The desire for a public museum in Dublin started around 1835, likely increased with the widening of education both with Mechanics Institutes and schools of design. An act of Parliment, the Dublin Science Museum Act in 1877, established a public museum and incorporated the collections of earlier institutions like the Royal Dublin Society. The new museum received advice from the South Kensington Museum and the British Museum and started to purchase from private collections objects that were examples of decorative art or industrial design. The institution changed its name in 1899 to the National Museum of Science and Art but spent the years post-WWI closed because of the political troubles until 1925, when it was reopened as the National Museum of Ireland. In 1927, a government recommendation suggested that the museum refocused on Ireland and Irish history. 

The archaeological collection is located in a building which opened in 1890 to house the growing collection of objects the museum was acquiring which included natural history, geology, fine and decorative arts, and ethnographic material. The majority of the Egyptological collection is from excavations but local benefactors such as Lady Harriet Kavanagh donated objects they had acquired during their travels. Around three thousand objects are contained in the collection.