ARGUMENT..3 THE BRITISH MUSEUM..4 THE EGYPTIAN GALLERY5 THE MUMMY GALLERY...5 THE ROSETTA STONE...

7 THE BRONZE AGE GALLERY ......8 LINDOW MAN.....8 THE ROMANS..9 EXHIBITS ORIGINATED IN BRITAIN.10 THE AFRICAN GALLERY .....11

BIBLIOGRAPHY.12

ARGUMENT

The British Museum is the oldest, and one of the largest museums in the world. Where else can you see some of the greatest treasures of all time under one roof? You will be fascinated by the Egyptian Mummies, and inspired by the superb exhibition of prints and drawings which changes several times a year. The British Museum is a vast storehouse of treasures. Six million people visit the British museum every year, making it London's greatest tourist attraction. It was built in the first half of the nineteenth century, at a time when Britain's empire building activities were putting more and more peoples and lands under British control. This was also a period of incredible curiosity in many different areas including science, technology and history. The military and economic strength of the country allowed private collectors and the government to amass first rate collections of artifacts from many of the world's major civilizations, including the Rosetta stone from Egypt, the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon in Greece, statues and tablets from Mesopotamia as well as Mayan and other cultural items from Central America. Today, the British Museum is home to no less than six and a half million objects and has ninety four permanent and temporary exhibition galleries. An Education Department provides a wide range of services for adults and children. Other departments are Coins and Medals, Egyptian Antiquities, Ethnography, Greek and Roman Antiquities, Japanese Art, Medieval and Later Art, Oriental Antiquities, Pre-Historic and Romano-British Antiquities, Prints and Drawings, and Western Asiatic Antiquities.

The heart of London is home to one of the greatest collections of antiquities the world has ever seen. The museum was born in 1753 then held at a different site. The British Museum as we know it today was built at the end of the XIX century for an aristocrat, who wanted a country home at the edge of the town. Today, more than 6 million visitors pour through these doors each year to view some of the 7 million items in 20 different galleries. The inner court yard at the British Museum was hidden to the public from 1867, but its reopen in 2000, created the largest, covered, public square in London. Almost a hector in size, the space was designed by Lord Norman Foster and features an extraordinary computer-designed glass and steel roof. The 11 kilometer of steel sustains 350 tones of glass. The central reading room is being wrapped in limestone and surrounded by shops and cafes. By day, the interplay of light and shape transforms the space in which the old and the new coexist in a perfect balance. As darkness falls, it becomes an arena of drama and mystery. The museum was opened in 1759 under its present name in Montague House, but the acquisition of the library of George III in 1823 necessitated larger quarters. The first wing of the new building was completed in 1829, the quadrangle in 1852, and the great domed Reading Room in 1857. Later, other additions were built. Long a part of the museum, the British Library was established as a separate entity by act of Parliament in 1973 and moved to new London quarters in 1997. After the relocation of the library, the famous Reading Room underwent extensive renovations, including the opening (2000) of a surrounding glassed-in Great Court and the installation of a billowing transparent roof, both designed by Lord Norman Foster . The space houses a gallery and a restaurant, as well as two small theaters and an education center beneath the courtyard.

Just off the great court, at the front of the museum, lies part of the oldest department of all, containing some of the most ancient exhibits. There are monumental statues, columns and friezes evoking more than 4.000 years of ancient Egyptian history. It has always been a popular part of the museum, even for the Victorians and the exhibits have remained largely unchanged today and still the crowds are drawn by these magnificent collections.

But it is up to what lays up-stairs, in the mummy gallery, that helps visitors to feel even closer to the Pharaohs. They are surrounded by mummified remains of the people from this ancient civilization. Museum staff dismissed suggestions that the gallery has a certain atmosphere. However, there is one exhibit about which they are less than free to talk about. It is referred to, for reasons of safety, simply by its catalogue number: EA22542. But over the years it is become known as the unlucky mummy. Although it contains no mummified remains, the exhibit has a painted-wooded sarcophagus lid, thought to be from the tomb of the mysterious early ruler of ancient Egypt. She was known to later Egyptologists as queen Nitokris. It is said that she committed suicide after massacring hundreds of Egyptian nobles to revenge the killing of her brother. Her tomb was cursed and laid silent for thousands of years until it was pillaged by thieves, who sold their treasure to

