Ibb museums show history [Archives:2006/966/Culture]
Mohammed A. Khoshafah
[email protected]
The evergreen province of Ibb opens its treasure chest to all who visit. Its ancient tall buildings, interesting mosques, popular markets, green mountains, natural spas and kind people attract many tourists.
Ibb governorate museums can be memorable and fantastic stations that won't be forgotten, even after the journey ends. Tourists can visit and enjoy viewing the beautiful antiquities in Jibla Museum, Al-Saddah district's Dhafar Museum, Al-Naderah district's Al-Awood Museum and Ibb Museum in the old city of Ibb. These museums represent ancient and simple Yemeni man, who has long since died but still lives in these antiquities and masterpieces.
Ibb Museum was inaugurated and officially opened August 21, 2005 by Vice President Abdu Raboh Mansour Hadi and Ibb Governor, Brig. Gen. Ali bin Ali Al-Qeesi. The museum contains fantastic and precious bronze statues in the form of humans, animals and plants. Our ancestors described and interpreted themselves, their social and cultural life at that time in such statues and antiquities.
Attempting to express themselves in any way, they carved and chiseled inscriptions such as ibex heads, special writings, drawings of animals, etc., on pieces of stone, marble and rocks. Such inscriptions reflected and imitated their life and interaction with their environment. These works were done with great accuracy, although they used very strong and hard stone on which it was difficult to carve.
Rafeeq Al-Orami, Ibb Museum's control and inspections manager, said, “Such antiquities and statues were found in Al-Awood in 1996.” He added, “The rare thing about this museum is that it contains funerary furniture found buried with human corpses in tombs and cemeteries.”
Al-Orami explained that in the past, there was a religious belief that the dead would come alive again in the tomb and practice another life in the grave, so people in those times buried all of the dead person's instruments and equipment in the grave, whether man, woman or child.
This religious belief was known among the pharaohs in Egypt, so the ancient Egyptians built the great pyramids as tombs for their kings and queens in order to bury them with their jewels, treasure, money, possessions, etc. They also mummified both dead people and animals.
Ibb museum manager Nashwan Dhaba'an explained, “Every individual was buried with his belongings, which represented his career. Warriors were buried with a sword, a dagger and a spear, while women were buried with implements and equipment of ornament and adornment.”
In the past, grave robbers used to break into cemeteries and dig up the tombs to steal such precious items. However, after some time, delusionary zigzag graves were used so robbers couldn't discover the tombs easily.
Indeed, museums are our folk, hereditary and ancestral heritage, which we can't neglect. Museums are scientific institutions that tell today's and tomorrow's generations about past centuries. These masterpieces tell about past states, their culture and what their social life was like.
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