The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden is an archaeological museum located in Leiden , the Netherlands and founded in 1818 by King William I of the Netherlands.

The collection of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden grew significantly in the 1830s thanks to various donations and was moved in 1837 to a building on the Breedstraat.

Today the main building in which the museum is housed was a former convent of nuns, used as such until the end of the 16th century.

The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden houses a total of around 150,000 exhibits including textiles, shoes, bronze objects, musical instruments, etc. from various parts of the world.

The museum houses, among other things, one of the largest collections of archaeological finds from Ancient Egypt in the world : the temple of Taffeh, visible in the main hall of the museum, where it has been housed since 1979 and finds from the Tomb of Ptahmes in Saqqara . There is also a section dedicated to the archeology of the Netherlands, from Prehistory to the Middle Ages.