Inner Mongolia Museum is a regional museum in the city of Hohhot in Inner Mongolia, in north-west China.
Inner Mongolian Museum was founded on the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, in 1957. The building was designed in the style of the local inhabitants, is located at the intersection of Xinhua Dajie and Zhongshan Lu in the heart of Hohhot City, the capital of the autonomous region. The Museum holds over 44,000 objects relating to ethnic history in its collections. Among these are quite a few rare treasures seldom seen in China, especially the artifacts relating to the northern tribes called Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qidan, Mongolians and others.
There are also a large number of cultural relics relating to these northern people's living and customs. The museum in particular offers an insight into the history and traditions of the Mongolian people exhibiting paraphernalia used by nomadic Mongols, including saddles, costumes, archery and polo equipment and a ger (a portable tent used by Central Asian nomads).
One of the important sources of its collections are precious materials excavated from the earth as a result of archaeological research. These materials are of great speciality to the museum. The Inner Mongolia Museum is renowned for its extensive collection of fossils and dinosaur remains found in both Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia including a complete skeleton of a wooly rhinoceros unearthed from a coal mine in Manzhouli.
The upper floor of the museum is dedicated to the life of Genghis Khan who in the 13th century united the disparate Mongol tribes and established one of the largest land empires in human history. Many of the maps and objects on display have English captions.
Inner Mongolian Museum also contains a number of intricate Mongol bone carvings depicting historical events.
Inner Mongolian Museum has also been active in collecting and preserving contemporary items that relate to the rich local culture. Presently, over 3,000 sets of such objects are housed in the museum, offering a glimpse into the lifestyles and customs of a wide variety of Mongolian and other ethnic groups in the region. Notable attractions include the costumes of Mongolian women from different parts of Inner Mongolia as well as Mongolian religious artifacts. Inner Mongolia is also known as the "Land of Fossils". Specimens shown in the museum include massive dinosaurs, mastodons, and many other kinds of fossilized remains from the Mesozoic period that have attracted global attention. The complete fossil skeleton of a mammoth is displayed in the museum.
|