Though the interior is dowdy and poorly illuminated, the archaeological collection here is excellent. In many cases what you'll see are the originals from which copies were made for the outwardly far grander new National Museum. Notably, the 13m-long sleeping Buddha here is the real one as removed from Ajina Teppe in 1966, when Soviet archaeologists sliced it into 92 pieces. Dating from the Kushan era (around 500AD), it is the largest known Buddha figure in Central Asia.
