#Exhibit of the Month

The exhibited necklace of beads originates from Funerary Complex No. 6 of Kurgan No. 4, excavated in 1982 by Dr. Habil. Eugen SAVA near the town of Taraclia. The beads were found in the chest area of the deceased, indicating that they had been worn as a necklace and had remained in their original position within the funerary assemblage.
The necklace consists of 11 elements made entirely of Egyptian faience. Eight of the beads are spherical and decorated with vertical incisions forming between 14 and 21 raised ribs. Their diameters range from 13 to 20 mm. Two additional elements are scarab representations measuring 23.5 × 19.5 mm, while the final component is a flattened cylindrical pendant bead featuring a central vertical groove and measuring 22 × 9 mm. The objects range in color from light blue to dark blue and violet hues, reflecting the natural deterioration and glaze variations characteristic of Egyptian faience.
Egyptian faience is an artificial quartz-based material coated with an alkaline glaze, typically blue or blue-green in color. It was widely used in Ancient Egypt and later spread throughout the Mediterranean and Pontic regions through trade networks. During the first centuries AD, such objects served as important indicators of cultural and economic contacts between the Mediterranean world and the communities of the North Pontic region.
Owing to its typological, technological, and symbolic characteristics, the Taraclia necklace is an exceptionally valuable artifact for the study of intercultural relations, the circulation of prestige goods, and the funerary practices of the Sarmatian communities during the first centuries AD (1st-2nd centuries AD).

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Events Archive

Opening of the exhibition „Memory of deportations”

July 3, 2024

On July 3, 2024, the National Museum of History of Moldova organized the opening of the "Memory of Deportations" exhibition, dedicated to the commemoration of 75 years since the second wave of mass deportations in the Moldavian SSR.

The exhibition approach reveals aspects of the history and memory of the victims of Operation "South" from the night of July 5-6, 1949, bringing to the attention of the visiting public documentary materials, testimonies, personal objects, works of art, thematic video materials. The exposed vestiges elucidate the context in which the organization of the second wave of deportations took place, the transportation and displacement of Bessarabians in special settlements in the eastern regions of the USSR, as well as examples of recent practices honoring the memory of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime during the SSR period Moldavian.

Today, more than three decades after the signing of the Declaration of Independence (1991), the complex and systematic valorization of the memory of the victims of the totalitarian past in the Republic of Moldova remains a desire of decommunization and democratization. The local communities of memory in the villages and cities of the Republic of Moldova offer examples and models worthy of following in the direction of knowledge of history and memory. However, the symbolic dimension of the commemorative actions comes to constitute for the memory of the victims of the communist regime one of the main forms of (re)knowing and intelligently assuming the traumatic past.

The exhibition presents the recourse to history and memory as an act of symbolic justice brought to all the victims of Operation "South" of July 5-6, 1949 in the Moldavian SSR, thus contributing to the building of a European culture of memory in the society of the Republic of Moldova.

The "Memory of Deportations" exhibition is opened to the large audience between July 3 - August 3, 2024, in the upstairs hall of the National Museum of History of Moldova (Chisinau municipality, str. 31 August 1989, 121A).

#Exhibit of the Month

Necklace of Egyptian faience beads discovered at Taraclia

Opening of the exhibition „Memory of deportations”

July 3, 2024

#Exhibit of the Month