The British Mandate era was a time of great turmoil in Palestine; the Ottoman Empire, which had relegated the province to backwater status, had fallen in the wake of World War I, both Jewish and Arab immigrants were flooding in, and the European colonial powers were eagerly staking their claims to the Middle East and its resources.

The geopolitical fallout of the British government's nigh-schizophrenic policies in Palestine and the rest of the Middle East is still being felt, and hotly debated, to this very day, but the opening of Palestine to Europeans led to at least one undeniable triumph for modern civilization: the discovery and study of thousands upon thousands of antiquities from one of the world's most historically rich areas.

The Rockefeller Museum in east Jerusalem stands as testament to that bounty; dating from the Mandatory period, the architecturally impressive museum is stocked with hundreds of artifacts archaeologists unearthed from multiple sites in Palestine during the British Mandate. Some exhibits are still in the process of being fully labeled, but the museum is worth seeing for east Jerusalem visitors.