unsuspecting tourists. In the 1860, four young Englishmen bought the coffin lid. They were on holiday and thought that they have found the perfect souvenir of their visit in Egypt. However, within months, three were dead and the fourth has lost his arm in a shooting accident. A famous clear-sighted of the time, Madam Elena Blavatkaia pronounced the coffin lid an evil influence. As a result, the lid was passed on to the British Museum, but that solved nothing. When the museum had it photographed, the photographer was so horrified by what he saw in the developing tray, that he killed himself. The man who transported the lid to the museum died within a week. The story continued right through the XX century. An expert, who was making a detailed study of the coffin lid, was on board the Titanic. The museum blames press sensationalism and public superstition for the stories, and deny the rumor that the curse of the unlucky mummy has meant that the staff turn-over in the mummy gallery is higher than anywhere else in the museum. The British museum has a store of over 7 million artifacts in its possession. Gathered from around the world, they represent the highest achievements civilizations have reached in architecture, art, religion and culture. The mummy gallery is just one part of the massive Egyptian department, that few get the chance to investigate the rest, which is stored in the basement below. The maze corridors and stores from the Egyptian department is where they keep the biggest collection of mummies outside the Cairo. The Egyptians believed that the soul returned to the body after death and they learned to preserve the bodies by embalming them and wrapping them in canvas to produce the famous Egyptian mummies.

Much fascinating

of

the

information would have

that been

Egyptologists now take for granted about this civilization unavailable if it hadnt been for another remarkable discovery that the museum now has on display upstairs. In the XVIII century, when archeologists went to discover and retrieve Egyptians remains, they were totally baffled by the writing. Hieroglyphics or picture writing shouldve been easy to understand, but it wasnt, especially since everyone assumed it wasnt a form of writing, but mysterious religious symbolisms. To solve the mystery of the real meaning of hieroglyphics, experts had to relay on an accidental discovery of a chunk from an old wall, in the northern Egyptian port, Rosetta. Just over a meter tall and one meter wide, it contained Greek writing that suggested it was a rather boring local decree. But there were two other forms of writing, both of which were hieroglyphs. It was in the early XIX century, that Frenchman, Jean Francois Champollion, identified a vital phrase. It showed that the three different scripts were in fact the same text. Today, as in the past, thousands of people stand in front of the glass case. For some, the stone holds even more significance, as well as holding the key to unlocking Egypt. It is suggested that the stone reveals the darkest secrets of parallel universe. Many people got nervous when they were in front of the stone, claiming they saw ghosts. There will always be strange theories surrounding such an important ancient artifact, but no one will deny that and the work of Champollion unlocked the secrets of the Egyptian way of life and contributed to the interest among experts and public alike, in the world of the pharaohs.

On the upper floor, just around the corner from the ancient Egyptian galleries, visitors are drawn to a darken corner, where a corpse resides. These are the remains of a man famous in death, but of his life we know almost nothing. His last moments alive are surrounded by mystery, which can only be solved because of the peat that preserved his body for 25 centuries. To the ancient Britains, the marshland around Lindow, near the modern city of Manchester, was a sacred location, a place to worship their gods. Centuries later, in 1984, while digging up peat, a worker came across the remains of a leg in his days load. They went back to the bog and found a large piece of skin, showing through the peat layers. They have found a body. And once the police confirmed it was out of their jurisdiction, caretakers from the British Museum brought the remains back to London. They knew the body was old, but it took carbon-fourteendating to establish that the man from the bog had lived 2500 years ago. The body is now stable, but it is still sensitive to the light, which causes problems for the museums caretakers. Under normal circumstances, they couldnt find skin, hair, brain, intestines. All of those have been preserved. Experts from the British Museum think they know how died. It was a very careful deliberate act, which leads us to think it was a sacrifice. The true story of the Lindow man remains one of the great museum mysteries and because of that will continue to be a source of fascination and speculation.

