“It belongs in a museum.” With these words, Indiana Jones, the world’s best-known fictional archaeologist, articulated an association between archaeologists, antiquities, and museums that has a very long history. Indeed, even Jones himself would likely marvel at the historic setting of the world’s first “museum,” and the remarkable woman who is believed to have been its curator, the Mesopotamian princess Ennigaldi-Nanna.
Ennigaldi-Nanna was the priestess of the moon deity Sin and the daughter of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus. In the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, around 530 B.C., a small collection of antiquities was gathered, with Ennigaldi-Nanna working to arrange and label the varied artifacts.
