National Museum of Brazil

History

The National Museum was established by the King of Portugal Dom João VI (1769–1826) in 1818 with the name of Royal Museum, in an initiative to stimulate scientific research in Brazil, which until then was an immense and wild colony, practically unexplored by science. Initially the Museum sheltered botanical and animal specimens, especially birds, what caused the old building where it was located in center of Rio de Janeiro, to be known by the population as the "House of the Birds".

After that, with the marriage of D. João VI's son and Brazil's first Emperor, Dom Pedro I (1798–1834) with Princess Leopoldina of Austria, the Museum started to attract the greatest European naturalists of the 19th century, such as Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (1782–1867), Johann Baptist von Spix (1781–1826) and Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868). Other European researchers who explored the country, such as Augustin Saint-Hilaire (1799–1853) and the Baron von Langsdorff (1774–1891), contributed for the collections of the Royal Museum.

By the end the 19th century, reflecting the personal preferences of Emperor Dom Pedro II (1825–1891), the National Museum started to invest in the areas of the anthropology, paleontology and archaeology. The Emperor himself, who was an avid amateur scientist and enthusiastic supporter of all branches of science, contributed with several of the collections of the art of Ancient Egypt, botanical fossils, etc., which he acquired during many of his trips abroad. In this way, the National Museum was modernized and became the most important museum of Natural History and Human Sciences of South America. Edmund Roberts visited the museum in 1832, noting that the museum only had three open rooms at that time, and that the closed rooms were "sadly plundered of its contents by Don Pedro."

D. Pedro II was well aware of the shortage of true scientists and naturalists in Brazil. He fixed this problem by inviting foreign scientists to come to work at the Museum. The first to come was Ludwig Riedel (1761–1861), a German botanist who had participated in Baron von Langsdorff's famed expedition to Mato Grosso from 1826 to 1828. Other scientists to come were: German chemist Theodor Peckolt and American geologist and paleontologist Charles Frederick Hartt (1840-1878). In the following years the Museum gradually became known so it continued to attract several foreign scientists who wished to achieve scientific stature with their work in Brazil, such as Fritz Müller (1821–1897), Hermann von Ihering (1850–1930), Carl August Wilhelm Schwacke (1848–1894), Orville Adalbert Derby (1851–1915), Émil August Goeldi (1859–1917), Louis Couty (1854–1884) and others, all fired by museum director Ladislau Netto when the emperor was deposed.

The Emperor was still a very popular figure when he was deposed by a military coup in 1889, so the republicans tried to erase the symbols of the Empire. One of these symbols, the Paço de São Cristóvão, the official residence of the emperors in the Quinta da Boa Vista, became vacant; therefore, in 1892, the National Museum, with all its collections, valuables and researchers, was transferred to this palace, where it stays until today.

In 1946, the Museum’s management was passed to the University of Brazil, currently the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The researchers and their offices and laboratories occupy a good part of the Palace and other buildings erected at Botanical Gardens (Horto Florestal), in the Quinta da Boa Vista park. There, one can find one of the largest scientific libraries of Rio. Currently, the National Museum offers graduate courses in the following areas: Anthropology and Sociology, Botany, Geology and Paleontology, and Zoology.

Collections

The Museum shelters one of the largest exhibits of the Americas, consisting of animals, insects, minerals, aboriginal collections of utensils, Egyptians mummies and South American archaeological artifacts, meteorites, fossils and many other findings.

Archaeology

The collection of archaeology of the National Museum comprises more than 100,000 objects, covering distinct cultures and important artifacts produced by several civilizations that lived in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Middle East, since the Paleolithic Age until the 19th century. The collection is subdivided into four main segments: Ancient Egypt, Mediterranean cultures, Pre-Columbian archaeology, and Brazilian archaeology — this last nucleus, systematically gathered since 1867, is the largest segment of the archaeological collection, as well as the most important collection of its tipology in the world, covering the history of Pre-Cabraline Brazil in a very comprehensive manner and sheltering some of the most important material records related to Brazilian archaeology. It is, therefore, a collection of considerable scientific value, and object of several works of basic research, theses, dissertations, and monographs.

