2017-08-28 Mon

On 18th May, three stamps were released by Lebanon celebrating International Museum Day. The stamps honoured Beirut National Museum, the Mim Museum, and the Sursock Museum which feature collections of archaeology, minerals, and modern art, respectively. Each stamp is denominated £2,000 and are printed by offset in sheets of 20.

The Beirut National Museum which opened on 27th May 1942, houses over 1,300 archaeological artifacts dating from prehistory to Ottoman times. It was closed during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-91). It was reopened again in stages after a lot of reconstruction. The basement was reopened in October 2016. A row of Phoenician sarcophagi from the museum is depicted on one of the three stamps. The museum also boasts of a carefully protected collection of 31 anthropoid sarcophagi that were discovered in Sidon. Each of them had faces made of white marble, which probably were portraits of the deceased.

Aquamarine crystals displayed at a private mineral museum in Beirut named Mim is featured on the second stamp. This museum opened in 2013. The third stamp features a photograph of the Sursock Museum which is a modern and contemporary art museum that opened in 1961.

The museum is believed to be Nicolas Sursock’s former residence that was constructed in 1912. The Museum’s architecture is a mix of Venetian and Ottoman elements that reflect the country’s past.