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British Museum

British Museum front entrance

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

Cavalry from the Parthenon Frieze, West II, 23, British Museum.

The British Museum in London is one of the world's largest and master important museums of
human history and culture. It has more than seven million objects from all continents. They
illustrate and document the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. As with all
other national museums and art galleries in Britain, the Museum charges no admission fee.
The British Museum set up in 1753 and opened in 1759. It was the first museum in the world to
be open to everyone. The museum gradually grew over the next two hundred years. It has nearly
six million visitors a year and is the third most popular art museum in the world.
Some of the museum's most popular and important exhibits include the Rosetta Stone and
the Elgin Marbles.

History
The history of the British Museum began with the English physicist Hans Sloane, who died aged
93 in 1753. During his life, he had collected many important things from all around the world.
When he died, he did not want his collection to be split up between his relatives. He sold his
collection to the parliament of King George II. The parliament set up the British Museum to hold
the collection. By the time he died, Sloane had collected over 80,000 objects from all over the

world including Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Americas. The collection was mostly books and
manuscripts. There were many important archaeological pieces included as well.

The Rosetta Stone on display in the Museum in 1874.

The government looked at many possible places to build the new museum, including
Buckingham House, which later became Buckingham Palace.[5]Eventually a building
called Montagu House was chosen. The Museum opened on the 15th of January 1759, although
all visitors had to be shown around by stewards. Over the years the museum began to concentrate
more and more on historical objects and sculptures. For this reason they were given the Rosetta
Stone by King George III in 1802. The Rosetta Stone had previously been important to French
historians trying understand the Hieroglyph language written by the Ancient Egyptians.[7] In 1816
the Museum acquired the Elgin Marbles from Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin. Elgin had taken
them from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece several years earlier. Many people disagreed with the
way Elgin took them from Greece. They compared his acts to looting and vandalism. People still
argue about this issue today. In 1822 King George III donated the entire Royal Library to the
museum. This contained over 65,000 books and pamphlets. In 1823 the original building was
demolished and work began on new buildings to hold the ever growing collection. Some of the
space was freed up when the National Gallery opened in 1824, as many of the Museum's
paintings and drawings were moved there.

New building and expansion

A drawing of the Museum under construction in 1828

The Museums collection continued to get bigger over the following years, and more and more
buildings were added to hold the new objects. Important discoveries by people working for the
British Museum included the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus by Charles Newton in 1857 and
the Temple of Artemis in 1869. Many things found at these sites were taken to the Museum,
where they have remained ever since.[10] In 1852 the British Museum's famous round Reading
Room was opened. It had enough space to display a million books at once. [11] The collection
continued to get bigger and bigger. Eventually theNatural History Museum was set up in 1887 to
hold the natural parts of the Museum's collection. It was around this time that electric lights were
first put in the Museum. It was one of the first public places in England to do so.[12] In the early
1900s the Museum's board of directors bought all the houses surrounding it, knocked them all
down and built over them. In 1939, just before the start of World War II, most of the Museum's
exhibits were taken to other places because the directors were worried the Nazis might bomb the
Museum during the Blitz. The exhibits were stored in old London Underground stations, as well
as other places.[13] The evacuation proved to be a good idea, as parts of the Museum were
destroyed by bombs in 1940.[14]

Into the modern day

The completed Great Court in 2007.

Much of the 1950s was spent fixing the parts of the Museum destroyed by the bombing, and
bringing back the pieces that had been taken away. During all this time the collection continued
to get bigger, although space was slowly running out for all the books being brought in. The
British Library was set up in 1973 to deal with this problem. [9] In 1972 the Museum
was loaned the Tutankhamun collection from the Museum of Cairo. They held a big exhibition
called 'The Treasures of Tutankhamun' and it attracted over 1.5 million people to come and see it.
[15]
In 1998 the central courtyard, which had been unused before, was turned into the Great Court
with the Reading Room at its centre. The Great Court has over 2 acres of space under its roof.
This makes it the largest covered public space in Europe.[16] It was opened by Queen Elizabeth
II in January 2000.[16] Since then the Museum has collected more things to do with history,
rather than more modern pieces. They now have a large collection of Roman British, Ancient
Greek and Ancient Egyptian artefacts, as well as objects from many other cultures and times
around the world.[17]

Departments
A giant sculpture of Ramesses II. It is nearly 2.7 metres (10 foot) tall and weighs about 7.5 tonnes. It is on
display in Room 4 of the British Museum's Egyptian department.

Because of its extremely large size the Museum's collection is split into many parts,
called departments. The departments have changed many times over the years. They are
sometimes merged together, split into smaller departments or renamed and changed altogether.

Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan


The British Museums department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan is one of the biggest collections of
Ancient Egyptian art in the world.[18] Only the Egyptian Museum in Cairo has a bigger collection.
They cover Egyptian and Sudanese history from around 10000 BC all the way to the 12th century
AD, a period of around 12,000 years.[18]
Around 150 of the objects in the Egyptian department were part of the first collection which was
given to the Museum by Hans Sloane in 1753.[19] In 1801 the British defeated the French, led
by Napoleon Bonaparte, at the battle of the Nile. After the battle, British forces took lots of
Ancient Egyptian artifacts from the defeated French. They were given to the British Museum in
1803.[19] These objects included the famous Rosetta Stone.
The department continued to get bigger, paying for archaeologists to go to Egypt and Sudan.
They did this until 2001 when the Egyptian government made it much harder for Museums to
take historical artefacts back to their own country.[20] The collection now has over 110,000
exhibits.[21]

Department of Greece and Rome

Statue of Maussollos, king of Caria. It is on display in Room 21 of the Greek and Rome department of the
British Museum.

The British Museum's department of Greece and Rome is one of the biggest collections of Ancient
Greek andRoman objects in the world.[22] The objects come from nearly 4000 years of European
history, from 3200 BC all the way to the 4th century AD.[22]
It contains parts of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; the Mausoleum at
Halikarnassos and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. It also had many pieces taken from
the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Like the rest of the Museum the department gets most of its
collection fromexcavations or the acquiring of private collections.[23] Some of the earliest objects
in the collection were bought from the collection of Sir William Hamilton in 1772. [23] In recent
years the Museum's rules on how it can get objects have become much stricter. Other countries
rules on allowing Museums to take objects away have also got stricter. This has meant the British
Museum has gradually taken fewer items each year in recent times.[23]

Department of the Middle East

The Cyrus Cylinder on display in Room 52 of the British Museum. It is often seen as the first written
example of human rights from anywhere in the world.

The British Museum Department of the Middle East has the largest collection
of Mesopotamian art in the world, outside Iraq. It has some 300,000 objects,[24] covering
the Neolithic period until present. It has objects from all over the Middle East including
Mesopotamia (Iraq), Anatolia (Turkey), Levant (Syria, Lebanon and Jordan) and some pieces
from central Asia. The Assyrian and Sumerian collections are also some of the biggest in the
world.[25]
Key objects in the collection include:

The Cyrus Cylinder, a cylindrical scroll from 539 BC. Written on it is the story of Cyrus,
king of Babylon. He gave rights back to the people of Assyria after the previous king enslaved
them and burned their temples

Several ten feet tall statues of lions and bulls with human heads.

The fifteen foot high bronze gates of the fortress of Galawat.

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