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Jakarta Attractions

Inscriptions Museum occupies a culture preserve building, an inheritance building from the colonial time. It was formerly a funeral park of Dutch and European people which than restored and modified to be Inscription Museum with the collections located at the open air area. The collections are located at a 1.2 hectares area, and for it Inscription Museum is also called as Inscription Park. Inscription Museum exhibits selected gravestone inscriptions from the historical relic and work of arts from the past that combined the work of sculptor, carver, calligrapher, and man of letters.

As mentioned above, the current Inscription Park located at an ex funeral. The name of the funeral is Kebon Jahe Kober, a funeral area for officers and prominent figures, especially for Dutch and European. The funeral started to be utilized in 1795 and the main building of funeral constructed in 1844 with Doria style. Behind the main building there’s a building called Balairung Building, functioned as ritual ceremonial hall before the burial carried out. Balairung Building consists of two halls, one at the right side and the other one at the left side. The right side the building used as a place to lie down female bodies, while the left side building used as a place to lie down male bodies.

After the freedom of Indonesia, the funeral was still used as a public funeral, especially for Christian people. In 1975, Kebon Jahe Kober funeral was closed. DKI Jakarta government considered that the ex Kebon Jahe Kober funeral has a potency to be developed as a museum. Therefore the government conducted a restoration and redesigning of selected gravestone inscriptions at the funeral area. In 1977, Inscription Museum which also known as Inscription Park was officially announced by Ali Sadikin, DKI Jakarta governor at that time.

The collection of Inscription Museum consists of inscriptions in the form of ancient gravestone, monument or pillar, goblet, statue, antique corpse carriage, bouquet, flat sided stone, replica and miniature of typical funeral from 27 provinces in Indonesia. At the back yard of Balairung Building there’re collections of bronze medal bells which previously used to give a sign that there’s somebody died. The bell was rang continuously to welcome the corpse while giving a sign for the funeral staffs to be prepared for the burial ritual. Inscription collections in the Inscription Museum are selected inscriptions from the work of talented carver and designer, used as a realization of the family and relatives feeling. When you see the inscriptions, as if they can talk through the deep meaning of the script on them. On one of the gravestone inscription at the Inscription Museum, there's a script written in Dutch saying “SOO GY. NU SYT. WAS. IK VOOR DEESEN DAT. JK, NV BEN SVLT GY OOK WEESEN”, which means “Like you are now, I was before. And like I’m now, thus you will be one day”.

Most of the gravestone inscriptions were from many prominent figures from many fields such military, education, art, science, religion and many others. Some of them were General Major J.H.R Kohler, Dr. W.R. Stutterheim, Dr. H.F Roll, Pieter Erberveld, Olivia Mariamne Raffles, Miss Riboet and Soe Hok Gie. There’re a total of 1700 collections at Inscription Museum.

• Since Inscription Museum is a museum at an open air area with many big trees, so there’re potentially many mosquito there. It’s recommended to bring anti-mosquito lotion before visiting Inscription Museum.

• The location of Inscription location is about 1.5 to 2 km away from the National Museum. To reach the Inscription Museum you could ride personal vehicle, taxi or bajaj.