Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities
The Ashmolean's antiquities form an academic museum example: ancient objects are tied to university research, catalogues and a long collecting history. It usefully complements the British Museum with a smaller but research-heavy scale.
The Ashmolean is important not only for Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Near Eastern objects but also for its way of handling sources. A university museum shows the link between display, storage, publication and teaching.
Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities: 1047111 I THE ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM AND THE TAYLOR INSTITUTE, side entrance St John Street Oxford 20250617 0001.
Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities: Ashmolean Museum Cast Gallery Basement 3.
Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities: Ashmolean MuseumDSCF0115detaul 03.Collection and Historical Context
The Ashmolean is not the main museum of one ancient territory. It should be read as a comparative and research collection where typology, catalogue and study history matter.
Work with this museum requires three levels to be kept separate: display, catalogue and archaeological context. The display shows the object's form and scale, the catalogue clarifies date, material, inventory number and collection history, while context explains whether the object came from a house, cemetery, sanctuary, fort, workshop or urban monument.
A single famous exhibit is not always typical. Series are more reliable: several vessels of one type, a group of inscriptions, a funerary assemblage, repeated military fittings or several related sculptural solutions. Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities should therefore be read not only through its most famous objects, but through the links between galleries, collections and findspots.
Display and Main Materials
Pottery, sculpture, coins, inscriptions, Egyptian and Near Eastern antiquities, and digital or catalogue material deserve attention. For reconstruction the key value is the ability to check an object against a museum record.
In the museum display it is important to look not only at individual masterpieces but at the neighbourhood of objects: sculpture, inscriptions, pottery, coins, architectural fragments and everyday items often explain one another better than an isolated photograph.
Athenian Fragmentary votive sculpture of Dionysus (?) Greek Ashmolean Museum. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Limestone bust of a veiled woman, from a sculpture set in a tomb at Palmyra (Syria), about AD 80-100, Ashmolean Museum (8400694289). Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Portrait sculpture of Homer, author of the Iliad and Odyssey epic poems 1-100 CE Ashmolean Museum. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.Related Topics
- Museums of Antiquity
- British Museum and Antiquity
- The Met: Greek and Roman Art
- National Archaeological Museum, Athens
- Roman Archaeological Sources
Official Pages and Catalogues
Marble statue of Eros, 100-200 AD, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Statue of a striding man with long dress leaving one shoulder bare. Hierakonpolis, circa 3100 BCE (Ashmolean Museum AN1896-1908 E.3925). Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Terracotta statuette of a barbarian warrior with long hair, dropping moustache, trousers and a tunic, he carries a Celtic shield, Ashmolean Museum (8401785992). Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Head from a life-size granodiorite statue of a man. Unprovenanced, 18th Dynasty.Ashmolean Museum Oxford. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Portrait head of Demosthenes, Greek, 250-150 BCE, Ashmolean Musem. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Terracotta statutette of Aphrodite. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Nubian head. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Aryballos in the shape of a sheep or ram protome Greek Hellenistic Ashmolean Museum. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Boeotian helmet, 4th century BC. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Three warrior head vases Ashmolean. Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Closeup of relief depicting Horus on the Shrine of the 25th dynasty pharaoh and Kushite King Taharqa Egypt 7th century BCE (28159797415). Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.
Closeup of relief on the Shrine of the 25th dynasty pharaoh and Kushite King Taharqa Egypt 7th century BCE (7) (28159799385). Object from the collection: Ashmolean Museum: Antiquities.Interested in Ancient Rome beyond reading? Join Legio X Fretensis or explore our reenactment directions.
