British Museum Tour | A Virtual Walk Inside a London Institution

hi and welcome to the british museum my name is  jessica and i'm one of the guides for free tourist   by foot london i specialize in the east end and in  museums and today i'm really excited to be taking   you on a highlights tour of the world famous  british museum now this museum is based on the   original collection of a man called sir han sloan  who we're going to meet a little bit later on   it's one of the world's biggest museums with  over 8 million different artifacts and it's   one of the most famous and let's face it it's  also one of the world's most controversial   by the way if you'd like a video just on  the controversies of the british museum   let me know in the comment section below but today  we're going to explore some of its highlights   items like the rosetta stone the egyptian  mummies the lewis chessmen the sutton who   hakananaya and so much more the british museum is  free it's open to the public and it's a brilliant   place to visit the next time you're in london i  guide public tours of it and also private tours   let me know if you have any specific questions  in the comments below and i'll try to answer them   on future videos all right it's certainly time to  get out of this rain i'm walking towards the front   entrance of the british museum if you're visiting  the museum this is probably the way that you're   going to enter however if it's really busy i've  got a trick for you that i'm going to show you in   a couple of minutes i'm walking up the stairs into  past these grand columns the museum was originally   opened in 1759 but it wasn't in this building it  was in a building called montague house which was   a grand manor on this site however by the 1820s  that museum was no longer large enough so sadly   it was demolished and sir robert smirk designed  this huge greek revival building that has since   been expanded a few times now as i approach the  entrance to the great court this never fails to   impress me so if we were here before the year 2000  we would actually be outside right now but today   this is the largest covered public square  in all of europe that's because back in 2000   norman foster he's the architect famous for the  millennium footbridge the gherkin london city hall   he designed this impressive glass and steel roof  and then it was renamed the queen elizabeth ii   great court so we would have been in the  rain but i'm really glad that it's covered   now so it's two acres of space here and that's  where you get a lot of the practical concerns   like the ticket booths that's for paid exhibitions  and also the audio guides you've got the ever   important toilets and gift shops some pretty good  cafes and also some really monolithic sculpture   that kind of introduces you to what's in  the different galleries so here's one of my   biggest secrets for anybody who's visiting the  british museum especially if it's on a busy day   don't enter through the main entrance unless  you need to use the cloakroom facilities instead   go around to the back of the museum on montague  place and use this entrance that i'm showing you   right now there's really short queues even in  the summertime and sometimes you can even walk   in there'll be an hour-long queue at the front of  the museum and five-minute wait at this entrance   the first place i'm going to start on our museum  tour today is room 33. normally in non-coveted   times there's no ticket required but it's a free  timed entry ticket to come into this gallery   which is the south asia and china gallery which  spans more than 7 000 years of history from china   throughout south asia i used to live in both  india and nepal for quite a time and i'm really   fascinated by the long and storied history of  these countries i'm not going to go into the   chinese side of room 33 today but if you'd  be interested in learning more about this   let me know i can do an entire video on it there's  ming dynasty blue and white porcelain tang dynasty   tube figures tons of jade and bronze sculptures  but today we're going to walk through the south   asian side featuring the rich and diverse cultures  of nepal pakistan india bangladesh and sri lanka   i just passed by the dancing nadaraja from around  1100 and i'm just coming up on my left hand side   to a hindu temple figure of the goddess kali you  can see around her neck she's wearing the severed   heads of her victims but we're here instead to see  one statue in particular we're here to see tara   at the back end of this gallery you can see her  shining like a golden beacon this remarkable   statue is considered one of the top 10 things  to visit in the british museum for good reason   it's an 8th century statue and it was taken  from sri lanka then called ceylon by sir robert   brownrigg he was the lieutenant general of ceylon  when the british took the mountain kingdom of   candy in the north of the country today we call  this country sri lanka it's the tear drop shaped   island nation located at the southern tip of  india robert brownrigg gifted this taurus statue   to the british museum in 1830 and the museum  curators didn't know quite what to do with it   it's bronze dipped in gold and it's utterly  utterly remarkable i mean just look at her figure   right i often say on my tours you know wowie  zowie the museum though knew quite well that she   was an object of meditation she's not an object of  titillation or eroticism but the museum curators   in 1830 i mean that's almost 200 years ago this  is at the beginning of victorian conservatism   they also knew that the conservative culture  at the time would not see tara as an object of   meditation so for the first 120 years of her time  at the british museum she was in a special museum   within the museum called the secretum only  scholars and vips were permitted to see her   but finally the secretum was impo incorporated  into the rest of the museum back in the 1950s   so okay now we know what tara isn't right she's  not an object of titillation but what is she   she's a part of mahayana buddhism which  is one of the two main types of buddhism   it's usually found in north india tibet and nepal  however today modern sri lanka is a terrible   buddhist country and that's the buddhism  that you normally find in southeast asia   prior to terra's discovery there was no  proof of a history of mahayana buddhism   in sri lanka so how did