Ancient Egypt

With more than 700 itens, the collection of Egyptian archaeology of the National Museum is the largest of Latin America and one of the oldest in the Americas. Most part of the objects entered the museum collection in 1826, when the tradesman Nicolau Fiengo brought from Marseille an assemblage of Egyptian antiquities that belonged to the famous Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni, who had been in charge of excavating the Theban Necropolis (modern-day Luxor) and the Temple of Karnak.

This collection had Argentina as initial destination, and had probably been ordered by the president of that country, Bernardino Rivadavia, creator of the University of Buenos Aires and a noted enthusiast of museums. However, a naval blockade at the La Plata River would impede Fiengo of completing his journey, forcing him to return from Montevideo to Rio de Janeiro, where the pieces were offered at an auction. Emperor Pedro I bought the entire collection for five million réis, and subsequently donated it to the National Museum. It has been sugested that the action of Pedro I would have been influenced by José Bonifácio de Andrada, a relevant early member of Freemasonry in Brazil, perhaps driven by the interest that the organization had for the Egyptian iconography.

The collection started by Pedro I would be expanded by his son, emperor Pedro II, amateur egyptologist and notable collector of archaeological and ethnographic artifacts. One of the most important additions to the Egyptian collection of the National Museum made by Pedro II is the polychromed wood sarcophagus of the singer of Amun, Sha-Amun-en-su, from the Late Period, offered to the emperor as a gift during his second trip to Egypt, in 1876, by the Khedive Isma'il Pasha. The sarcophagus is distinguished for its rarity, since it is one of few examples that have never been opened, still preserving the mummy of the singer in its interior. The collection would be enriched through other acquisitions and donations, becoming, at the beginning of the 20th-century, sufficiently relevant to draw the attention of international researchers and egyptologysts, such as Alberto Childe, who served as conservator of the Department of Archaeology of the museum between 1912 and 1938, and was also responsible for publishing the Guide of the Collections of Classical Archaeology of the National Museum, in 1919.

Besides the forementioned coffin of Sha-Amun-en-su, the museum possesses other three sarcophagi, from the Third Intermediate Period and the Late Era, belonging to three priests of Amun: Hori, Pestjef, and Harsiese. The museum also conserves six human mummies (four adults and two children), as well as a number of mummies and sarcophagi of animals (cats, ibises, fishes, and crocodiles). Among the human examples, the highlight is a mummy of a woman from the Roman Period, which is considered extremely rare for the preparatory technique used, of which there are only eight similar examples worldwide. Called "princess of the Sun" or "princess Kherima", the mummy has her members and fingers of the hands and feet individually swaddled and is richly adorned, with painted strips. "Princess Kherima" is one of the most popular itens of the National Museum collection, being even related to accounts of parapsychological experiences and collective trances, that supposedly occurred in the 1960s. "Kherima" also inspired the romance The Secret of the Mummy by Everton Ralph, member of the Rosicrucian society.

The collection of votive and funerary steles is composed of dozens of pieces dated, in their majority, from the Intermediate Period and the Late Era. The steles of Raia and Haunefer, which are graved with titles of Semitic origins present in the Bible and in the tablets of Mari, stand out, as well as an unfinished stele, attributed to the emperor Tiberius, of the Roman Period. The museum also has a vast collection of shabtis, i.e. statuettes representing funerary servers, including a group of pieces that belonged to pharaoh Seti I, excavated from his tomb at the Valley of the Kings. Still among the group of rare artifacts, there is a limestone statue of a young woman, dated of the New Kingdom, carrying a conic ointment vessel on the top of her head — an iconography that is almost exclusively found among paintings and reliefs. The collection also includes fragments of reliefs, masks, statues of deities in bronze, stone and wood (such as representations of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris), canopic jars, alabaster bowls, funerary cones, jewels, amulets, etc.

Mediterranean cultures

The collection of classical archaeology of the National Museum adds up to around 750 pieces and consists mostly of Greek, Roman, Etruscan, and Italiote objects, being the largest collection of its kind in Latin America. Most of the pieces previously belonged to the Greco-Roman collection of empress Teresa Cristina, who was interested in archaeology since her youth. When the empress disembarked in Rio de Janeiro in 1843, right after her proxy wedding to emperor Pedro II, she brought an assemblage of antiquities found during the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the Ancient Roman cities destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Part of this collection had also belonged to Carolina Murat, sister of Napoleon Bonaparte and queen consort of the king of Naples, Joachim Murat.

