Atestat British Museum

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ARGUMENT……………………………………..…3 THE BRITISH MUSEUM…………………………..4 THE EGYPTIAN GALLERY………………………5 THE MUMMY GALLERY……….…………..5 THE ROSETTA STONE……………………...7 THE BRONZE AGE GALLERY ………..………....8 LINDOW MAN……………………..………...8 THE ROMANS…………………………..……9 EXHIBITS ORIGINATED IN BRITAIN…….……10 THE AFRICAN GALLERY ……………..………...11 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………….12 2

Transcript of Atestat British Museum

Page 1: Atestat British Museum

ARGUMENT……………………………………..…3

THE BRITISH MUSEUM…………………………..4

THE EGYPTIAN GALLERY………………………5

THE MUMMY GALLERY……….…………..5

THE ROSETTA STONE……………………...7

THE BRONZE AGE GALLERY ………..………....8

LINDOW MAN……………………..………...8

THE ROMANS…………………………..……9

EXHIBITS ORIGINATED IN BRITAIN…….……10

THE AFRICAN GALLERY ……………..………...11

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………….12

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ARGUMENT

The British Museum is the oldest, and one of the largest museums in the world. Where

else can you see some of the greatest treasures of all time under one roof? You will be

fascinated by the Egyptian Mummies, and inspired by the superb exhibition of prints and

drawings which changes several times a year. The British Museum is a vast storehouse of

treasures.

Six million people visit the British museum every year, making it London's greatest

tourist attraction.  It was built in the first half of the nineteenth century, at a time when Britain's

empire building activities were putting more and more peoples and lands under British

control.   This was also a period of incredible curiosity in many different areas including

science, technology and history.   The military and economic strength of the country allowed

private collectors and the government to amass first rate collections of artifacts from many of

the world's major civilizations, including the Rosetta stone from Egypt, the Elgin marbles from

the Parthenon in Greece, statues and tablets from Mesopotamia as well as Mayan and other

cultural items from Central America.

Today, the British Museum is home to no less than six and a half million objects and

has ninety four permanent and temporary exhibition galleries. An Education Department

provides a wide range of services for adults and children. Other departments are Coins and

Medals, Egyptian Antiquities, Ethnography, Greek and Roman Antiquities, Japanese Art,

Medieval and Later Art, Oriental Antiquities, Pre-Historic and Romano-British Antiquities,

Prints and Drawings, and Western Asiatic Antiquities.

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The heart of London is home to one of the

greatest collections of antiquities the world has ever

seen. The museum was born in 1753 then held at a

different site. The British Museum as we know it today

was built at the end of the XIX century for an aristocrat,

who wanted a country home at the edge of the town.

Today, more than 6 million visitors pour through these doors each year to view some of the 7

million items in 20 different galleries. The inner court yard at the British Museum was hidden

to the public from 1867, but its reopen in 2000, created the largest, covered, public square in

London. Almost a hector in size, the space was designed by Lord Norman Foster and features

an extraordinary computer-designed glass and steel roof.

The 11 kilometer of steel sustains 350 tones of glass. The central reading room is being

wrapped in limestone and surrounded by shops and cafes. By day, the interplay of light and

shape transforms the space in which the old and the new coexist in a perfect balance. As

darkness falls, it becomes an arena of drama and mystery.

The museum was opened in 1759 under its present

name in Montague House, but the acquisition of the library of

George III in 1823 necessitated larger quarters. The first

wing of the new building was completed in 1829, the

quadrangle in 1852, and the great domed Reading Room in

1857. Later, other additions were built. Long a part of the

museum, the British Library was established as a separate

entity by act of Parliament in 1973 and moved to new

London quarters in 1997. After the relocation of the library, the famous Reading Room

underwent extensive renovations, including the opening (2000) of a surrounding glassed-in

Great Court and the installation of a billowing transparent roof, both designed by Lord Norman

Foster . The space houses a gallery and a restaurant, as well as two small theaters and an

education center beneath the courtyard.

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Just off the great court, at the

front of the museum, lies part of the

oldest department of all, containing

some of the most ancient exhibits. There

are monumental statues, columns and

friezes evoking more than 4.000 years of

ancient Egyptian history. It has always

been a popular part of the museum, even

for the Victorians and the exhibits have remained largely unchanged today and still the crowds

are drawn by these magnificent collections.

But it is up to what lays up-stairs, in the “mummy gallery”, that helps visitors to feel

even closer to the Pharaohs. They are surrounded by mummified remains of the people from

this ancient civilization. Museum staff dismissed suggestions that the gallery has a certain

atmosphere.

