While the Library of Alexandria in Egypt may be the most famous ancient museum, it was actually two centuries earlier, around 530 BC, that princess (and priestess) Ennigaldi-Nanna of the Neo-Babylonian empire curated the world's first known public museum.
Situated in Ur (part of modern-day Iraq), this museum contained artifacts belonging to Southern Mesopotamia. Many of the pieces were excavated by Ennigaldi-Nanna's father, King Nabonidus, or collected by the former King Nebuchadnezzar. Ennigaldi-Nanna helped organize all of these objects in order to share the history of the empire.
Around 530 BC she founded the world's first public museum in an ancient building called E-Gig-Par, where she also had living quarters.
Among its many objects, the museum housed a ceremonial mace head, a Kassite boundary marker called a kudurru, and part of a statue of the Sumerian king Shulgi. The oldest items dated back as far as 2,000 BC.
Each exhibit was accompanied by a clay cylinder inscribed with a description in three languages, and are the earliest known “museum labels”. For thousands of years following the eventual collapse of the Sumerian kingdom which saw the end of Ennigaldi-Nanna’s museum, objects of curiosity, beauty, or general interest were largely collected privately in curio cabinets or kept in religious institutions. Rarely were the objects in these collections displayed in an educational manner, and were certainly not labeled.
Ennigaldi-Nanna was the daughter of King Nabonidus, ruler of the Neo-Babylonian empire. She was the first priestess in six centuries and held significant importance in Ur. While most of her duties revolved around serving as a “human wife” to the moon god Sin, she also oversaw a school for priestesses and managed part of the temple complex of Ur.
After the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire, the area of Ur declined under Achaemenid rule and the museum was eventually forgotten. But in 1925, the ruins of the building and the rest of the Ur temple complex were discovered by English archaeologist Leonard Woolley. Extensive excavations revealed its ancient secrets.
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