Why did museums develop

Today we think of museums as areas that display the past, our culture, or natural history of our world. This certainly has developed to be the modern norm; however, when museums first developed they were for the private display of monarchs, showing war trophies and past societies. This evolution went further development in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, with the rise of intellectual wonder and development of social education.

Early Developments

The world's first museum known to us appears to be from Babylon, now in southern Iraq, found within the palace of king Nebuchadnezzar, the well known king who sacked Jerusalem in the Bible (Figure 1). Although some scholars claim the title of the first museum should be in the city of Ur, in the temple of Ennigaldi-Nanna, which did house ancient collections, this structure may date to a slightly later time than that of Nebuchadnezzar's displays. During the Neo-Babylonian period (626-539 BC), there was interest in both the distant past, which by that time Mesopotamian urban complex societies were nearly 3000 years old, as well as capturing war booty from within the Empire as it expanded. In essence, the concept of the museum as a display of the origin of a people as well as of its power was developed.