National Museum of Iraq - Foundation

Foundation

After World War I, archaeologists from Europe and the United States began several excavations throughout Iraq. In an effort to keep those finds from leaving Iraq, British traveler, intelligence agent, archaeologist, and author Gertrude Bell began collecting the artifacts in a government building in Baghdad in 1922. In 1926, the Iraqi government moved the collection to a new building and established the Baghdad Antiquities Museum, with Bell as its director. Bell died later that year.

In 1966, the collection was moved again, to a two-story, 484,375-square-foot (45,000-square-metre) building in Baghdad’s Al-Ṣāliḥiyyah neighborhood in the Al-Karkh district on the east side of the Tigris River. It is with this move that the name of the museum was changed to the National Museum of Iraq. It was originally known as the Baghdad Archaeological Museum.

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