Termez Archaeological Museum

The Archaeological Museum of Termez was opened in 2002, the year the city marked its 2,500th anniversary. Its building in the centre of town holds collections drawn almost entirely from excavations in Surkhandarya, which makes it the best place to understand the sites you will see outside the city.

The collections

The displays run in chronological order, from Stone Age tools and the story of the Neanderthal burial found in Teshik-Tash cave in the Boysun mountains, through Bronze Age settlements such as Sapallitepa, to the Greco-Bactrian and Kushan periods. The Kushan rooms are the heart of the museum: painted clay sculpture from the palace at Khalchayan, coins, jewellery and ceramics, and Buddhist reliefs, sculpture fragments and inscriptions from Kara-Tepe, Fayaz-Tepe and Dalverzin-Tepe. Later halls cover medieval Termez, with glazed ceramics, carved stucco and objects from the city destroyed by the Mongols.

Visiting

Labels are partly in English, but a guide makes a real difference here, especially for the Buddhist material. Allow an hour and a half. If you have a choice, come before the open-air sites: the objects make the ruins far easier to read. The museum is air-conditioned, a welcome break in the afternoon heat.