Rezan Has Museum opens Urartian jewelry collection to public

Works of Urartian jewelry, representing a significant portion of the Kadir Has University’s Rezan Has Museum Collection, have gone on display for the first time. The show is considered one of the most comprehensive in the world Showing off the glory and wealth of the ancient Urartians, a new exhibition has opened at Istanbul’s Rezan Has Museum featuring around 1,110 items of jewelry from the civilization, which inhabited what is now eastern Anatolia during the Iron Age.

Thanks to a grant from Bank of America Merrill Lynch as part of their global Art Conservation Project, the museum’s collection of Urartian jewelry is considered one of the most comprehensive in the world.
The exhibition showcases a broad variety of jewelry that belonged to the Urartian Kingdom, a civilization unique to Anatolia. The collection included pins, rings, earrings, bracelets, fibulas, belts and belt pieces, votive plaques, armbands, neck collars, necklaces, hair spirals and pectorals which were created in the middle of the ninth century B.C. Additionally, 74 belts, conserved under the expertise of Professor Rafet Çavuşoğlu, will be on view.

“With a large collection of archaeological artifacts extending from the Neolithic Era to the Seljuk period, the Rezan Has Museum spent the last year completing the restoration and conservation of more than 1,000 pieces of jewelry from the Urartian period with the contributions of Bank of America Merrill Lynch,” Kadir Has University Chairman of the Board of Trustees Can Has said at a recent ceremony to open the exhibition.

“Having been selected to be part of the same project as globally acclaimed museums including the Metropolitan, Louvre, Hermitage, and the British Museum is a...