You don’t have to be Indiana Jones to enjoy a good romp through the Odessa Archaeological Museum.  Located in the Ukrainian city of Odessa, the entrance to the museum is marked by a significant statue of Laocoon, although this statue is not as large as the one of Mother Russia standing guard over the war museum in Kiev.  That’s a big statue.  Anyway, the museum is one of the oldest in Ukraine and any student of archaeology would want to visit it.

Founded in 1825, the museum was developed by the Odessa Society of antiquity and history.  This group had been given the right to excavate in the Northern Black Sea Region and over the years they have collected over 160,000 exhibit worth of artifacts.  It is one of the largest collections of Northern Black Sea ancient history and it contains relics from primitive and classical culture, relics from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and a large, valuable collection of coins and medals.  The artifacts from Egypt, Greece, and Rome are a good indication of how far the leaders of these three nations took their ancient conquering of other countries to heart in their own bids for world domination.