Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum



The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum was established in the spring of 1953 in the People's
Park in Urumqi City. Anew museum was later built in 1962 at a new site on Xibei Lu.

The building occupies a space of 11,000 square meters and is built in a modern style enhanced by local
architectural features. The central dome is thirty meters high and from its height one can view the entire
city of Urumqi. The museum is divided into different sections: a Mongol wing, a Tajik exhibition, a Kasak
exhibition and a Dauer people and relics display.

The Museum presents a wonderful collection of items from the local area as well as items from other
areas on the ancient Silk Road. Brocades from Eastern Han and specialized silk-woven products of the
great Tang Dynasty are highlighted. These are as lustrous and beautiful today as when they were new and display weaving techniques that were
highly refined many hundreds and even thousands of years ago. A number of the articles on display here are the earliest extant examples of
certain weaving technologies in China.

The museum also displays clay or terracotta sculptures. Among these are single-humped Central Asian camels, fat and vigorous Yuan-dynasty
horses, women figurines in all postures and impressively fierce soldiers.

Other items in the collections include microliths, silver works of art, stone steles, ancient coins, potteries and wooden articles.

The most dramatic and interesting exhibits are the "Mummies of Urumqi" - ancient corpses preserved and
found in the desert sands. They are the earliest known such examples in China and are important in the
study not only of humankind but of ethnic composition in this region at the time. Discovered in 1980 in the
riverbed of the Tieban in Loulan city, the corpse is believed to be around 4,000 years old.  Also in the
museum are an Eastern Han couple, buried together and well preserved, and a corpse from the Tang
dynasty with well preserved skin and hair.