Star attraction “Tell Halaf”! 250 000 visitors recorded in just the first eleven weeks

20.04.2011
Pergamonmuseum

The exhibition 'The Tell Halaf Adventure' is currently the Museum Island's main crowd-puller. After just eleven weeks, Beate Salje, Director of the Museum of the Ancient Near East in the Pergamonmuseum, was able to join with Nadja Cholidis and Lutz Martin, curators of the exhibition, in welcoming their 250,000th visitor today.

Family Kraft-Arens - comprising parents Birgit (44) and Bernd (46) and their two children Jonathan (10) and Nikolas (8) - who had come all the way from Bad Vilbel in Hessen, visited the Pergamonmuseum for the first time as part of their four-day Berlin trip. While here, they of course couldn't resist a look round the 'Tell Halaf Adventure'.

Director Beate Salje not only presented the family with the customary bouquet of flowers, but also a copy of the catalogue and an audio-book for children to accompany the exhibition. She was delighted at the exhibition's popularity, saying: 'We are positively thrilled at the number of visitors who have come, quite literally in their droves, to look at the Tell Halaf gods. It's all the more wonderful when you consider that the gods on show today were smashed to smithereens in 1943 and had to be reassembled from a staggering 27,000 fragments. As you know, an 'alliance for the gods' was formed to recreate this jewel in the cultural history of Mesopotamia and their efforts have paid off: after nine years of painstaking work, the spectacular monumental sculptures are here again for everyone to see! The excavator Max von Oppenheim would definitely have been as happy as we are to see his discovery on show in such a successful exhibition in the Pergamonmuseum.'