she get there well she  was first discovered buried in the coastal region   and people assumed that she was actually a  theravadan deity called pattini but experts   now agree that she's tara and she's the aspect  of a male counterpart called avalo takeshivara   there likely would have been a pair of statues  like this one on either side of an altar   and that's proof of a medieval mahayana tradition  in sri lanka dating to around the 7th or 8th   century to give you an idea of how significant  that is that's like finding out that britain used   to be a completely hindu country you know it would  really shock people and that's exactly what this   discovery did now avalo to kashvara and that's  pretty fun to say is a bodhisattva someone on the   spiritual path to enlightenment and he represents  the compassion of all the buddhists i'm going to   show you avalo takeshvara in a couple of minutes  now if you magnify his compassion by a thousand   tara represents his compassion we're supposed to  gaze upon her and meditate upon our own compassion   now here's that avalo takeshvara that i was  talking about he's much younger than her   though this one dates to the 16th century and  he's from a completely different region he's   from the kathmandu valley in nepal which is much  further north and closer to where the buddha was   actually born now we are going to leave room 33  again it's one of my favorite galleries in the   entire museum so let me know if you'd like to see  a video just on this gallery we're heading back   out through the main entrance it's really nice  and quiet in here today um again this gallery   unlike a lot of the others has timed entry and  that's because you can see that there are a lot   of sculptures and statues that are just kind of  out in the open if it gets really crowded in here   it could be a security risk for the museum not  in terms of theft or anything like that but just   in terms of accidents happening now i'm going to  leave out at this door say goodbye to the card and   we're gonna head in to the welcome trust gallery  of living and dying now this is a completely   different kind of gallery that we're about to  enter into it's a gallery that's curated around   a central theme rather than a time period or a  geographical region so it's got pieces that are   from all different time periods and all different  geographical regions based on the theme of life   death medicine and how people from indigenous  cultures around the world deal with sickness   and the transition from our world to the realms  beyond whatever their culture believes that to be   each display case is filled with fascinating  objects and labeled with the faces and names   of the indigenous stakeholders who participated  in the gallery's design that's a relatively new   trend in museum curation that you're actually  seeing indigenous people getting involved or   being allowed to get involved being asked to  be involved in curating galleries like this and   that's you can tell this is a much newer gallery  than some of the others in the museum it's 2003.   now filled with all kinds of treasures and we  could spend all day here i'll i probably will   say that about every room but i really mean  it but we are here to see this spectacular   monolith this is the gallery's most famous object  another of the british museum's top 10 items   this is hoa hakananaya now ho hakunan comes from  another island we've been talking about sri lanka   but now let's talk about the isolated  polynesian island of rapa nui   you might recognize rapa nui by its more  common name easter island it's so named   because the first dutch explorers landed  here on you guessed it easter sunday in 1722   so the dutch explorers and the spanish and the  british before them they encountered a lot of   people living amongst the toppled moai that's  the name for this type of sculpture the moai   date back to the 12th to the 16th century and they  represent specific ancestors throughout my tours   i always like to make connections about between  the different objects remember we've already seen   something on this tour that dates from that time  period the avalo to kashvara statue from nepal   now this moai represents a specific ancestor  he's not just a sculpture to the people of   rapa nui he is a living being creating these  moai was incredibly labor-intensive it relied   on a lot of cooperation and advanced artistic  and technical skill of the people of rapa nui   however creating these also relied on resources  especially a lot of trees so it's likely that   felled trees were used as kind of a conveyor  system and there you can see a bunch of mole   standing up overlooking  harbor absolutely beautiful   making these probably use trees like a  conveyor system to move them away around the   one part of the island to another but some recent  scholarship shows that they may have been walked   the way that you would bump a heavy chair from  side to side the gradual deforestation of the   island led to an agricultural tipping point and  the erosion of the soil some scholars argued that   this society plunged into chaos and collapse  but recent theories show that the islanders   may have actually voluntarily decreased their  numbers and practiced environmental stewardship   so hakananeya has actually been used twice for  two different religions by the time that europeans   arrived he'd been repurposed for the bird man  religion which worshipped a god called makemake   now you can see the change in the carvings we  were just looking at the back of hakanana which is   shallow relief it's not very deep but the front is  deep relief that's evocative and complex carvings   it requires a lot of organization and a lot of  food to keep people happy and motivated and in   good strength on the back though you could see  there's little shallow carvings including look up   at the top right corner a little picture of hoax  himself this is made by a less thriving society   when the hms topaz arrived in 1868 was in a  ceremonial house but british sailors dragged   him down the beach and locals were crying and  begging running after it as a result this is   one of the most heavily contested objects in the  museum and as that information panel i just zoomed   in on detailed the british museum is currently  in talks with rapa nui delegates for a resolution   the delegates visited in 2018 and they brought  soil from rapa nui you can see it