In his turn, Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, brother of empress Teresa Cristina, had ordered the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, initiated in the 18th century, to be resumed. The recovered pieces were sent to the Royal Bourbon Museum of Naples. Aiming to increase the number of classical artifacts in Brazil and cogitating the future creation of a museum of Greco-Roman archaeology in the country, the empress established formal exchanges with the Kingdom of Naples. She resquested the shipment of Greco-Roman objects to Rio de Janeiro, while sending artifacts of indigenous origins to Italy. The empress also personally financed excavations in Veios, an Etruscan archeological site located fifteen kilometers to the north of Rome, bringing a large part of the objects found to Brazil. Most part of the pieces were gathered between 1853 and 1859, but Teresa Cristina continued to enrich the collection until the fall of the Brazilian empire in 1889, when Republic was proclaimed and the empress left the country with all the royal family.

Among the highlights of the collection, there is a set of four frescos from Pompeii, made around the 1st century AD. Two of the pieces are decorated with marine motifs, respectively depicting a sea dragon and a seahorse as central figures, surrounded by dolphins, and were used to adorn the lower walls of the room of the devotes at the Temple of Isis. The other two frescos are decorated with representations of plants, birds, and landscapes, stylistically close to the paintings of Herculaneum and Stabiae. The museum also houses a large number of objects from Pompeii, portraying the daily life of the Ancient Roman citizens: fibulae, jewels, mirrors, and other pieces of the Roman female toilette, glass and bronze vessels, phallic amulets, oil lamps molded in terracotta, etc.

The collection of Mediterranean pottery comprises dozens of objects and is noted for the diversity of origins, shapes, decorations and utilitarian purposes. Several of the most important styles and schools of classical antiquity are represented, from the Corinthian geometric style of the 7th century BC to the Roman terracotta amphoras of the Early Christian era. The museum houses examples of kraters, oenochoai, kantharos, chalices, kyathos, cups, hydriai, lekythoi, askoi, and lekanides. The groups of Etruscan Bucchero pottery (7th-4th centuries BC), Greek black-figure vases (7th-5th centuries BC), Gnathian vessels (4th century BC), and the vast set of Italiote red-figure vases, with ceramics from Apulia, Campania, Lucania and Magna Graecia, also stand out.

The collection of sculptures comprises a large number of Tanagra figurines, small terracotta sculptures of Greek origin that were largely appreciated in the Ancient world, as well as a group of Etruscan bronze statuettes representing warriors and female figures. The collection of military artifacts includes entire pieces or fragments of helmets, maces, scabbards, bronze blades, brooches and phalleras.

Pre-Columbian archaeology

The National Museum houses and important group of about 1,800 artifacts produced by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas during the Pre-Columbian era, as well as Andean mummies. Gathered throughout the 19th century, the collection takes its rise from the holdings of the Brazilian royal family, with several objects coming from the private collection of emperor Pedro II, later enlarged through acquisitions, donations, exchanges, and excavations. By the end of the 19th-century, the collection already had considerable prestige, being cited, in the occasion the 1889 Anthropological Exposition inauguration, as one of the largest collections of South American archaeology.

The collection is mostly comprised of objects related to the textile manufacturing, featherwork, ceramic production, and stonecraft of the Andean cultures (groups of Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina) and, to a lesser extent, of the Amazonian natives (including a rare assemblage of Venezuelan artifacts) and Mesoamerican cultures (mainly from present-day Mexico and Nicaragua). Several aspects of the daily routine, social organization, religiosity, and imagery of the Pre-Columbian civilizations are addressed in the collection, exemplified from the basic utilitarian dimensions (clothing, body ornaments, weapons) to more refined artifacts, imbued with notable artistic sense (measurement and musical instruments, ritualistic objects, figurative ceramic sculptures and vessels distinguished for their aesthetic features). Other aspects of the Pre-Columbian life, such as the dynamics of trade, ideological diffusion and cultural influences among the groups are also represented in the collection, being noticeable, for example, on the similarity of the decorative patterns, artistic techniques, as well as in the subjects portrayed in their production, common to nearly all distinct groups, such as the representation of plants, nocturnal animals (bats, serpents, owls) and fantastic creatures associated to natural elements and phenomena.

