First antiquities library opens in Basra
Basra Cultural Museum. Photo: SNA
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – An antiquities and heritage library was opened inside what was once Saddam Hussein’s palace in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
The library includes a large collection of books and manuscripts specializing in ancient antiquities and archaeological sites in Iraq.
The library was opened in the Basra Cultural Museum to facilitate academics’ access to rare books and manuscripts.
The library includes rare books of foreign and Iraqi excavation missions that worked 100 years ago in archaeological sites across Iraq.
The collection of books available in this library, which is the first for the people of the southern Iraqi city, covers the Sumerian, Babylonian and other ancient eras in Iraq.
According to the University of Cambridge, the Basra Cultural Museum had been closed since 1991, after the First Gulf War, and was reopened to the public in 2019.
Basra Cultural Museum has thousands of artifacts dating back as far as 6,000 BC with labels in English and Arabic.