Old-Peru

image author: Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum

The Roemer- and Pelizaeus-Museum owns one of the most unusual and important old-Peru collections in Europe. By adding several new gifted objects and purchases in the last years, the exhibition present itself in a new designed permanent exhibition.

image author: Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum

The visitor will get a chronological overview about the most important cultures from Chavín (120 - 400 BC) to Inca, whose culture was destroyed by Spanish conquerors 1532. Theme groups give an intensive insight into the life of South America's old Indian peoples; the depiction and design of animals, fruits, music instruments and erotic images on objects illustrate the everyday life of early often still illiterate cultures like a 'ceramic library'.

image author: Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum

The omnipresent awareness about death by the living and with that the connected cult of the dead gave us numerous important and more or less intact objects from graves. Mummies wrapped in gaudy textiles, grave goods made of gold and semi-precious stones as well as an abundance of ceramic works bear testimony in an impressive way of three thousand years Indian civilisation with its religious believes and craftmanship.

A new important enrichment is a small but high quality collection of pre-Colombian objects from the private assets of Dr. Marie-Luise Zarnitz, which were handed over to the museum by the foundation Lower Saxony on permanent loan in April.