Today the British Museum has been celebrated with a Google Doodle, 255 years
to the day after it first opened its doors.
Back in 1759, it was housed in the Bloomsbury mansion,
Montagu House (on the same site as today's building), with a collection based
on the bequest of the physician, naturalist and collector Sir Hans Sloane.
Initially it attracted 5,000 visitors per year.
14/01/2014, the museum announced that a record 6.7
million people flocked through its doors in 2013 and beating the previous
annual record of 5.9 million in 2008. This was partly attributed to a string of
superb exhibitions including Ice Age Art and Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum,
the latter of which was seen by 471,000 people.
As well as the temporary blockbusters though, the British
Museum has a first-rate collection on permanent display. Here below we pick British
Museum's top five masterpieces. The British Museum is open daily from
10.00 to 17.30 and is free to enter
The Parthenon Sculptures
Aka, the Elgin Marbles. Purchased by Lord Elgin in 1816,
these sculptures survive from the ruin of the Parthenon, the fifth-century BC
temple to Athena set high above Athens on the rock of the Acropolis. They are a
source of continued diplomatic dispute with Greece, the British Museum refusing
to countenance repatriation and with good reason. These 75m of sculpted frieze
are arguably the BM’s greatest treasure.
The Oxus Treasure
This hoard of 180 gold and
silver items, dating from the Persian empire of the 5th century BC,
is perhaps the finest surviving collection of Achaemenid metalwork. One of its
prize pieces is the glitteringly intricate model of a manned, four-horse
chariot. Not really until the Renaissance creations of Cellini would gold smithery
reach such peaks of sophistication again.
The Rosetta stone
The key to the decipherment of hieroglyphs after
countless centuries of head scratching and bemusement. The inscription on the
stone isn’t especially exciting in itself: a decree affirming the royal cult of
the 13 years old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation in 196
BC. But the fact it was written in three different scripts hieroglyphs, demotic
Egyptian and Greek allowed modern scholars to begin to decipher hieroglyphs for
the first time.
The Lewis
Chessmen
These 82 chess pieces were
carved from walrus ivory and whale tooth in the late 12th century
and found on a beach on the windswept Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, in
1831. The pieces represent the highest classes of society and may well have
been made for a medieval Norwegian king, as a symbolic display of his sovereign
power (the Isle of Lewis then being part of the Kingdom of Norway).
Mummy of Katebet
It’s not easy picking one
from the BM’s fine collection of Egyptian mummies, but this particular example
from Late 18th Dynasty Thebes is a longstanding favorite. It preserves the body
of 'The Chantress of Amun’ a well-regarded singer who performed at temple
rituals. Her mummy's rich outer trappings include a gilded mask, elaborate wig
and real rings on the fingers of her carved hands.