in front that   woman's looking at the soil and that's an offering  to their ancestor it remains seen what's going to   happen to this iconic sculpture in the future  but in the meantime he's absolutely marvelous   and if you'd like to come and see him in person  he's on my tour obviously but he's also well worth   your time even if you pop by just for a couple  of minutes on your way to or from another london   attraction if there's no queue why not hop into  the british museum for a coffee and just look at   one or two things it's a great way to explore  the museum again just zooming in on that view   of rapa nui a dream of mine to go visit there  and some of the offerings that the delegation   brought back in 2018. there was a lot of talks  a lot of news stories about this at the time but   the kova 19 pandemic has kind of  pushed that out of the news for now   we're gonna head downstairs to the africa  galleries so again i promised you i would   say this about every room and i'm i'm serious  we could spend all day in the africa gallery   i'm just walking down the stairs they're divided  into east and west africa mostly focusing on the   sub-saharan regions of africa since many of the  northern african antiquities are in other parts   of this building like the egypt galleries that  we're going to visit a little bit later on you   can see there's some artworks in the stairwell and  i'm gonna walk past a couple of glass doors in a   moment you might see a name that you recognize  uh sainsburys yes the massive supermarket giants   of course you know for tax breaks and also  for goodwill from the public a lot of very   important corporations and families around the  world donate heavily to museums um in order to   kind of reap those cultural benefits and the  sainsbury galleries are east and west africa uh   we're gonna head towards the west african side but  that doesn't mean that there's not just as much   that we could talk about on the east african side  as well in a couple of moments i'm going to start   walking into west africa here and you're going to  see some really amazing stuff to catch your eye   first probably these massive carnival marionettes  they represent stilt walkers called moko zombies   these are the first major contemporary works by  a caribbean artist in the british museum they're   created by a uk trinidadian artist called zac  obey in 2015 to honor the notting hill carnival   and you can see i like to tease my guests  especially school kids that these are really   old but then of course i zoom in there on the  nike shoes that the mocha zombies are wearing   um some stunning uh masks from different west  african cultures it's important to remember   that west africa is not a monolith there are  hundreds if not more different cultures and   um unique histories and unique works of art  but we're here to see something in specific   we're here to see the ife head so the ife head  is one of 18 heads that were excavated in ife   nigeria in 1938 there he is by a team led by  german archaeologist lyo fraubenius this was   the former royal center of the yoruba people  a place of rich culture from then to today   much earlier to today just look at the peaceful  beatific expression on his face this man is serene   yet he's powerful he's viewing as slightly  from above his face is decorated with ritual   scarification which would have been considered  exceptionally beautiful and his crown is topped   with a rosette and a plume slightly bent to one  side but it would have been painted red and black   the ife head was created by an artistic master  but we don't know who and he's likely a king   although we don't know for certain which one  and that's a really common theme in archaeology   we're going to see that same story again with  the sutton who later on most scholars believe   that the ife head depicts a ruler called ani the  head is made from an alloy of copper and bronze   like tara it was made using the lost wax  technique and it's also approximately   three-quarters life-size just like tara is  different culture different time period but   similar artistic vision while he dates to the late  medieval period around the 14th or 15th century   subsequent excavations have provided evidence  of a metal and bronze working culture dating   all the way back to the 9th and 10th centuries  for reference that's a similar time period to   the lewis chessmen who we'll see a little bit  later on upon encountering this stunning head   frobenius simply couldn't believe or  wouldn't believe that it was from nigeria   he tried to come up with an alternate story he  actually went so far as to state that the ife   heads must have been created by a lost colony  of ancient greeks in the 13th century bce   he even wondered if maybe this was the origin  of the ancient legend of the lost civilization   of atlantis but we now know this is like laughably  incorrect the ife heads are not ancient greek from   3 500 years ago they're from medieval africa more  like 500 years ago and they were likely made by   an individual artist in a single workshop african  antiquities are a hot topic in the media right now   so again let me know if you'd like to hear  more about the museum's controversies right now   there is a lot of controversy about not only  the ife head but some of these other remarkable   benin bronzes that i'm about to show you these  brass plaques were stolen by british soldiers   that's not contested that's that's the official  history um during a kind of a siege of a palace   in benin they were locked away in a storeroom  where they'd been taken down for repair   and british soldiers carted them back in their  personal effects and belongings many of them were   donated to the british museum this great hoard of  them was donated to the british museum these date   to a similar time period of the ife head and they  are absolutely beautiful as pieces of art but also   as important historical records of this culture  now there are these brass plaques found in museums   all throughout europe but you may have read in the  newspaper recently that a major german museum just   agreed to give a lot of them back and um the pit  rivers museum in oxford has also agreed to give   back somebody in bronzes as well so the british  museum is facing some pressure just took the lift   up to back to the great court all right i'm back  in the great court and this time i'm here to see   some coast salish