History of the Nicholson Museum

The Museum was founded in 1860 by Sir Charles Nicholson, Provost of the University from 1854 to 1862. Nicholson had studied medicine at Edinburgh, and came to Australia to practise his profession at the invitation of his uncle in 1834.

His uncle drowned in the Hawkesbury River in 1836 and left his fortune to Nicholson, who was then able to pursue his scholarly interests in History and the Classics. Nicholson became a leading figure in education in New South Wales and was instrumental in the foundation of the University of Sydney and the Australian Museum.

By writing to antique dealers abroad during the 1840s and 1850s, Nicholson built up a collection of antiquities from all over western Europe. On his way to England in 1856, he toured Egypt and personally acquired much of the present Egyptian collection.

In the enlightened belief that it would be of greater value in Australia than in Europe, he donated to the University his collection of some 400 Egyptian antiquities, about 100 Greek vases, and some prehistoric, Etruscan, and Roman objects. These formed the basis for what became known as the Nicholson Museum, now an archaeological collection unique in Australia.

The Museum was first accommodated in what is now the Oriental Studies Room in the Main Quadrangle building, and was later transferred to its present location in 1926. It was entirely renovated in the 1960s, and officially reopened to the public in September 1966. Since its foundation, the Egyptian, and especially the Classical, collections have been significantly increased, and the Museum has been further expanded to include archaeological material from the Near East, Cyprus, and Europe.

Artefacts from the Near East, Egypt, Cypriot, Classical and Europe are on display at the Museum.

The Near Eastern collection contains material from Israel, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, as well as a selection of objects from the Department of Archaeology's excavations at Pella and Teleilat Ghassul in Jordon.

The material ranges in date from the Natufian to the Roman periods, and includes stone tools, pottery, and bronze and iron artefacts. Of particular interest is a Neolithic 'portrait', formed in plaster over a human skull, with shells to represent the eyes. It dates back to the 7th millennium BC.

The Egyptian collection contains material from all periods of ancient Egyptian history; from the Prehistoric (ca. 5000-3100 BC) and Dynastic (ca. 3100-332 BC), to the later Greek (332-30 BC) and Roman (30 BC-304 AD) periods.

A great variety of artefacts are displayed, including stone tools, ceramic and alabaster vases, jewellery and amulets, bronze implements, wooden statuettes, papyrus and linen fragments from the Book of the Dead, and basalt and granite sculptures.

Large-scale sculptures include those of Ramesses II, Pharaoh during the time of Moses, and Horemheb, Tutankhamun's general, and later Pharaoh.

The Museum's Cypriot collection is one of the most important outside Cyprus itself. A significant proportion of the material has come from excavations carried out in the 1950s by Professor J. R. B. Stewart, and later by Professor J. B. Hennesy, both of the University of Sydney. A wide range of pottery forms is on display, fully covering the periods from prehistory to the Hellenistic Age.

The Classical collection contains material from ancient Greece, Italy and other parts of the Mediterranean. The display begins with artefacts from pre-Mycenaean Greece and the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. Developments in Greek art can be followed through the late Geometric period, especially figured pottery.

Notable amongst these vases is an Athenian blackfigured Amphora by the Antimenes painter, and a Lucanian red-figured skyphos of the late 5th century BC with the earliest known depiction in Greek art of the personification of the sea-breeze, Aura. There are many other fine examples ranging from small household artefacts to a fine display of early Greek and Roman glass.

Both the oldest and the most recent objects in the Museum are to be found in the European section, where the display commences with examples of some of the earliest human tools and concludes with Anglo-Saxon jewellery.

Of special interest is a hand-axe from the excavations which established a more accurate understanding of the extended age of the human race. The axe, which is about 250,000 years old, comes from the Somme Valley in France and was presented to the Museum by the excavator, M. Boucher de Perthes, soon after 1860.

The Museum is open from 10am - 4.30pm, Monday to Friday. Admission is free.

Address - University of Sydney.
Telephone (02) 692 2812

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