However, there is one exhibit about which they are less

than free to talk about. It is referred to, for reasons of safety,

simply by its catalogue number: EA22542. But over the years it is

become known as the “unlucky mummy”. Although it contains no

mummified remains, the exhibit has a painted-wooded

sarcophagus lid, thought to be from the tomb of the mysterious

early ruler of ancient Egypt. She was known to later Egyptologists

as queen Nitokris. It is said that she committed suicide after

massacring hundreds of Egyptian nobles to revenge the killing of

her brother. Her tomb was cursed and laid silent for thousands of

years until it was pillaged by thieves, who sold their treasure to

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unsuspecting tourists. In the 1860, four young Englishmen bought

the coffin lid. They were on holiday and thought that they have found

the perfect souvenir of their visit in Egypt. However, within months,

three were dead and the fourth has lost his arm in a shooting

accident.

A famous clear-sighted of the time, Madam Elena Blavatkaia

pronounced the coffin lid an evil influence. As a result, the lid was

passed on to the British Museum, but that solved nothing. When the

museum had it photographed, the photographer was so horrified by

what he saw in the developing tray, that he killed himself.

The man who transported the lid to the museum died within a week. The story

continued right through the XX century. An expert, who was making a detailed study of the

coffin lid, was on board the Titanic. The museum blames press sensationalism and public

superstition for the stories, and deny the rumor that the curse of the “unlucky mummy” has

meant that the staff turn-over in the mummy gallery is higher than anywhere else in the

museum.

The British museum has a store of over 7 million artifacts in its possession. Gathered

from around the world, they represent the highest achievements civilizations have reached in

architecture, art, religion and culture. The mummy gallery is just one part of the massive

Egyptian department, that few get the chance to investigate the rest, which is stored in the

basement below.

The maze corridors and stores from

the Egyptian department is where they keep

the biggest collection of mummies outside the

Cairo. The Egyptians believed that the soul

returned to the body after death and they

learned to preserve the bodies by embalming

them and wrapping them in canvas to produce

the famous Egyptian mummies.

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Much of the information that

Egyptologists now take for granted about this

fascinating civilization would have been

unavailable if it hadn’t been for another

remarkable discovery that the museum now has

on display upstairs.

In the XVIII century, when archeologists

went to discover and retrieve Egyptians

remains, they were totally baffled by the

writing. Hieroglyphics or picture writing should’ve been easy to understand, but it wasn’t,

especially since everyone assumed it wasn’t a form of writing, but mysterious religious

symbolisms.

To solve the mystery of the real meaning of hieroglyphics, experts had to relay on an

accidental discovery of a chunk from an old wall, in the northern Egyptian port, Rosetta. Just

over a meter tall and one meter wide, it contained Greek writing that suggested it was a rather

boring local decree. But there were two other forms of writing, both of which were

hieroglyphs.

It was in the early XIX century, that Frenchman,

Jean Francois Champollion, identified a vital phrase. It

showed that the three different scripts were in fact the same

text. Today, as in the past, thousands of people stand in

front of the glass case. For some, the stone holds even more

significance, as well as holding the key to unlocking Egypt.

It is suggested that the stone reveals the darkest secrets of

parallel universe.

Many people got nervous when they were in front of the stone, claiming they saw

ghosts. There will always be strange theories surrounding such an important ancient artifact,

but no one will deny that and the work of Champollion unlocked the secrets of the Egyptian

way of life and contributed to the interest among experts and public alike, in the world of the

pharaohs.

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On the upper floor, just around the corner

from the ancient Egyptian galleries, visitors are drawn

to a darken corner, where a corpse resides. These are

the remains of a man famous in death, but of his life

we know almost nothing. His last moments alive are

surrounded by mystery, which can only be solved

because of the peat that preserved his body for 25

centuries. To the ancient Britains, the marshland

around Lindow, near the modern city of Manchester,

was a sacred location, a place to worship their gods.

Centuries later, in 1984, while digging up

peat, a worker came across the remains of a leg in his day’s load. They went back to the bog

and found a large piece of skin, showing through the peat layers. They have found a body. And

once the police confirmed it was out of their jurisdiction, caretakers from the British Museum

brought the remains back to London. They knew the body was old, but it took carbon-fourteen-

dating to establish that the man from the bog had lived 2500 years ago.

The body is now stable, but it is still

sensitive to the light, which causes problems for

the museum’s caretakers. Under normal

circumstances, they couldn’t find skin, hair,

brain, intestines. All of those have been

preserved. Experts from the British Museum

think they know how died. It was a very careful

deliberate act, which leads us to think it was a

sacrifice.

The true story of the Lindow man remains one of the great museum mysteries and

because of that will continue to be a source of fascination and speculation.

