National Museum of Iraq

　　The museum reopened to the public in February 2009 after being closed for six years. It features a total of 28 exhibition halls and once housed a vast collection of artifacts unearthed from the Tigris-Euphrates river basin (commonly referred to as the “Mesopotamian region”) since 1950. These included valuable relics from various peoples and historical periods that once thrived in Mesopotamia, reflecting a splendid and diverse cultural heritage with both shared characteristics and unique features. The museum’s library also held nearly 6,000 manuscripts and around 70,000 books in various languages—an indispensable cultural treasure for studying Mesopotamian civilization. Among these were inscribed clay tablets and epic poems from the Sumerian period around 4000 BC written in cuneiform script, which are truly priceless treasures.