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also has galleries devoted to collections of
both pre-Islamic and Islamic Arabian art and
artifacts. Of its many noteworthy collections,
the Nimrud gold collection—which features
gold jewelry and figures of precious stone
that date to the 9th-century BCE—and the
collection of stone carvings and cuneiform
tablets from Uruk are exceptional. The Uruk
treasures date to between 3500 and 3000
BCE.

In 1966, the collection was moved again, to
a two-story, 45,000-square-meter (480,000-
square-foot) building in Baghdad’s Al-Sālihiyyah
neighborhood in the Al-Karkh district on
The National Museum of Iraq the east side of the Tigris River. It is with this
move that the name of the museum, originally
the Baghdad Archaeological Museum, became
today’s Iraq Museum.

A must for the international traveler to Baghdad considered among the most important in the Bahija Khalil became the director of the Iraq
is a visit to the National Museum of Iraq, which world. The British connection with the museum Museum in 1983. She was the first woman
contains precious relics from the Mesopotamian, — and with Iraq — has resulted in exhibits always director and she held that post until 1989.
Abbasid and Persian civilizations. It is considered, being displayed bilingually, in both English and
together with the British Museum in London as Arabic. It was looted during and after the 2003 invasion
being one of the best ones in the world. of Iraq. Despite international efforts, only some
It contains important artifacts from the over of the stolen artifacts have been returned.
After World War I, archaeologists from Europe 5,000-year-long history of Mesopotamia in 28 After being closed for many years while being
and the United States began several excavations galleries and vaults. refurbished, and rarely open for public viewing,
throughout Iraq. In an effort to keep those the museum was officially reopened in February
findings from leaving Iraq, Gertrude Bell (a The collections of The Iraq Museum include art 2015, and is now open to the public.
British traveler, intelligence agent, archaeologist, and artifacts from ancient Sumerian, Assyrian
and author) began collecting the artifacts in a and Babylonian civilizations. The museum
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 leaving £50,000
in her will to the Baghdad Museum.

The new director was Sidney Smith. He was the
Director of Antiquities and Director of the Iraq
Museum (1926–31). While there, he and his wife
befriended Smith’s colleague Max Mallowan
and his wife, the novelist Agatha Christie, with
Christie dedicating her novel The Moving
Finger (1942) “To my Friends Sydney and Mary
Smith”.

Owing to the archaeological riches of
Mesopotamia, the museum’s collections are

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