National Museum of Ethiopia

Just outside the museum there is this random little patch with some trees and sculptures oddly placed, most of them are broken too.

This is the scene as you enter the museum. Lots of cases with figurines and pottery fragments. Very little information and terrible lighting. Does not so look appealing, but there are some beautiful and interesting items there. (The whole museum does not look like this, but my camera died..)

Crowns of various emperors of Ethiopia.

Throne of Haile Selassie and imperial seating.

The star of the museum is of course Lucy (Dinknesh in Ethiopia). Lucy is a 40% complete skeleton of a Australopithecus afarensis and it is estimated Lucy lived about 3.2 million years ago. The sheer size of the finding is astounding on its own (usually only fossil fragments are found). When she was discovered in 1974 (in Ethiopia of course – this region is the cradle of life) she was the oldest hominid found (in 1994 one found hominid dating back 4.4 million years). Lucy was important as her skeleton showed a link between her species and apes (skull capacity) and she could walk upright on two feet akin to humans. This apparantly showed that in evolution walking upright on two feet came before increase in brain size which is very important info for science geeks ;) (I do find it interesting really!). However there is some debate whether Lucy and her species are ancestral to humans or not. Some more fun facts: Lucy would have been 1.1m and weighed about 29kg. Lucy was named after the Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds as it was playing on their tape recorder on repeat. Lucy would have looked like a chimpanzee, but the pelvis and leg bones are almost indentical to those of modern humans.

The third floor holds a modern/contemporary art gallery.

More about the museum in general: The museum is a part of the University of Addis Ababa and is located on their grounds. The first floor holds the old pottery, imperial items and a random skull. The basement holds Lucy, exhibition on development of mankind with focus on Ethiopia-Eritrea&kenya region, and some exhibition about some animals that used to roam around here. The second floor is a bit weird. Lots of glass cabinets, most of them are 3/4 empty. I think it was meant to be about the different peoples and culture of Ethiopia.. The third floor is about the art of Ethiopia with focus on modern/contemporary, but there are some older pieces in there too. Here is also a gift shop that sell posters, post cards and t-shirts.