The History of the Museum’s Building

The building itself is a unique historical structure. It was built by Osman Hamdi Bey in 1883 as Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi, better known as the Academy of Fine Arts. This academy, which would form the foundations of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in the future, is the first fine arts school opened in the Ottoman Empire.

The architect of the building was Alexander Vallaury, who would later build the Classical Building of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. In 1917, after the academy was moved to another building in Cağaloğlu, this building was allocated to the Directorate of Museums. Halil Edhem Bey, the head of the Directorate of Museums, thought that it would be more appropriate to exhibit the works of ancient cultures of the Near East countries separately from the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine works, and he arranged the building as the Museum of the Ancient Orient.

During the Second World War, the Museum of the Ancient Orient was discharged for defense purposes. In 1963, a major arrangement was made in the museum structure, and it was opened to visitors in 1974. The Museum of the Ancient Orient gained its present form on September 8, 2000, and it has continued to serve as a tourist attraction ever since.

If you are visiting the Museum of the Ancient Orient, keep in mind that nearby a similar tourist attraction is located. The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art is an impressive museum that combines Turkish and Islamic artifacts You can access this museum for free with Istanbul Tourist Pass.

Four Main Exhibition Sections in The Museum of the Ancient Orient

Mesopotamia: Findings from the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian civilizations are exhibited in a historical sequence documenting the development of Mesopotamia.

Egypt: Findings from 3000 BCE to 600 CE are on display. Some of them were gifted by Khedive Abbas Pasha in 1894, and some were found during several excavations in Anatolia. Among these works, there are stone or bronze statuettes, wooden sarcophagi, and burial find.

Anatolia: Early Bronze Age, Hittite Imperial Period, and Late Hittite Period finds are exhibited. There is also a wide variety of artifacts unearthed during the Zincirli and Karkamış excavations.

Arabia: This collection contains works related to the pre-Islamic cultures of the Arabian Peninsula. The most valuable parts of the Museum of the Ancient Orient mostly belong to the Assyrian King II. There is a statue of Salmanasar, a winged statue of the Hittite King Tuthalia IV, a relief depicting Assyrian soldiers with spears, a mummy from the 10th century, a statue of the Sumerian King Fudea, and many cuneiform clay plates.

The First Love Poem in History

There is a cuneiform tablet numbered “Istanbul #2461” in the Cuneiform Documents Archive of the Museum of Ancient Orient. The tablet was found in 1889 in the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur, located in the southeast of present-day Iraq.

It was deciphered by the American Assyrian and Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer, who came to Istanbul in 1951 and started working on the Sumerian tablets. It was translated into Turkish by Muazzez İlmiye Çığ. It soon became clear that on this cuneiform tablet, the world's oldest love poem was written. Its authenticity is confirmed by Guinness World Records.