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The Nicholson Museum of Antiquities at the University of Sydney is the largest university-connected archaeological museum in the southern hemisphere. It houses collections from ancient cultures, including European, Classical, Egyptian, and Near Eastern artifacts, as well as rare books. The museum also offers educational tours for students and adults.
The University of Sydney has been collecting ancient artefacts and holding them at the Nicholson Museum of Antiquities since 1860. It was then that the museum opened with the collection of school co-founder Sir Charles Nicholson. According to the school, it has grown through faculty finds and additional requests to become the largest university-connected archaeological museum south of the equator.
Located in the center of the school’s main campus, the Nicholson Museum is just one of Sydney University’s museums that are free and open to the public. Also in the group are the University Art Gallery and the Macleay Museum of Natural History. Part of the holdings are held at the school’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library which in 2011 had more than 170,000 rare works, such as a copy of the first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s seminal Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
The Nicholson Museum divides his work into a handful of categories. A European collection focuses on early Anglo-Saxon tools, including an ax estimated to be around 250,000 years old. The Classical Collection holds artifacts from ancient Greek and Roman culture, from domestic objects preserved from the infamous eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeii to the formal statuary of the imperial classes. Both the Egyptian and Near Eastern collections include illuminating artifacts from those ancient cultures.
The University of Sydney faculty feature prominently in the collections. The Near East exhibits are filled with archaeological discoveries unearthed by the faculty in places like the ancient Jordanian cities of Teleilat Ghassul and Wadi Hammeh. Yet another collection exhibited at the Nicholson Museum, the Cypriot Collection of Prehistoric Artifacts, depends on faculty finds from 1950s excavations on the ancient island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea.
A series of special exhibitions fills all the gaps in the Nicholson Museum. In 2011, one of these included Charles Nicholson: Man and Museum, a tribute to the museum’s founder, featuring key initial donations that kickstarted the legacy. Other special exhibits that share the space include historical features on ancient Egyptian, Etruscan, and Italian civilizations.
Being attached to a major university, the museum naturally has an educational focus. It doesn’t just exhibit university artifacts; it also helps younger students to better understand their roots. Following a similar mission to the natural history museum, students and adult students regularly make their way through the Nicholson Museum with trained guides to tie the various collections together into one big picture of the human race.
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