British Museum, London

1 more image

In the Egyptian sculpture gallery (the large gallery nr 4 on the ground floor) I discovered a beautiful bronze seated cat from 600 BC which was not there at my previous visit.
It is the "Gayer-Anderson cat" which was given to the museum in 1940 and was analysed in 2007 with X-ray fluorescence.

Since I discovered Egyptian art I have been impressed by the cat-goddess Bastet and this cat is a particularly fine example of the many statues of cats from ancient Egypt. It has gold rings in the ears and nose, a silvered collar round its neck. The eye sockets, which are now empty, would originally have held eyes made of stone or glass.
Funny is the scarab beetle on the cat's head.
Cat-goddess Bastet or Bast was much honored at the temple of Bubastis where there was a festival attracting several hundred thousand visitors according to Herodotus!

2 more images

On my first visit to the British Museum it was a shock to discover the body of this man who died in the "Late Predynastic period" around 3400 BC.
The body of this Predynastic Egyptian man, probably from Gebelein, was placed, in a contracted position, in a desert grave in direct contact with the dry sand.

It is therefore not a mummy in the sense of the Egyptian mummies who, starting around 2700 BC, underwent the elaborate mummification process. Here it was the desiccation and absence of bacteria which preserved remarkably well the body, the nails and also the somewhat red hair. It is due the colour of the hair that the name of "ginger mummy" is used. The mummy is surrounded by burial goods, tools, as well as pottery once filled with food for his afterlife.

The body is on display since 1900 in a reconstructed Egyptian grave-pit.
In the mid-eighties a treatment has been applied to the mummy because in some areas the skin was cracked and lifting away from the underlying bone and tissue.
It goes without saying that the body is checked and monitored regularly.
Ginger mummy in Room 64 is probably the most photographed item in the museum (photo 3).

Interesting in the same room is a basket coffin from the 1st Dynasty showing a mistake of the beginning artificial mummification. The body probable rotted by the moisture trapped in the basket; only bones are left (photo 2).

It was my first visit to this magnificent former library of King George III located on the right side of the Great Court. The books from the King's Library are now at the British Library at St Pancras. The books you see on the shelves are from the House of Commons.

I liked it because I was always a fan and user of libraries (before the time of computers) and because this large room nr 1 on the Ground floor shows thousands objects demonstrating how people in Britain understood their world during the period of Enlightenment. Objects on display reveal the way in which collectors, antiquaries and travellers during this great age of discovery viewed and classified objects from the world around them.

The Enlightenment was an age of reason and learning that flourished across Europe and America from about 1680 to 1820.
What makes me feel sad is the fact that Enlightenment has now to be confined to a museum gallery and is no more the usual way of thinking.

3 more images

My first visit goes back to the early sixties so that I have seen on my successive visits a fantastic transformation from a somewhat dusty, old fashion, museum to the present outstanding museological achievement with the Great Court.
The success of the British Museum, with more than 6 million visitors/year, is certainly due to the quality of its collections, of which about 50.000 items are shown over 75.000 m2 with a number of world highlights and also disputed items like the Parthenon marbles, which do attract a range of visitors interested by this controversy.

Furthermore, and not without importance, the entry is free; I have never seen queues as there is no ticket or security check. If at the opening there are people waiting at the main entrance Russell Street, there is a second entrance on the back at Montague Place.
What is also great is the fact that on the contrary of several London museums, a.o. National Gallery, taking photos is allowed here.

The facilities are convenient and there are enough lifts for less young legs like mine.
One thing I don't like are the two "court cafés" behind the "Reading Room" of the Great Court; makes me think of factory canteens. Better is the Gallery Café near the Ancient Greece rooms (11 & 12) on the Ground floor.
If you have money you can go to the chic Court restaurant at level 3. Actually around the museum there are lot of places to eat and drink.

On my visit begin of July the crowd was huge, especially in the Egyptian sculpture halls on the Ground floor (rooms n° 4). Schools had transformed this part of the museum in a play ground. As long as Ramesses the Great does not complain about the noise …
I added a video from August 2011.

Open daily 10.00 - 17.30 h. Selected galleries are open until 20.30 h on Fridays.
Closed 1 January, Good Friday and 24, 25 & 26 December.

