Toghraklek Manor Museum

The Toghraklek Manor, a former estate of a Uyghur local notable, has been repurposed as a small local museum. Its collection focuses on the archaeological finds from the Zaghunluq cemetery site and other locations in the Qiemo (Cherchen) region, providing context for the famous Tarim mummies without the polished presentation of the Xinjiang Regional Museum in Ürümqi. The display includes tools, pottery, textiles, and some replicas of the mummy finds.

The museum is modest and the labelling is primarily in Chinese, which limits its accessibility to non-Chinese readers. But the building itself — a traditional Uyghur courtyard structure — is worth seeing, and the collection has an unmediated quality that larger institutions often lack. Staff can sometimes arrange access to the Zaghunluq cemetery site for visitors who want to see the actual excavation locations, about three kilometres outside town.

things to do museum history
A story
The Cherchen Man — one of the most famous Tarim mummies — was found at Zaghunluq wearing a red and white striped woollen shirt, decorated boots, and an ochre-painted face. He was around 55 years old when he died, stood about 1.8 metres tall, and had red-brown hair. He was buried with a ten-gallon hat. The combination of clothing, physical type, and date of around 1000 BCE placed him genetically and culturally much closer to Bronze Age Europe than to any East Asian population.

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