Over 55,000 artefacts from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana State museums digitalised

Vishakhapatanam: Two government archaeological museums in the two Telugu states — Nagarjunakonda at Guntur and Salar Jung in Hyderabad — have been listed among the country’s top 10 museums, whose artefacts have been digitalised and made accessible to the world via online.

More than 2.8 lakh artefacts have been digitalised from all the 10 museums. Some 20 per cent of them (55,954) come from the two museums from AP and Telangana.

A total of 47,504 artefacts of the Salar Jung museum in Telangana have been digitalised while 8,450 artefacts at the Nagarjunakonda in AP.

The National Museum in Delhi has the highest number of artefacts (80,997) while the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bengaluru has the lowest number (534) of artefacts for digitalisation.

There, in all, are 48 key archaeological site museums under the Archaeological Survey of India. Of them, the Union ministry of culture has picked only 10 museums in the first phase and the remaining will be digitalised in a phased manager.

The ministry has taken up the task of digitalisation with a special visual museum software named Jatan, developed by Pune-based Human Centres Design and Computing Group, in April 2014.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, the Nagarjunakonda museum assistant archaeologist Sai Krishna said the digitalisation will help students, history lovers and those who prepare for competitive exams, besides tourists visiting the museums.

"The Nagarjunakonda is the only museum in Andhra Pradesh to have had the digitalisation of all its artefacts. The work was delayed due to Covid19," Sai Krishna said.

The Nagarjunakonda museum, designed in the style of Buddhist Viharas, was established in 1966. It displays the Buddhist, Palaeolithic and Neolithic artefacts and ruins. Carved limestone slabs, sculptures, inscriptions from the 3rd and 4th century AD are displayed at the museum.

"I have viewed terracotta and stucco statues in one of the galleries of the Nagarjunakonda," said a museum-goer.

The Salar Jung museum is an art museum located at Dar-ul-Shifa. It was endowed to the nation after the death of Salar Jung III and officially established in 1951. It displays a collection of artefacts from different parts of the world and has emerged as one of the largest museums in the world.