When they arrived in 55 B.C., the Romans changed the course of British history, making the wild, wet island part of an empire that stretched across Europe. The British Museum has a large collection to reflect this important age. There is plenty here to show that the Romans who lived in Britain brought with them some of the comforts of home. They drank wine, grown in Mediterranean vineyards and at least one very important person ate off this silver dinner service. But what sinister event could have made the rich roman abandoned his fabulous treasure in a field near the town of Mildenhall, in the county of Suffolk? In 1942, Britain was in the depths of war and every available hector of land is being cultivated. Farmer Sidney Folk wanted to plant an extra crop of sugar-beet and hired ploughman Gordon Butcher. Butcher knew that he had to set the plough deeper that usual. When the iron tip hit something metallic, he stopped and pulled out what appeared to be some old metal plates. They were black with age and covered in mud, but Ford realized they were silver and did not want to hand over the treasure to the authorities. So he told Butcher The Great Dish from the Mildenhall treasure the dishes were worthless and hid them away. After the war, he decided to polish the silver for his own table. Unfortunately for him, a dinner guest spotted the treasure and persuaded him to hand them over to the British Museum. Both Ford and Butcher, received one thousand pounds, a modest reward for discovering what turned out to be the biggest roman treasure. The Mildenhall treasure comprised of 34 items, clearly the priced possessions of a wealthy mercer, diplomat or official. The reason they ended up in that field is still shrouded in mystery. Dated to the second century A.D, they come from a time of peace and prosperity, and there seems no reason for the owner to have abandoned these beautiful and valuable items. So why were they conceded to the soil? Were the valuable plates at the center of a family dispute, or were they stolen? One theory is that the owner wasnt frightened, just over-precautious. When caught away on business, he chose to burry his valuables, because he didnt trust his servants not to steal them. We can only imagine his despair, if on return he couldnt locate the spot where he had buried them. We can never know for sure what circumstances gave us such a magnificent treasure.

With over 7 million items, the British Museum has an enviable reputation. Although it holds treasures from around the world, some of its finest exhibits originated in Britain itself. Across the land, mysterious mounds called tumuls are still evidence. It was in the summer of 1939, that land-owner, Mrs. Pretty, asked local historian Basel Brown to open the tumuls that had mystified her for so long. What they found would astonish the world. The largest mound of all contained a perfect influent of a great boat that had once held the body of a British chief, possibly a king, dated from the fifth century. There was no skeleton to offer a clue to his identity. But a big number of belongings allowed the museum to begin to piece together the story of the man and the masked helmet. The museums Conservation Department is still engaged in the task of recovering and evaluating the possessions of the great man that arrived still encrusted with mud. Conservators use x-rays to show them what lies beneath. The organic material doesnt show up in x-rays, so you can tell the exact shape of the object. Some of the items found in the grave are truly baffling. But the real mystery remains: who was the great man that deserved such an elaborate burial. He was important enough for his followers to have dragged a long boat from the river and across the hills to the sacred meadow. In other nearby mounds there were found treasures, which suggest that this was a cemetery for nobility. But none as elaborate as the ship burial, that was a royal privilege. If it is indeed a royal grave, then its thought that the man and the mask may have been the Dark Ages hero, Redwald, a high chief of the Wuffingas clan, who ruled over much of eastern England and was said to have died around 650 A.D. Certainly, his finely craft belongings suggest a very important person.
Redwalds helmet

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Beneath the great hall, there is another new development, the recently completed, where all is not necessarily as is seems. This modern display is designed to challenge visitors preconceptions about Africa and its people. Most of the items on display here have been clearly identified and explained. But the collection of one case is still shrouded in mystery. It contains strange objects, never seen before. It was assumed that these mysterious objects were vicious weapons from Africas so called savage past. They fitted into the traditional Victorian view of what they referred to as the dark continent. Weapons were exhibited in large quantities in the late XIX century and not really to show off their esthetic value as more to give people an idea of the savagism of the Dark Continent. They werent used in hunting or in warfare, but it is still not known what they exactly meant for the Africans. The museum prefers to acknowledge a mystery rather than accept a convenient label. Mozambique is a country recovering from a devastating civil war which ended in 1992. To encourage people to give up their guns, a project called TAE (Transforming Arms into Tools) swaps any guns people hand in for tools to help them in farming or building. Four Mozambican artists, Kester, Hilario Nhatugueja, Fiel dos Santos and Adelino Serafim Mate, worked together to create the Tree of Life from handed-in weapons. A throne, made by Kester, has also been made from these weapons and is currently touring the UK. This amazing throne was made by the artist Kester from these handed-in weapons. It includes guns from Russia, Britain and Germany. gallery. These creations belong to the African

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