Uşak Archaeology Museum: Home of the Lydian Hoard

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1. What is Uşak Archaeology Museum?
2. How do you get to Uşak Archaeology Museum?
3. When is the best time to visit Uşak Archaeology Museum?
4. What is the history of Uşak Archaeology Museum?
5. What is Uşak Archaeology Museum famous for?
6. What can you see at Uşak Archaeology Museum?
7. Common misconceptions about Uşak Archaeology Museum
8. Frequently asked questions about Uşak Archaeology Museum
9. What do the official records say about Uşak Archaeology Museum?

What is Uşak Archaeology Museum?

Uşak Archaeology Museum is the main museum of Uşak province and the home of the Karun Treasure, a collection of Lydian objects from burial mounds near the village of Güre that was smuggled abroad in the 1960s and won back in a New York court case. For most visitors this is the reason to come to Uşak.

After about 48 years in its old building, the museum moved in 2018 to a new purpose-built home in the station area. The Uşak Culture and Tourism Directorate describes it as holding a collection of some 42,000 objects. The displays run over three floors and a mezzanine, from Palaeolithic stone tools to Byzantine glass, with the Lydian treasure on the top floor.

How do you get to Uşak Archaeology Museum?

The museum is in Uşak city, in the area of the railway station, so it is easy to reach on foot or by taxi from the centre and directly from a train. Uşak lies on the D-300 highway and the railway from İzmir, about 210 km to the west. Uşak Airport has almost no scheduled flights; most visitors fly to İzmir Adnan Menderes Airport and continue by road or rail.

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When is the best time to visit Uşak Archaeology Museum?

The museum is indoors and works in any season, which makes it a good plan for a hot summer afternoon or a winter day when the canyons are cold. Check current opening hours with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism before you go. Give yourself time for the second floor: the treasure is the reason most people come, and the story of its recovery is told alongside it. Combine it with the Ulubey Canyon, about 30 km away, for a full day.

What is the history of Uşak Archaeology Museum?

The 2002 inventory notes that the museum was rearranged when the Karun Treasure arrived in 1996. The story of the treasure is the story of the museum.

In 1966 treasure hunters from Güre, about 25 km west of Uşak, dug into a tumulus at Toptepe and, on the night of 6 June, blew open the tomb chamber with dynamite. They took more objects from other mounds in the area in 1966–1967. The finds were smuggled out of Türkiye through İzmir and Amsterdam, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York bought them between 1967 and 1968. In 1984 the journalist Özgen Acar recognised the pieces in a Met catalogue and alerted the Ministry of Culture. Türkiye sued in 1987; in 1993 the museum admitted it had known the objects were stolen when it bought them, and they were returned.

The treasure had one more chapter. Between 2005 and 2006 the golden winged seahorse (hippocamp) brooch, the best-known piece, was found to have been replaced with a fake. The former museum director was convicted, and the original was later returned from Germany through the efforts of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (Uşak Culture and Tourism Directorate).

In 2018 the collection moved to the new museum building.

What is Uşak Archaeology Museum famous for?

• The Karun Treasure: Lydian gold and silver jewellery, vessels and objects from the Toptepe, Basmacı and Aktepe tumuli.
• The winged seahorse brooch, stolen, replaced with a copy and finally recovered.
• Coins. Uşak was part of the Lydian kingdom, where coinage was first used, and the museum has a large coin collection and coin hoards.
• Roman sculpture from the ancient cities of the province.

What can you see at Uşak Archaeology Museum?

Ground floor. Palaeolithic tools, Bronze Age idols and beak-spouted jugs, pottery from the Phrygian to the Eastern Roman period, lamps, figurines and glass, and displays on ancient burial customs and beliefs.

First floor. Roman statues of officials, statesmen and athletes found in Uşak, and stone works from Akmonia, Blaundos and Sebaste.

Mezzanine. Coin hoards and reconstructions of ancient coin minting.

Second floor: the Karun Treasure. Finds from the Basmacı, Toptepe and Aktepe tumuli, including the winged seahorse brooch, with reconstructions of the İkiztepe and Harta tumuli and of Lydian crafts and daily life.

Ethnography. Local costumes, swords and weapons, and everyday objects.

The building also has a children’s education area, a conference hall and a specialist library.

Common misconceptions about Uşak Archaeology Museum

Was this King Croesus’s treasure?

What people often assume: “Karun” is the Turkish form of Croesus, the famously rich last king of Lydia, so the hoard must be his royal treasury.

What the record says: The name is a popular label. The objects come from the burial mounds of the Lydian elite around Güre, the richest from the tomb chamber of a Lydian princess at Toptepe, not from a royal treasury (Lydian Hoard, Wikipedia; Uşak Culture and Tourism Directorate).

Frequently asked questions about Uşak Archaeology Museum

What do the official records say about Uşak Archaeology Museum?

Rich historical artefacts from the Chalcolithic to the Byzantine period are exhibited. With the arrival of the Karun Treasures in 1996, the museum was rearranged.

The Karun Treasures are Lydian-period works of the 6th century BC, smuggled in the mid-1960s from the monumental tombs near Uşak’s Güre village and recovered from the USA in 1993 by court decision. This treasure, made up of 450 pieces large and small, has been exhibited in the Uşak Archaeology Museum since 1996. (Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Uşak Provincial Tourism Inventory, 2002)