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THE BRITISH MUSEUM The British Museum in London is one of the world's largest, oldest and most important museums of human history and culture. It has more than 7 million objects from all continents. They illustrate and document the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. The British Museum set up in 1753 and opened in 1759. It was the first museum in the world to be open to everyone. The museum gradually grew over the next two hundred years. It has nearly six million visitors a year and it’s the third most popular art museum in the world.

HISTORY The history of the British Museum began with the English physician, naturalist and collector Sir Hans Sloane, who died aged 93 in 1753. During his life, he had collected many important things from all around the world. Over his lifetime Sloane collected more than 71’000 objects, which he wanted to be preserved intact after his death. So before to die he sold his collection to the parliament of King George II. The collection was composed by books, manuscripts and natural exemplars with some antiquities (including coins and medals, prints and drawings) and ethnographic material. On 7 June 1753, an Act of Parliament established the British Museum. The government looked at many possible places to build the new museum, including Buckingham House, which later became Buckingham Palace. Eventually a building called Montagu House was chosen. The British Museum opened to the public on 15 January 1759 and for the first time entry was free and open to everyone. Over the years the museum began to concentrate more and more on historical objects and sculptures. For this reason they were given the Rosetta Stone by King George III, in 1802. The Rosetta Stone which was important for trying to understand Hieroglyph language written by the Ancient Egyptians. In 1816 the Museum acquired the Elgin Marbles from Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin. Elgin had taken them from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece several years earlier. Many people disagreed with the way Elgin took them from Greece. In 1822 King George III donated the entire Royal Library to the museum. This contained over 65,000 books and pamphlets. The National Gallery opened in 1824 and in 1852 the British Museum's Reading Room was opened. It had enough space to display a million books at once.

New building and expansion In the early 1900s the Museum's board of directors bought all the houses surrounding it, knocked them all down and built over them. In 1939, just before the start of World War II, most of the Museum's exhibits were taken to other

places because the directors were worried the Nazis might bomb the Museum during the Blitz. The exhibits were stored in old London Underground stations, as well as other places. The evacuation proved to be a good idea, as parts of the Museum were destroyed by bombs in 1940. With the exception of two World Wars, the Museum has remained open ever since, gradually increasing its opening hours and moving from an attendance of 5,000 per year to today's 6 million.

Into the modern day Much of the 1950s was spent fixing the parts of the Museum destroyed by the bombing, and bringing back the pieces that had been taken away. In 1998 the central courtyard, which had been unused before, was turned into the Great Court with the Reading Room at its centre. The Great Court has over 2 acres of space under its roof. This makes it the largest covered public space in Europe. It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in January 2000. They now have a large collection of Roman British, Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian artefacts, as well as objects from many other cultures and times around the world.

Departments Because of its extremely large size the Museum's collection is split into many parts, called departments. The departments are:

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Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan The British Museums department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan is one of the biggest collections of Ancient Egyptian art in the world, in fact it has over 110’000 exhibits . Only the Egyptian Museum in Cairo has a bigger collection. They cover Egyptian and Sudanese history around a period of around 12,000 years.

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Department of Greece and Rome The British Museum's department of Greece and Rome is one of the biggest collections of Ancient Greek and Roman objects in the world. The objects come from nearly 4000 years of European history. It contains parts of two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. It also had many pieces taken from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.

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Department of the Middle East The British Museum Department of the Middle East has the largest collection of Mesopotamian art in the world, outside Iraq. It has some 300,000 objects, covering the Neolithic period until present.

Most Important Exhibits The most important exhibits in the British Museum are:

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Rosetta Stone: The Rosetta Stone is a stone with writing 3 languages on it (Greek, demotic and hieroglyphs) each saying the same thing. The Rosetta Stone is written in three scripts because when it was written, there were three scripts being used in Egypt: -

The first was hieroglyphic which was the script used for important or religious documents.

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The second was demotic which was the common script of Egypt.

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The third was Greek which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time.

The Rosetta Stone was written in all three scripts so everyone could read what it said.

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Parthenon Sculptures Iconic sculptures from ancient Greece.

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Mummy of Katebet One of the most studied Egyptian mummies....