From the crowds met on the Ground floor (rooms 4) with the Egyptian sculptures and at Level 3 with galleries 61 - 66 mainly dedicated to life, death, afterlife in ancient Egypt and Nubia, this department is certainly the most visited of all the British Museum.

It is the second world's largest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but only 4% of its Egyptian holdings are on display; what is a pitty I think.

Best known is certainly the Rosetta Stone, on public display at the British Museum since 1802, which contributed greatly to the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyph writing in 1822 by the British scientist Thomas Young and the French scholar Jean-François Champollion credited as the principal translator.
The dispute which arose over the fate of French archaeological and scientific discoveries in Egypt after the surrender of the French troops in Egypt in 1801 is captivating for those who like to know how the British Museum and Le Louvre built up their Egyptian collections.

The Rosetta stone arrived in the British museum more than two centuries ago but now Mr. Zahi Hawass, chief of the Antiquities in Cairo, is aggressively claiming its return to Egypt!
It is not the only artifact claimed by Mr. Hawass; there are some thousand objects he wants to get back including the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin. It sounds a bit strange knowing that the Egyptian museums have already no room to display thousands and thousands antic objects (security is a new problem as seen on 28/01/2011).

Much crowded by visitors are rooms 62-63 at Level 3. Here is on display a selection of the 140 mummies and coffins which make of the British Museum the largest collection outside Cairo.
Best known is the "Ginger mummy" in Room 64 (ref. my tip).

The controversy started at the time of Melina Mercouri and increased in such way that the British Museum feels now obliged to put leaflets in the Parthenon room (n° 18) as justification of keeping the Elgin marbles.
The British Museum's position is the following:
"The Parthenon sculptures are integral to the Museum's purpose as a world museum telling the story of human cultural achievement…
The current division of the surviving sculptures in eight countries … allows different and complementary stories to be told about them, focussing respectively on their importance for the history of Athens and Greece, and their significance for world culture."

I think the British Museum is right but for more general reasons:

1° Museums worldwide have protected artefacts from destruction.
Just an example about Athens: in the seventies, I have seen four of the original Caryatides on the Acropolis. They were so corroded by the air pollution that they had to be put inside a museum and replaced by copies.
In the British Museum, room 19, there is one Caryatid in a much better state than those of Athens. What would be the condition of the Elgin marbles if left in Athens?

2° Museums gave the opportunity and still give the opportunity to millions of people, who had/have not the means to travel to Greece or Egypt, to see, close to their home, artefacts of past civilisations. Without museums such as the British Museum ancient cultures would still be ignored by most people.

3° These controversies hide economical interests linked to tourism. A number of countries on the southern border of the Mediterranean Sea - I do not include Greece among them - show interest for their past civilisations only since tourists want to spent money to visit them.

You could spend years in this fabulous museum and still not see everything there is to see. Although there are over 6.5 million objects owned by the museum "only" 50,000 are on display at any given time. There are over 100 galleries spread over several floors.

You may be best to start out seeing what interests you most or the top 10 highlights which include: Egyptian Mummies, Sculptures of th Parthenon, Rosetta Stone, Nereid Monument, Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, Lewis Chessmen, Lindow Man, Benin Bronzes, and Cassiobury Park Turret Clock. My favorites were the Egyptian Mummies!

The main collections of the museum include: Greece and Rome, Ancient Near East, East Surope, Medieval and Modern Europe, Treaures of Ancient Egypt, Africa, The Americas, and one of my favorites, Asia.

There is something here for everyone to enjoy and I'd consider it a must see in London. I'd wear comfortable shoes and allow several hours. Ninety minute tours of the highlights (charge payable) start daily at 10:30 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m. There are free "eye-opener" tours that last about 30-40 minutes, and you can also choose from a variety of audio sets (which I recommend), including one especially for children.

Hours:

Daily 10 a.m. - 5:30 p.m., until 8:30 p.m. every Friday (except Good Friday).

Since this is a national museum, there is no admission charge, except for some special exhibitions.

Please note that all visitor information is correct as of this update.

Unreal; one of London’s top attractions, and absolutely free. I have been there several times but have not even scratched the surface of the millions of things to see, peek at the Rosetta Stone, and move on to Aztec mosaic masks or the head-smashed ‘Lindow Man’ (a 1st-century unfortunate found in a peat bog in 1984) and I found that I still had over seven million other items for subsequent visits. Watch for worthwhile 20- and 50-minute eyeOpener tours offered for free too.