British Museum
London
The easiest way to travel from Europe to Africa to Asia to the
Americas and back again in just one afternoon is to go to the
British Museum in London. Still standing on its original site in
Bloomsbury, London, since 1759, the British Museum is one of the
most important museums in the world, with collections of
historic and cultural significance from all continents. It is
here that you'll find Cleopatra's mummy, the Mausoleum of
Halikarnassos, the Rosetta Stone, textiles and weapons from
Aztec and Inca tribes, the entire history of coinage from 7BC to
today as well as thousands of sculptures, drawings, paintings,
prints, and ceramics.
The British Museum was actually started when naturalist and physician Sir Hans Sloane died in 1753. His will had entrusted his collection of 40,000 books, 7,000 manuscripts, artifacts from Egypt, Rome, Greece, and other ancient Asian civilizations, as well as several specimens of dried leaves and plants, to the nation of Great Britain and Ireland, under the care of King George II.
The King then established the first museum in the world that was
owned neither by church nor king and allowed free admission. It
was also the first kind of museum whose goal was to amass
collections for exhibit from all over the world and from
different periods in time.
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Currently, the British museum houses more than 13.5 million objects in almost 100 galleries stretched out over 588,000 square feet. Its expansive collection of Egyptian artifacts, found in the museum's seven permanent galleries and more undisplayed, is second only to the Egyptian museum in Cairo. It boasts several colossal stone heads and busts of former pharaohs in its special gallery for monumental sculpture, and over 140 mummies, including that of the Queen of the Nile, Cleopatra of Thebes. You can also find the Rosetta Stone here, a slab with three different translations of a single text, from which linguists learned how to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.
There are several exhibits on the different periods of Greek
culture. Several vases, statues and figurines, plates and bowls,
water jars, perfume bottles, rings and earrings, shields, among
others, are separated according to the Greek Archaic, Classical,
Hellenistic and Orientalizing periods, showing the evolution of
Greek culture over time. This is the norm in the British museum,
where you can tell a civilization's history just by looking at
the exhibits from the different periods. It is as if the British
museum had captured the history of the entire world in its
rooms.
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This, of course, eventually didn't sit well with the countries
that the artifacts originated from. The argument is that these
artifacts belong to their own countries and it's a pity that
they're too far from those cultures they helped shape. For
example, Nigeria is claiming its right to the Benin Bronzes,
Greece is demanding the return of the Elgin or Parthenon
Marbles, and Egypt is trying to reclaim the Rosetta Stone.
The British Museum stands by its policy of refusing to return
objects that enter the museum, objects that would have been
destroyed or lost when left to their own devices. Seeing all the
marvelous civilizations on display, it would be hard to imagine
if the British Museum did start returning all these antiquities
to their country of origin. There might eventually be nothing
left in the museum. That possibility is quite a pity, too.
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