house poles sometimes called  story polls or you might have heard of them as   totem poles they're usually a symbol of indigenous  people for all around north america you'll see   them in gift shops but polls like these are only  actually carved by a small group of different   first nations on the north coast of the continent  places like vancouver island washington the haida   gwaii islands mainland british columbia and alaska  and if you've been trying to place my accent i'm   from vancouver as well from the same place as  these polls but not from the same culture because   one of these poles this one here is from the niska  culture while the other that i'm heading towards   now is from the haida people of haida gwaii which  used to be called the queen charlotte islands   by the way it's a unesco world heritage site  and it's really a truly amazing place to visit   they're carved from cedar wood which naturally  repels insects and water but after around 100   years of being erected they would naturally fall  down and then they'd be allowed to decay back into   the earth and that would feed the next generation  of totem poles they're carved to mark significant   occasions such as anniversaries but carving totem  poles was actually illegal in canada from the mid   19th century through to 1951 because christian  missionaries and government forces saw them as   barriers to first nations assimilation it was  a lost nearly a lost art that's been reclaimed   when european explorers arrived to these coastal  regions they often looked at polls that they saw   laying on the ground and they assumed they were  unwanted so they also bartered and bought some   of the poles which is the case of the haida pole  here purchased in 1903 by charles newcomb from   chief wya totem pools often depict animals and  supernatural creatures and family crests and   detailed stories this poll tells the story of a  life-giving raven spirit called yetil who could   also swim beneath the sea and steal hooks and  fish from rods the villagers decided to change   their hooks and bait them with devil fish and one  caught yellow pulling his beak right off his face   he was angry and hungry and so he took on human  shape and was then accepted into the village   but he spoke gibberish and he only would  ever show the top half of his face to hide   his disfigured mouth and he used a charm to win  his beak back however he was impressed with the   village and returned as a chief and you could see  that at the top of this pole that's yellow as the   chief eating with the villagers today there  are totem poles in museums all over the world   here's another hidden treasure of the british  museum and no it's not an object it's the view   itself of the queen elizabeth ii great court you  can see designed by norman foster as we mentioned   earlier it's really hard to get a picture of this  that represents the scale and grandeur from the   main floor however when you come up to this little  secret balcony then you can find this absolutely   fantastic place for selfies and photos however  i'm about to head into room 40 which is medieval   europe this is my personal favorite gallery in  the entire museum it's home to some of the world's   most fascinating medieval treasures from europe  britain the byzantine empire and i find it really   fascinated to see these archaic objects that are  many of which are connected to the church from   our not too distant past and think about how they  shaped our current uh reality wait a second i'm   i'm a canadian but i've clearly been in the uk  for too long because i'm now referring to the   medieval period as our not too distant past anyway  many of these objects are connected to the church   but there's one in particular that's notable for  its secular nature and that's what we've entered   this room to see this heading i'm heading towards  the case right now to go and look at the lewis   chessmen now it's always a bit of a challenge  to look at the lewis chessmen because there's   always a ton of people gathered around them these  are some of the most famous objects in the museum   they these curious little pieces were discovered  in a church on the isle of lewis in the outer   hebrides in 1831 but they are much much older they  date to the 12th century or maybe even earlier   most of the pieces are made from walrus ivory  but a few are carved from whale teeth when found   the horde contained 93 items in total that was 78  chess pieces 14 tableman and one belt buckle 82   pieces are here at the british museum and 11 are  at the national museum of scotland in edinburgh   they were likely brought to the really bustling  isle of lewis then from norway by a merchant and   then buried for safe keeping there's pieces  from four separate sets in the horde but   most of the ponds are missing recently a water  which is the equivalent of a castle or a rook   was found in an old antiques collection and  it sold for a massive 735 000 pound in july   2019 i mean multiply that by 93 and you get an  idea of the immense value of this collection   let's have a closer look at the fine detail  and care that's gone into making these pieces   so just look at the carvings on the back of the  king and the queen's chairs so some of them are   pieces that we recognize today with the addition  of the waters and also some very peculiar chaps   that i'm gonna zoom in on and show you in a minute  the berserkers berserkers are fighting knights   that bite the edge of their shield to show them  show us the audience how mad they are with rage   so berserk is one of the few icelandic words that  we've borrowed in english and we still use it   today to refer to somebody who's gone on a rampage  somebody who's gone absolutely berserk is somebody   who's a bit mad and it kind of has a negative  connotation there you can see him see what i   mean about how he's biting the edge of his  shield and that's to bear his teeth and   show us just how ready he is for a battle the  queen looks quite introverted she almost looks   miserable she's meant to be deep in thought  so that she can give wise counsel to the king   today the queen is the most powerful piece  on the board but back in medieval times   the piece actually had very little power  and could only move one square at a time   by the way uh if these pieces look familiar you  might recognize them from harry potter and the   philosopher's stone so you often get a lot of  kids