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Come with us on a tour to discover the first museum built in Angola

Aerial shot of the museum of Dundo in eastern Angola.   -  
Copyright © africanews
Photo captured from Euronews video.

Angola

Euronews has come to see the first museum to be built in Angola, the Dundo Museum.

It was built in 1936 by the former diamond company Diamang, now ENDIAMA, and is located in the capital of Lunda Norte, the city of Dundo.''

In this museum is a whole collection that tells the collective memory of the entire region of eastern Angola".

The first gallery depicts the entrance to a typical village of the Lunda Tchokwé people, with the traditional spiritual guardian here symbolized by this lion.

According to the director of the museum in Dundo in 1957, there was a significant increase in research activities carried out by more than 260 corresponding scientists the world over.

''In relation to the ethnographic collections, the museum has under its guard about 9,000 objects and 30,000 specimens of natural history and has a herbarium with various samples of plants of this region some of them with therapeutic effect and an archaeological collection yet to be inventoried'', André told Euronews’ Angolan correspondent, Neusa E Silva.

Until December 1972, the museum held about 13, 216 pieces in its various collections. Today, it has only 1,000 ethnographic objects. Few pieces have been recovered so far.

''These pieces were recovered in the Kingdom of Belgium by the Sindika Dokolo Foundation, and in 2019 were delivered to the Museum of Dundo in representation of this population. There we will find the stool that is the chair of the Soba, it also has two masks, one of them of the escusa and the other of the Mukixi a Folo", André added.

Neusa E Silva reports that the regional museum of Dundo is one of the main destinations for scientists and tourists interested in learning about the history and culture of eastern Angola, and is considered as one of the most important cultural heritage in Africa.

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