THE BRITISH MUSEUM

 

The BM, as it is known, is quite simply one of the very best museums in the world. It also often feels like the whole world is in there so it's a very good idea to know what you are looking for before you go. When it first opened in the 18th century people WERE expected to know what it was all about before they visited. You couldn't possibly know that now but do have a look through what I think are some of the highlights. Also, the BEST thing to do, especially for the first time visitor, is to go on one of the Highlights tours. You never know, I may be your guide! If not, it will be one of my colleagues.

The British Museum is the oldest public museum in the world. The original collection was put together by Sir Hans Sloane who died in 1753. On his travels he collected over 79,000 objects! One of the things he brought to this country was the cocoa bean. He also invented hot chocolate, and used to recommend it to his patients! The Great Court, which is in the centre of the museum was only opened in 2000. The roof is new and the British Library Reading Room, which now houses temporary exhibitions and a reference library, is where Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital and where Dickens got a ticket to study on his 18th birthday. This is what it looks like with snow on the roof.

It is from the Rosetta Stone that hieroglyphics were deciphered. The museum is full of hieroglyphics but this is different as the text is also in Greek. The Greek gave us the meaning and from it the hieroglyphics were eventually translated. Why is this so important? Because the Egyptians wrote so much in hieroglyphics and writing gives us information. Without writing we can only guess what something is about.

 

The Parthenon is a temple dedicated to Athena that was built in Athens in 432BC. If you're thinking that you already seen tons of sculpture like this, you're right. This is the Greek Classical style that was used all over Greece and then copied by the Romans. You only need look at the British Museum itself to see the classical style. The thing about the Parthenon is that it all started here, so it is one of the most influential buildings in Western Art. It was considered much more realistic than anything that went before.

 

They are often called the Elgin Marbles after Lord Elgin who brought them back here having bought them from the Turks who occupied Athens at the time. The Greek government have asked for them to be returned many times and it fact the poet Lord Byron campaigned for them to be returned 200 years ago.

 

There's a great deal more to the sculptures than this and they're certainly worth spending a bit of time on. (By the way, Lord Elgin's nose rotted away and he used to wear a leather nose!)

The British Museum has a splendid collection of mummies. One of the most fascinating bodies, however, predates mummification by about 2,000 years. Alive about 5,500 years ago in Egypt, Ginger was preserved by natural dessication, in other words just by drying out. The egyptians believed that in order for the Ka, rather like the soul, to reach the afterlife the body of the person had to remain intact for the Ka to inhabit. So Ginger (so called for his still red hair) isn't a mummy, he's just very well preserved!. He also has fantastic teeth; you can see what sugar in our diet has done to our teeth.

 

The mummies are amazing. The mummification process lasted 70 days with the first 40 days spent drying the body out. The lungs, liver intestines and stomach were removed and the brain was removed with a hook that went up your nostril and when you whisked it, your brain was turned to liquid. I once did a tour in the Museum when one man on the tour told me that he tried it out on a dead beaver on his kitchen table. And it worked!

 

The Museum has some beautiful sculptures from Assyria, which is today Northern Iraq. One of my favourites is the Lion Hunt Relief which shows King Ashurbanipal hunting lions. They present an incredibly vivid and dramatic image of the struggle between the brute force of the lions and the intelligence and skill of the hunters. Especially powerful is the lioness that has been paralysed by an arrow in her spine and is dragging her back legs behind her.

I love the Lewis Chessman. You will have seen them if you have seen the film of 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' as they played Wizards' Chess with a copy of them. They were probably made in Norway and we think a Viking merchant was shipwrecked with them on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.

 

My favourite is this one, the Viking berserker who is biting his shield. The berserkers were the most terrifying of the already terrifying Viking soldiers. It seems that they dressed in bearskin or wolkskin and wore no armour. It is thought that they either drank a potion or ate magic mushrooms that caused them to hallucinate and lose all fear. So in battle they were fearless and as scary as hell. They bit their shields which is what this one is doing here. Some of us remember the recently deceased Oliver Postgate who produced fantastic children's tv programmes. I grew up with Noggin the Nog, whose Viking Sagas are based directly on the Lewis Chessmen.

The Vindolanda Tablets were voted the number 1 British item in the British Museum in a BBC programme in 2003. Just like the Rosetta Stone, it importance lies in its writing. Vindolanda was a fortress town on Hadrian's Wall. The tablets were ordinary letters, to soldiers from their families, spy reports commenting on what a strange lot of soldiers the British were (it refers to us as Little Britons!) and there is even a birthday party invitation, It's a bit like going through your recycling bin!

 

The Sutton Hoo Treasure comes from what is thought to be a ship burial site in the East of England. Scholars and historians can only guess what it is from the evidence found at the burial site but that makes it like the most exciting detective story. The coins found there, which were probably payment for the ghostly oarsmen, seem to date the hoard to around 625AD. If you have ever read Beowulf this will feel familiar.

 

Lindow Man

In 1984 a body was found in a peat bog in Lindow in Cheshire. After extensive tests it became clear that he was brutally murdered, possibly sacrificed about 2,000 years ago. His body is so well preserved that you have see clearly that the poor man was garrotted and that his skull was fractured. A model was made of what we think he would have looked like, which gives an incredible insight into what our ancestors looked like. In fact he looks like my brothers! He has the same cheekbones, thick dark hair and swarthy complexions that we have all inherited from our Cornish ancestors. You can find out more about typical faces from the regions of Britain from the Channel 4 programme, The Face of Britain.

 

The Crystal Skull

When the film Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull came out I was so excited when he talked about "the Mitchell Hedges skull. I saw it in the British Museum." In fact, from from being Aztec it is most like a 19th century fake. It's still beautiful though.

 

A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 100 OBJECTS

is a series of 100 BBC radio programmes on Radio 4 starting on January 18th 2010, with each programme looking at n object chosen by museum Director, Neil McGregor and the museum curators. Not to be missed! The series has been described by the controller of Radio 4 as "by quite a significant margin the most ambitious and thrilling project I've ever been involved in." More Information >