in here who are really excited to have a   look at the harry potter chess set the harry  potter chess set you can buy reproductions of   the louis chessmen in the gift shop you can buy  them all throughout scotland they're really really   famous pieces um we're not sure exactly where they  came from but the most common theory is that they   came from norway as i mentioned but they could  have also come from iceland now here is another   amazing piece that helps us step back to an even  earlier europe to the centuries of 8 300 to 1100   in this room room 41. that time period used to  be called the dark ages but we now know that   there was an immense amount of craftsmanship and  global trade going on during this period we're   here to see the anglo-saxon ship burial at sutton  who in suffolk if you want to learn about this   which is one of the most important archaeological  discoveries in british history i really recommend   the movie dig which is on netflix on netflix  here in the uk i think it's on netflix worldwide   starring kerry mulligan as a woman called ms edith  pretty so we have to step back in time to 1939.   edith pretty decided to have one of the mounds on  her property excavated she herself had taken part   in archaeological digs in her younger years but  she was in poor physical health and she hired an   amateur archaeologist basil brown to do the dig he  would soon find massive ships rivets which would   lead them to the most intact early medieval grave  in europe a 27 meter ship that's nearly 90 feet   fully loaded with rich treasures buried beneath  the earth the ship contained unimaginable riches   including a solid gold belt buckle silverware  from byzantium garnets from sri lanka there's   sri lanka again huge feasting bowls sumptuous  textiles dazzling swords and as i zoomed in   on at the beginning of this room a helmet with a  human mask these have since been dated to around   600 a.d look at this solid gold belt buckle that i  mentioned a couple of seconds ago when basil brown   pulled this from the earth it was just as dazzling  as it is today because gold doesn't tarnish   we believe this dates to 600 a.d which is around  the time of the anglo-saxon period chronicled in   the epic poem beowulf this mighty ship would  have had to been dragged uphill from the river   debbed in and then buried in a deep trench mounded  with soil clearly this grave belonged to somebody   important but we don't know exactly who that  reminds me of the ife head but like the ife head   we have a reasonable guess this is likely  the final resting place of anglo-saxon king   reidwald who ruled east anglia however no body  was discovered it was likely dissolved by the   acidic soil along with all of the wood cloth  and bone now i could speak about each item   in this exhibit in great depth so please let  me know if you'd like a video just about the   sutton who but for this video today i'm going  to focus mostly on its most iconic object   the mind-blowing helmet so let's examine it in  more detail it's not only beautiful but it's   really functional it's got cheap piece deep cheek  pieces and a vaulted cap it's covered with imagery   and symbolism including fighting warriors and  mythical creatures but look at the eyebrows the   end of each is a wild boar and there's a dragon  head here at the intersection of the eyebrows   the entire shape of the mustache nose and brows  make a flying dragon now this one is a recreation   the original was found smashed into hundreds of  little bits the eyebrows are lined with garnets   from sri lanka but only one of the garnets is  backed with gold foil so only one of the eyebrows   is backed with gold foil reflectors so if you  looked at it in the light of a flickering fire in   i just want to stop here quickly in room 56 which  is home to some objects from mesopotamia that span   4 500 years between 6000 bc and 1500 bce we're  going to see another important mesopotamian   object at the very end of our tour that connects  to setting in this case here so think of this   as a little preview the royal game of er is  one of the oldest board games in the world   originating around 4 600 years ago we know  the rules because a babylonian astronomer   wrote them on cuneiform in the 177 bc and we've  been able to decipher the rules from this two   players would race from one end to the other and  the central squares were used for fortune telling   now this stan royal game of er uh  you can come to visit it in room 56   but i just wanted to stop here quickly because  we are on our way to the egyptian galleries now we're heading into the most famous  galleries in the entire british museum   the egyptian galleries that explore death funerary  customs and the afterlife the afterlife held a   deep important meaning for ancient egyptians  after all most of what we think about when we   think of ancient egypt is ritual and mummification  and of course pyramids so we could spend all day   and in fact we could probably spend weeks in  these galleries so if you would like a video   just dedicated on the egyptian collection in the  british museum let me know um i also want to point   out again that visiting egyptian mummies in almost  any other city in the world including in cairo   comes with a steep admission price at most museums  and of course in cairo it's absolutely worth it in   most cities it really is but again just marveling  in this wonderful fact look at all of these   mummies from different eras across ancient egypt  that we can come and spend as much time as we like   for free i though of course i could spend a long  time looking at these mummies of um embalmed and   preserved humans and of course these are not  the mummies themselves we're just looking at   the sarcophagi and the funerary coffins um but i  am drawn to one mummy in specific in the british   museum more than any others and the mummy that i  want to talk about is not a human it is a cat in   fact many many cats the ancient cat mummies of the  british museum so of course remember the internet   was uh created to share cat videos so we're just  carrying on in a long tradition of cat videos   um in just a moment i know i've not focused on it  quite yet but in just a moment we're going to take   a walk up to the case holding the mummified cats  now egyptian pets humans were mummified in ancient   egypt and so were animals so common ancient  egyptian pets included cats dogs monkeys birds   