Museum · Moynaq District
Moynaq Ship Cemetery
The port the sea abandoned
Museum · Moynaq District
Moynaq Regional Museum (Aral Sea Museum)
A small museum founded in 1984: the life of Aral fishermen, boats and fishing gear, Karakalpak costume and jewellery, and paintings and photographs of the sea before it vanished.
Photo: Adam Harangozó · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
About the museum
The museum opened in 1984 in the port village of Uchsay, moved into Moynaq’s district community centre in 1998 and reopened after reconstruction in 2013. Much of the collection was assembled in the 1980s by O. Eserkepov: national costume, old jewellery, household objects, boats and fishing tackle, stuffed animals and birds of the Aral region and historical photographs. Most moving are the canvases of Rafael Matevosyan and Faim Madgazin, known as the chroniclers of the Aral, which show the sea, its fishermen and its shore still alive. It is small — around two hundred exhibits — but it makes the ship cemetery far more affecting.
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