well-defined and intelligently arranged spaces, the different historical periods are presented, from the origins of the region to the Chaybanids, passing through Buddhism and Tamerlan. Models of the various monuments sometimes give a better overview of the sites than visits to the ruins, which are rather frustrating unless accompanied by an archaeologist. The films shown in English in each room are also a very good source of information not only on the history of the region, but also on the history of past or current archaeological missions. The first nine rooms contain a total of over 50,000 archaeological finds from the region. Among the most recent remarkable pieces, note the beautiful statuette of a Greco-Bactrian woman dressed in flames. The tenth room is in fact a vault: it contains numerous coins and jewelry Turkmen, Iranian or Agfhan in gold or silver dating from the Greco-Bactrian era until the ^nineteenth century. Two small gold buttons, found on the clothes of a child's skeleton discovered at Fayaz Tepa and dated to the ^8th century B.C., have made it possible to establish that the site was inhabited well before the ^4th century B.C., as had been assumed until then.