Changes

The two oldest continuous museums are found in Rome, the Capitoline and Vatican Museums. The former was essentially a collection of Roman sculptures gifted by Pope Sixtus IV. Discovery of sculptures also inspired the Vatican museum, as Pope Julius II was inspired by the discovery to preserve the pieces in the Vatican's collections. This interest spawns an interest in the Classics in general and a rebirth of ideas and focus on the pre-Christian past. Soon, objects began to be collected not just by officials or religious figures but by wealth individuals. By the 16th century, a new era began, where large collections of artefacts were now collected for their sake, as interest in the past continued. In Europe, the so-called cabinets of curiosities began to be made, which were sometimes large private collections of ancient artifacts, fossils, or other remains that sparked interest in the past. The interest in the past continued as the Renaissance gave way to the Age of Enlightenment, which now began scientific interests as well as simple curiosity to collect. ==Birth of Modern Museums== By the 18th century, scientific progress and ever increasing knowledge about the world increased interest in creating large public galleries. Furthermore, similar to the interests of the Babylonian Empire, the new empires of the world, in particular Britain, began to see the collection of artifacts and objects as a way to display power and dominance in the globe. The British Museum was opened based on the principal it would be accessible to the public, although mostly it was the privy of the middle and upper classes, and it began to display the wonders of Britian's every increasing dominance. This continued into the 19th century, where the Louvre and British Museum began a type of competition to collect the best objects from natural and ancient history. Soon, with the increasing collections, museums began to be divided into different types of museums, such as natural history and archaeology. However, it was only by the late 19th century were museums beginning to become more scientific in developing disciplines in studying ancient objects. With the advances made by Charles Darwin on the Theory of Evolution and archaeology becoming a more modern discipline led by Augustus Pitt-Rivers and Flinders Petrie do we see museums now retrieving objects with more care. The collections also now became more studied for greater insight into knowledge about the deep past, including the natural and human-made world. ==Summary==The development of museums was not a continuous path. After initial development in the ancient and classical worlds, at places such as Babylon and Alexandria, it took the Renaissance before interest in them begins again. However, it was only in the late 19th century do we see museums becoming more scientific and applying scientific principles in their collection of objects and their study.