Best represented groups, in the context of Andean cultures, include:

The collection of Andean mummies of the National Museum allows a glimpse at the funerary practices of the cultures of the region. The mummies of the collection were preserved either naturally (as a result of the favorable geo-climatic conditions of the Andean Mountains) or artificially, in the context of religious and ritualistic practices. Originating from Chiu Chiu, at the Atacama Desert, northern Chile, there is a mummy of a man with an estimated age of 3.400 to 4.700 years, preserved in a seated position, with the head resting on the knees and covered by a wool cap. This was the position which the Atacaman cultures used to sleep, due to the cold climate of the desert. It was also the position in which they were buried, together with their belongings. A second mummy in the collection — an Aymara man, found in the surroundings of Lake Titicaca, between Peru and Bolivia — is preserved in the same position, but involved in a funerary bundle. The collection of mummies also include a boy, donated by the Chilean government, and, illustrating the techniques of artificial mummification of Pre-Columbian cultures, an example of a shrunken head, coming from the Jivaroan peoples of equatorial Amazon, of ritualistic purposes.

Brazilian archaeology

The collection of Brazilian archaeology of the National Museum brings together a vast set of artifacts produced by the cultures that flourished in the Brazilian territory during the pre-colonial era, with more than 90,000 objects. It is considered the largest collection in its typology worldwide. Gradually assembled since the early 19th century, the collection started being systematically gathered since 1867 and has been continually expanded until the present day, through excavations, acquisitions and donations, also serving as basis for a large number of research projects conducted by the academics from the museum, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and from other institutions. It is composed of objects coming from all regions of Brazil, establishing a timeline spanning more than 10,000 years.

From the oldest inhabitants of the Brazilian territory (horticulturists and hunter-gatherer groups), the museum preserves several artifacts made of stone (flint, quartz and other minerals) and bones, such as projectile points used for hunting, axe blades of polished stone and other tools used for carving, scraping, cleaving, triturating, and piercing, in addition to artifacts of ceremonial use and adornments. Although objects made of wood, fiber, and resin were also produced, the majority of them didn't stand the test of time and are almost absent in the collection, except for some individual pieces — namely a woven straw basket covered by resin, only partially preserved, found in the southern coast of Brazil.

In the segment regarding the Sambaqui people, i.e. the fishing and gathering communities which lived in the south-central coast of Brazil between 8,000 years before present and the early Christian era, the National Museum holds a large number of vestiges originating from deposits constituted of agglomerated lime and organic material — the so-called Sambaquis, or middens. Two fragments of Sambaquis are preserved in the collection, in addition to a group of human skeletal remains found in these archaeological sites, as well as several cultural testimonies of the Sambaqui people, encompassing utilitarian objects used in routine tasks (vessels, bowls, pestles and mortars carved in stone), ceremonies and rituals (such as votive statuettes). Among the highlights of the Sambaqui collection, there is a large set of zoolites (stone sculptures of votive use, with representation of animals, such as fish and birds, and human figures).

The collection also includes several examples of funerary urns, rattles, dishes, bowls, clothing, dresses, idols, and amulets, with emphasis being placed on ceramic objects, produced by numerous cultures of precolonial Brazil. Best represented groups in the collection include:

The National Museum also preserves the only known examples of indigenous mummies found in the Brazilian territory. The collection consists of the body of an adult woman of approximately 25 years of age, and two children, one located at her feet, with an estimated age of twelve months, involved in a bundle, and a new-born, also covered by a mantle, positioned behind the head of the woman. This mummified set is composed of individuals that probably belonged to the group of the Botocudos (or Aimoré) people, of the Macro-Jê branch. They were found at the Caverna da Babilônia, a cavern located in the city of Rio Novo, interior of the state of Minas Gerais, in a farm that belonged to Maria José de Santana, who donated the mummies to emperor Pedro II. As an act of gratitude for this favor, Pedro II awarded Maria José with the title of Baroness of Santana.