gazelles and even mon gooses and so you might  already know that cats were worshipped and   venerated in ancient egypt and cats and all their  animals were mummified for a few specific reasons   first of all they were beloved pets so mummifying  cats allowed them to join their owners in the   afterlife they were also offerings to different  gods and they were considered incarnations of   specific gods such as the cat god bastet who  had the head of a cat and the body of a woman   in other cases and here finally were at the  cats here you can see them animals such as   ducks were mummified in order to serve as food  in the afterlife and here you can see cats and   kittens so important humans had been mummified for  5 000 years before it became common to mummified   cats and other animals so this cat mummy in  specific the one the largest one in the case   dates to around the year 30 bc and around that  time egypt became a province of the roman empire   for reference that's only about 107 years after  the rosetta stone that we're going to go see   while animal offerings had previously been bronze  statues mummifying actual animals gradually became   cheaper than making bronze and therefore they  became more common so during this time period   that we're talking about animal mummies were  straight up mass-produced and we have literal   millions of them in cemeteries dedicated to animal  mummies in egypt the most famous is near the   pyramids in saqqara in fact so many cat mummies  were excavated in middle egypt in the late 19th   century that they were shipped to liverpool to be  crushed up and used as fertilizer in the fields   think about that when you were in liverpool if  you go visit liverpool you could be walking across   fields filled with fertilizer made from ancient  egyptian cat mummies that's one of those things   that sounds like an urban legend but i promise you  it's true according to according to common belief   some animals contained a ba which was a part of  the soul that could act as a liaison between this   world and the spiritual world so think of these  kiddies as spiritual messengers before they were   mummified the cat's body would have been dried and  filled with a dry material like sand and then they   were arranged in a life-like way and wrapped in  linen just remember cats were not the only animal   mummies here at the british museum there's  also a baboon crocodile dogs and many others   by the way did you know that in the 17th and 18th  century and earlier people in europe used to eat   the human mummies by crushing them up and  putting them in tinctures and medicines   again that's another one of those things that  sounds like an urban legend but i promise or   myth not even an urban legend but i promise  you that is true and if you want to know more   about these weird oddities of the british  museum please let me know in the comments   and i will make a video just on the strangest  things in this wonderful wonderful building so i'm just entering room 70. the objects  in this room illustrate the rise of rome   from a small town to an imperial capital  the controlled mediterranean basin and   northwestern europe and the near east extending  from scotland to syria this exhibition covers a   period of about a thousand years from rome's  legendary foundation in 753 bc to ad324   when the emperor constantine founded his  new christian capital at constantinople   objects on display here come from all over the  empire reflecting both its vast scale and diverse   cultural and ethnic nature but i want to  stop and talk here about the portland vaz   not only because it's decorated with intricate  cuttings and detailed scenes but because it's   influenced modern design in countless ways this is  one of the most requested objects in the british   museum gift shop actually the stunning roman vaz  is about 2 000 years old it's made from luminous   violet blue glass that you can see reflecting  and it's decorated with a single continuous   white glass cameo it depicts two different scenes  including seven human figures a snake and two   bearded and horned heads between below the handles  it's very pretty i think we can agree on that but   why is it so important well let's start by saying  that this was meticulously copied by pottery giant   josiah wedgewood he probably recognized that name  wedgewood pottery he devoted years of his life to   try to duplicate this ancient technique but even  he had to admit that he couldn't do it in glass   he had to use jasperware which is a type of  mat stone that's so fascinating to me that the   ancients were able to do things that we couldn't  do in 1790. so now today you can buy replicas of   the portland bars all over the world and actually  one of wedgewood's actual replicas is on display   at the victoria and albert museum another amazing  place please let me know if you'd like me to do a   tour of the vna it's another wonderful museum for  me the most interesting fact about this voz though   is that it was completely shattered by a drunk who  threw it onto another case he was arrested but the   museum was changed forever so the vaz was changed  forever the museum as well of course more security   was put into place because of instances like  this so a british museum restore painstakingly   pieced it back together but he couldn't account  for 37 small fragments but it looked good so   they checked the remaining pieces in a box and  it was only discovered in 1948 100 years later   it was dismantled and restored again but this  time they could only add three of the 37 pieces   so again in the 1980s the adhesive was starting  to look yellow so conservatives took it apart yet   again they fixed some shoddy repair work and they  were able to integrate all but three of the teensy   tiny pieces so if you break something valuable  in your own house don't feel so bad because at   least you didn't drunkenly smash the portland  bras one of the most famous pieces of pottery in   the world glassware in the world rather now just  leaving room 70 and i am going to continue walking   through these galleries as i head back downstairs  to the main floor of the british museum   i'm just entering into the enlightenment gallery  now the enlightenment gallery gives us a glimpse   into how the museum would have looked when  it was first founded in the 18th century   wealthy learned men rushed to collect treasures  and replicas of treasures from all