The story behind the world’s oldest museum, built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago

http://uk.io9.com/5805358/the-story-behind-the-worlds-oldest-museum-built-by-a-babylonian-princess-2500-years-ago?skyline=true&s=i ^ | May 25, 2011 | Alasdair Wilkins

[decimon]

In 1925, archaeologist Leonard Woolley discovered a curious collection of artifacts while excavating a Babylonian palace. They were from many different times and places, and yet they were neatly organized and even labeled. Woolley had discovered the world's first museum.

It's easy to forget that ancient peoples also studied history - Babylonians who lived 2,500 years ago were able to look back on millennia of previous human experience. That's part of what makes the museum of Princess Ennigaldi so remarkable. Her collection contained wonders and artifacts as ancient to her as the fall of the Roman Empire is to us. But it's also a grim symbol of a dying civilization consumed by its own vast history.

[decimon]

Via InstaPundit.

[decimon]

Ur been renew ping.

[the invisib1e hand]

what no pic of the princess?! Puhleeze! Come ON!

[decimon]

what no pic of the princess?! Puhleeze! Come ON!

She looked like Yassir Arafat in drag.

[the invisib1e hand]

She looked like Yassir Arafat in drag.

Oh, you mean like Helen Thomas, then.

Please NO PICS!

[csvset]

the administrator of a school for young priestesses

There had to be some hotties.

The girls of Ur U issue.

[martin_fierro]

That museum should be in a museum.

Of museums.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Archaeology began in Ancient Egypt when the Egyptians wanted to learn about their own past-—a thousand years before. But The idea of a Museum may go to Babylon until the building of The Great Museum in Alexandria to house Alexander the Great’s trophies. (The museum was more a research center and think tank that just displays).

[punditwannabe]

It’s interesting to think that humans of old were just as “smart” as current humans like Einstein et al, but still couldn’t invent the stuff we have today......until today. Anyone know what I mean because I’m not sure I do but I know I’m asking something!

[Forward the Light Brigade]

The ancients made a great many interesting things and discoveries that are only now being recognized—Egyptian had an advance pharmacology, Romans were great engineers, Greeks were perhaps the best—they invested the keyboard for music, Organs, and a crude steam engine. Egypt invented straws for drinking, umbrellas to keep off the sun, wine & beer and Pizza (without the Tomato sauce) Stone buildings for temples and adobe bricks. great mystery—the mummies of Egypt had traces of cocaine—it only grows in South America—so they may have been trading with the New World. The world lost a lot with the Dark Ages.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks decimon and martin_fierro. Oscar Meyer has a way with Ba by L O N I A. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[Judith Anne]

The inventers of today “stand on the shoulders of giants.” Just like the axle could not be invented until after the wheel, and baking until flour, yeast and ovens were developed, so our modern inventions, all of them, are built upon ideas many centuries old, in some cases.

[Bellflower]

Oxford ping

[Winstons Julia]

With God, things are possible. With only man ... not so much.

This was not the whore of Babylon who did this. This was clearly the Female Geek of Babylon.

[texanred]

Egypt invented straws for drinking, umbrellas to keep off the sun, wine & beer

When the invention of beer is credited to Egypt I always imagine a man dying of thirst with no water at hand except some dribbles in the bottom of a bucket that had previously been used to cook gruel.

It had to be a desperate man that first saw fermented beer and said "Looks refreshing. I think I'll drink that brown foamy water..."