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The Great Dish from the Mildenhall treasure

When they arrived in 55 B.C., the Romans changed the course of British history,

making the wild, wet island part of an empire that stretched across Europe. The British

Museum has a large collection to reflect this important age. There is plenty here to show that

the Romans who lived in Britain brought with them some of the comforts of home. They drank

wine, grown in Mediterranean vineyards and at least one very important person ate off this

silver dinner service. But what sinister event could have made the rich roman abandoned his

fabulous treasure in a field near the town of Mildenhall, in the county of Suffolk?

In 1942, Britain was in the depths of war and every available hector of land is being

cultivated. Farmer Sidney Folk wanted to plant an extra crop of sugar-beet and hired

ploughman Gordon Butcher. Butcher knew that he had to set

the plough deeper that usual. When the iron tip hit something

metallic, he stopped and pulled out what appeared to be some

old metal plates. They were black with age and covered in

mud, but Ford realized they were silver and did not want to

hand over the treasure to the authorities. So he told Butcher

the dishes were worthless and hid them away.

After the war, he decided to polish the silver for his own table. Unfortunately for him, a

dinner guest spotted the treasure and persuaded him to hand them over to the British Museum.

Both Ford and Butcher, received one thousand pounds, a modest reward for discovering what

turned out to be the biggest roman treasure.

The Mildenhall treasure comprised of 34 items, clearly the priced possessions of a

wealthy mercer, diplomat or official. The reason they ended up in that field is still shrouded in

mystery. Dated to the second century A.D, they come from a time of peace and prosperity, and

there seems no reason for the owner to have abandoned these beautiful and valuable items. So

why were they conceded to the soil? Were the valuable plates at the center of a family dispute,

or were they stolen?

One theory is that the owner wasn’t frightened, just over-precautious. When caught

away on business, he chose to burry his valuables, because he didn’t trust his servants not to

steal them. We can only imagine his despair, if on return he couldn’t locate the spot where he

had buried them. We can never know for sure what circumstances gave us such a magnificent

treasure.

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Redwald’s helmet

With over 7 million items, the British Museum has an enviable reputation. Although it

holds treasures from around the world, some of its finest exhibits originated in Britain itself.

Across the land, mysterious mounds called tumuls are still evidence. It was in the summer of

1939, that land-owner, Mrs. Pretty, asked local historian Basel Brown to open the tumuls that

had mystified her for so long. What they found would astonish the world.

The largest mound of all contained a perfect influent of a great boat that had once held

the body of a British chief, possibly a king, dated from the fifth century. There was no skeleton

to offer a clue to his identity. But a big number of belongings allowed the museum to begin to

piece together the story of the man and the masked helmet.

The museum’s Conservation Department is still engaged in the task of recovering and

evaluating the possessions of the great man that arrived still encrusted with mud. Conservators

use x-rays to show them what lies beneath. The organic material doesn’t show up in x-rays, so

you can tell the exact shape of the object.

Some of the items found in the grave are truly baffling. But the real mystery remains:

who was the great man that deserved such an elaborate burial. He was important enough for his

followers to have dragged a long boat from the river and across the hills to the sacred meadow.

In other nearby mounds there were found treasures, which suggest

that this was a cemetery for nobility. But none as elaborate as the

ship burial, that was a royal privilege.

If it is indeed a royal grave, then it’s thought that the man

and the mask may have been the Dark Age’s hero, Redwald, a

high chief of the Wuffingas clan, who ruled over much of eastern

England and was said to have died around 650 A.D. Certainly, his

finely craft belongings suggest a very important person.

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Beneath the great hall, there is another new development, the recently completed,

where all is not necessarily as is seems. This modern display is designed to challenge visitors’

preconceptions about Africa and its people. Most of the items on display here have been

clearly identified and explained.

But the collection of one case is still shrouded in mystery. It contains strange objects,

never seen before. It was assumed that these mysterious objects were vicious weapons from

Africa’s so called savage past.

They fitted into the traditional Victorian view of what they referred to as the “dark

continent”. Weapons were exhibited in large quantities in the late XIX century and not really to

show off their esthetic value as more to give people an idea of the savagism of the Dark

Continent. They weren’t used in hunting or in warfare, but it is still not known what they

exactly meant for the Africans. The museum prefers to acknowledge a mystery rather than

accept a convenient label.

Mozambique is a country recovering from a devastating civil war which ended in

1992. To encourage people to give up their guns, a project

called TAE (Transforming Arms into Tools) swaps any

guns people hand in for tools to help them in farming or

building. Four Mozambican artists, Kester, Hilario

Nhatugueja, Fiel dos Santos and Adelino Serafim Mate,

worked together to create the Tree of Life from handed-in

weapons. A throne, made

by Kester, has also been

made from these weapons

and is currently touring the UK.

This amazing throne was made by the artist Kester from

these handed-in weapons. It includes guns from Russia, Britain

and Germany. These creations belong to the African

gallery.

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