over the world   this collection is housed in the oldest room of  the museum which was originally designed to be   king george iii's library in just a few seconds  i'm going to walk over to a bust of sir hans   sloane he's often called the quote unquote  founder of the british museum there's his   bust in the case there we'll look back at it  in a moment he was an irish botanist physician   and collector who traversed the globe  collecting objects and plant specimens   his wife elizabeth langley rose was the heiress  to sugar plantations that were worked by slaves   and the prophets from the slave labor  funded sloane's immense personal collections   as you can see with this display case the british  museum is attempting to reckon with this dark   past this display case is actually rather  new within the last year it's been um   put together sloan left 71 000 objects to the  king in his will intending them for public display   and his collection forms the backbone of the  museum's collection you can see here in the case   lots of interesting information and very  important information about what the british   museum is doing moving forward to reckon with  and deal with how a lot of its objects have   been acquired in the past and this is going to be  an interesting project moving forward i'm excited   and nervous of course to see what happens in the  future with displays like this and again if you'd   like to learn more about the controversies of the  british museum let me know now in just a moment   we're going to walk over to a very unique case so  we can see here how a learned gentleman would have   arranged his collection so throughout this tour  we've been talking a little bit about different   ways that you can curate a exhibit uh but here you  can see that they're around themes instead of um   geography or an era for instance on this shelf  feet including a big toe um different objects   doesn't always matter where they're from doesn't  always matter what era they what part of the   world what era you can also see from this display  that the enlightenment gentleman did not mind a   good fake see part of having your own cabinet  of curiosities was showcasing your intellect   and that's why this scary little creature  is here this is the fiji mermaid so sloane   and his contemporaries weren't always concerned  about the authenticity of their collected objects   but sometimes they just wanted something that was  a conversation point or something to talk about   and the fiji mermaid is one of those it was a  different fiji mermaid was originally created   by pt barnum the great circus ring leader he  actually started his career working in museums   it's true and one of his favorite objects in his  museums was a fiji mermaid similar to this one   so that's a gaff it's a fake oddity that's created  by sewing two animals together in this case and in   most fiji mermaid cases it's a fishtail with  a body made from wood wire and monkey parts   this particular fiji mermaid dates to 18th century  japan and it's been in the museum's collection   since 1942. let me know if you want a video about  the strangest artifacts in the british museum   there are some really weird things here let's walk  a few steps to the rosetta stone all right here   it is the number one the most authentic the most  famous oh wait a second okay you can probably tell   by my touchy-feely fingers here and this is not  the original we are going to see the original next   this one is a replica and visitors are  encouraged to touch it i'm not being a horrible   museum's guest i used to be a museum curator's  assistant i would never touch an object that   i wasn't expressly invited to do so um  the rosetta stone itself the real one   we're gonna see it in a few minutes but the reason  i've chosen to talk to you here about this one   will make a lot of sense in a few minutes because  the real one is absolutely thronged by people   this is a great place to talk about  why we are so fascinated by a broken   slab of stone so first let me just tell you how  it was discovered before i tell you what it is   in 1799 some of napoleon's men discovered the  slap being used to hold up the wall of a fort   in the village of el rashid which was known to the  french's rosetta they were shocked to see three   languages on the tablet each seeming to say the  same three things here i'm pointing to encircled   words called cartouche trust me when i say that  folks in the enlightenment period were very   very keen to learn about what rosetta stone  and other egyptian objects said egypt mania   was sweeping across europe and the public was  fascinated by all of the objects that the british   and the french were bringing home in their battles  they wanted to understand what all of the temples   and sarcophagi said the french who found this  object never actually had a chance to decipher it   the british acquired the stone in the treaty of  alexandria and they whisked it to london that's   when the race to translate it started british  scientist thomas young had some early success   but it would be the french scholar jean-francois  champollion who had the first major breakthrough   he realized that the hieroglyphs the name of  the of the egyptian language here was both part   pictorial and phonetic that means they give clues  about pronunciation he translated the cartouche   that's the french word for bullet that's what i'm  pointing to here it's named for the shape of the   proper nouns you can make out the name ptolemy but  what does it actually say so the story starts with   alexander the great king of the ancient egyptian  kingdom sorry ancient greek kingdom of macedon   he expanded his empire for thousands of miles  including into egypt where the stone is from   his empire got too big and after he died  it was divided into various kingdoms   the kingdom where this is from is  roughly where modern egypt is today   so after alexander the great this kingdom was  ruled by ptolemy the first and after ptolemy the   first came tolemy the second and then so on and  so forth of course told me the fifth eventually   around 2200 years ago ptolemy v was a boy  king trying taking the throne at only age five   his kingdom was therefore ruled by a council and  there were a lot of people trying to overthrow him   the writing on the stone is a decree about  the king that was then a decree about the king   it was then copied onto large stone stabs  