Ancient Worlds Gallery

Drawn from Auckland Museums own collections this gallery illustrates part of the depth and variety of ancient civilisations and cultures from all over the world. A focus of this gallery is Ancient Egypt from the pre-dynastic period to the Roman and Christian (Coptic) eras, including the display of the Museums very own Mummy which will finally be given a permanent home. The gallery will also house significant collections from the great civilisations of the past notably Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia, India, China and Central and South America.

The Ancient Worlds gallery is an introduction to the tools and arts of all these regions and is designed for all New Zealanders who want to know more about these aspects of the human past.

Most of what we know of our ancestors for almost all of human existence is told by arts and artifacts left to us. These date back to 2.5-million-year-old stone tools found in Africa when food was obtained by hunting animals and gathering wild plants.

The first domestication of plants and animals took place ca 11–9000 BC in Southwest Asia, probably triggered by the end of the Ice Age not long before. Other places soon followed. The Agricultural or Neolithic Revolution was based on maintaining and harvesting plants and animals for future food supplies. The increase of available food led to population growth.

Five or six thousand years ago in a few places where conditions allowed, Neolithic farmers first gave way to more complex societies. It was especially the development of irrigation that allowed for intensive farming and thus further population growth, leading to new social and political structures. Egypt is the greatest example. New features of these societies were cities and writing, and a complex division of labour which included artists who created many of the items shown here for privileged political, religious and merchant classes.