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Wooden architectural elements from a mosque in the Swat-region in Pakistan

These architectural elements originate from mosques in the villages of the Swat-region in Northwest Pakistan. Between 1956 and 1981 a team of Italian archaeologists studied about 75 mosques decorated with wood carvings. This patrimony was endangered: old mosques were being replaced by modern, more practical ones at a high rate. The museum bought these elementes from an antiquarian in the nineties.

Wooden architectural elements from a mosque, Swat-region (Northwest of Pakistan), 17th-20th century, pine, mulberry and cedar.

Based on oral traditions the team was able to deduce a presumed age for each mosque of no older than two to three centuries. The entrance to the prayer room with its lobbed arch reminds of the Mughal style dating back to the 17th century and is presumably the oldest part in this setup.

This woodwork was reworked and rebuild throughout the years: several different types of connections are still visible: pen-and-hole connections, metal nails with star shaped heads and even recent nails. Traces of polychromy and a layer of black resin were also found.

The woodwork shows a mixed style: the fluting and volutes remind of Gandhara art which inherited these Greek style elements in the wake of the conquests of Alexander The Great. The stylised, floral motives on the other hand refer to the Mughal style, even other elements go back on Iranian traditions.

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Insects by Philippe Wolfers

The sixth day of #MuseumWeek revolves around nature and the way it has inspired humans throughout time. Our current temporary exhibition about  Wolfers Frères and Horta has quite a few art nouveau and art deco objects inspired by nature. The best known might be the Dragonfly, pictured below. In this blogpost we offer you a glimpse of several rarely seen pieces from our reserves.

Art nouveau, the style first developed by Victor Horta in 1893, was heavily inspired by nature. Just like Horta, Philippe Wolfers found based a lot of his work on plants and animals. In his summer residence Les Glycines in La Hulpe, Belgium, he was surrounded by nature. Nature, and in particular insects, was a prime and direct source of inspiration for the jewellery he made between 1902 and 1905.

A glimpse in our reserves:

Some of these jewels, like the Dragonfly, are on show in our temporary exhibition. In this blogpost we would like to show you some pieces from the Wolfers collection that are not on show at the museum. All of these drawings were made by Philippe Wolfers.

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Merovingian Belgium

The third day of Museum Week is all about heritage. We are the proud keepers of a lot of Belgian archeological heritage. We’re happy to offer you a glimpse of the vast collections of prehistoric, Gallo-Roman and Merovingian material we have on display.

Our unique Merovingian and Frankish collection holds numerous objects from graves that were excavated at the end of the 19th century or in the first half of the 20th century. Most objects originate from Belgium and illustrate funerary culture, clothing, connectivity and Christianisation in the Early Mediaeval period. From an archaeological point of view this is one of the most extensive Merovingian collections from Europe.

Grave gifts reflect the status the deceased had in society, depending on the quantity, quality and the used materials (gold, silver, bronze, glass, precious stone...).  Weapons for the men, jewellery for the women and ceramics, combs and knives for both. On top of that, these objects show a connectivity with regions throughout and beyond Europe.

Merovingians

Written sources mention the Franks for the first time in the second half of the third century. They are a federation of several Germanic peoples rather than one nation. They offered military services to the Roman empire and are thus able to establish small kingdoms. A Salian dynasty, whose intial territory lay mostly in today’s Belgium, emerges from these kingdoms: the Merovingians.

The best known Merovingian king is Clovis (481-511 AD), both for his conversion to christianity and for his unification of the Frankish kingdom. He and his successors brought the areas of the Thuringians, The Alemanni and The Burgundians under Frankish rule.

Marilles brooch

The Marilles brooch is a remarkable golden brooch (dated 560-610AD), found in Marilles, Belgium in 1859. It has garnet inlays in a geometrical network of small vertically placed golden partitions or cloisons. These garnets were imported from southern Asia until the end of the 6th century, when supllay stagnated probably due to political unreast along the trade routes.

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Gallo-Roman Belgium

The third day of Museum Week is all about heritage. We are the proud keepers of a lot of Belgian archeological heritage. We’re happy to offer you a glimpse of the vast collections of prehistoric, Gallo-Roman and Merovingian material we have on display.

After Julius Caeser conquers Gaul, Belgium becomes part of the Roman Empire. This results in a specific, interesting mix between cultures: the Gallo-Roman culture.

Our museum houses a large and unique collections of Gallo-Roman objects, most of them belonging to the elite. Lots of these objects were found in tumuli (graves). Tableware, toiletries in glass and metal, jewelry and other objects in precious metals... they were all found in the final resting places of the Gallo-Roman elite. This is also the reason why we have so many (almost) intact pieces: the graves protected not only the deceased, but also the gifts he or she took with them.

Gallic golden coins

Another important collection: coins. Our museum houses several coin treasures, both Roman and Celtic. Together with molds uses by counterfeiters they remind us of the importance, the use, the evolution and the instability of the monetary system introduces in our region by the Romans.

In 1980 a remarkable coin treasure was found in Thuin, Hainaut. The coins were buried there in the surroundings of a fortress at the end of the Iron Age. It’s not the only such treasure found in Belgium, but it is part of very specific context. Other golden treasures were found from the same age and in the same region. This region, between the rivers Samber and Maas, was inhabited by the Aduatuci tribe. The burial of these kind of treasures can be linked to the Roman conquests under Caesar: the local population buried its valuables in the hope to recover them in better times.

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Prehistoric Belgium

The third day of Museum Week is all about heritage. We are the proud keepers of a lot of Belgian archeological heritage. We’re happy to offer you a glimpse of the vast collections of Prehistoric, Gallo-Roman and Merovingian material we have on display.

Our collection National Prehistory is the biggest of its kind in Belgium. Starting almost half a million years ago right up to the Celtic period: the Belgian soil (and our museum) offers an extraordinary insight in the lives of our ancestors.

Stone Age

The silex artefacts gathered in our museum show how hunter-gatherers and the first farmers used and shaped their environment to their advantage.

The silex mines of Spiennes, Hainaut, were named UNESCO world heritage back in 2002. In the region around Mons silex was dug up in large quantities between 4250 BC until 3500 BC. The gains of this almost industrial style of mining were mostly ment for export.

The mining techniques used were rather advanced and were developed around 6000 years ago. Huge chunks of silex were dug up from up to 18 meters of depth using a complex system of holes and shafts.

Mining silex was a dangerous venture. Miners cut and carved the silex from the ceilings of horizontal shafts. This way the ceiling of the shaft collapsed onto bench like shapes who were carved out on the bottom of the shaft. As a result large pieces of silex were broken into smaller, more manageable parts.

Those smaller parts were then hauled up to the surface where they were processed into half finished products, ready for export.

Metal Age

The transition from stone age to metal age in Belgium (and the wider region) starts around 2000 BC.

One of the masterpieces from this period is strip of thin gold leaf, originally used to decorate a drinking horn. The decorations show mediterranean motifs: lotus flowers and palmettes.

It was found by accident in Eigenbilzen in 1871, in a rich celtic grave dating back to 400 BC. The strip of gold leaf, together with the other high quality objects in the grave, show the high status of the person buried there.