called stellais and placed in every major   temple in the country the stones read that  the most influential priests in memphis   not the elvis memphis the one in egypt that these  priests supported ptolemy v and this stone also   did something that everybody loves it gave tax  breaks at this time in history only the priest   could understand hieroglyphs the average person  either spoke and read demotic or greek within   a few hundred years more not even the priests  were using hieroglyphs and the language was lost   that's why the rosetta stone was such an  incredible discovery without this stone slab   we may never have learned how to understand the  treasures of ancient egypt and here is the real   one we've now entered into the egyptian sculpture  gallery this is one of the most impressive rooms   in the british museum it's filled with sculptures  that span 3000 years of fascinating history   and there's different monoliths and broken busts  but you'll find one of the most famous objects in   the world and that's the real rosetta stone and  as you can see it's really packed with people   on this day that i visited again i'll mention it  was quite slow but it is normally just heaving   with people who all want to get a photo of  the most famous object in the british museum   you can see the front you can see the  back for being such a famous piece   my guests often remark that it's a lot smaller  than they're expecting it i'm used to hearing   that especially about stonehenge as well people  saying wow this is a lot smaller for an object   of such importance but let's go look at an object  that's not small at all here he is this monolith   when i look at him ramsay's the second i  always think of these lines of poetry my name   is ozymandias king of kings look upon my works  ye mighty and despair percy shelley wrote that   poem in 1818 in his despair over europeans  removing precious antiquities from europe   during this time the british public was  following the news about this monumental statue   with baited breath as it made its way from egypt  to london on a very troubled journey but before i   tell you about the journey let me let's ask first  who is he so ramses ii ruled from 1279 bce to 1213   bce and he was one of egypt's greatest pharaohs so  much so that nine further pharaohs took his name   to try to cash in on his own name on his name  and success so he was a warrior king but he was   also the ultimate self-publicist he loved his own  image i think of him as the selfie king because he   erected more statues than any other egyptian  pharaoh and he even changed the inscriptions   on other pharaoh statues to have his name so he  really loved his own image and he had more than   a hundred children to prove that as well so this  statue is called the younger memnon it flanked the   entrance to the ramesem a massive funerary complex  at luxor when napoleon's men tried to move it in   1798 they only succeeded in damaging it badly  because it weighs seven tons so there's a hole   above his right nipple that was made during this  attempt as napoleon's men attempted to hoist the   bust with poles the french troops abandoned  the statue and it sat dejected and abandoned   that is until the british consul general henry  salt decided he was going to and there you can   see the hole i was mentioning he decided he was  going to be the one to bring it to the uk he hired   a true character he'd probably be good in that  new film um nightmare alley an italian strong man   turned archaeologist an adventurer called giovanni  belzoni to do the job they used a complex system   of hydraulics and hundreds and hundreds of men to  pull it onto the banks of the nile and it finally   arrived in england in 1818. during this time the  the journey shelley wrote his famous poem and he   actually wrote the poem about this sculpture  before ever seeing it it was just so regularly   in the news that it was he the younger remnant  or ramses ii was a household name at the time   it was installed here in the egyptian sculpture  hall in 1821 by the way ozymandias is ramsay's   greek name so that's why percy shelley chose to  title his poem ozymandias and here he is more than   3 000 years later still gazing down at us on this  gallery so he really is the ultimate selfie king   i'm now walking through the egyptian sculpture  hall past more sculptures of you guester ramses ii   there's a lot of them here and we're going to make  our way towards the final exhibit that we're going   to look at on our tour we're going towards the  ancient assyrian guards the ancient assyrian   guards are massive sculptures they're actually the  two of the heaviest items in the museum here's two   assyrian guards here they look really big you'd  probably believe me if i told you that those were   some of the heaviest objects as we make our way  past some exquisite greek sculpture we can see   that these are much bigger assyrian guards these  weigh about 16 000 kilos that's roughly about   8 000 pounds so they're extremely difficult to  lift so when they arrived to the museum in the   19th century they actually had to be chopped into  four different pieces each of them to travel here   they come from the 8th century bce that's  about 2700 years ago situated on the gates   of the city of corsibad in ancient assyria  today that's situated in northern iraq   course the bed was a walled city so  people had to enter through gateways   so these human-headed winged bowls were really  um important to the assyrian empire because they   signified strength they also protected the city  from evil spirits and uh they these sculptures   have this really remarkable almost 3d effect and  i don't just mean the way that they're popping off   the walls like this in in both high and low relief  but in the fact that from the front the assyrian   guards have two legs and from the side they have  four so it appears that they have extra legs as if   they are walking in motion towards us at all times  so it's not really the same as modern 3d but it's   interesting to see that they were playing around  with these different dimensions in the art i   now you can see incredible detail really quite  remarkable to have these massive sculptures here however i wanted to show you something a little  bit more interesting and here you can see all of   the extra legs he's almost a spider bowl  at this point but i wanted to show you   remember earlier upstairs we stopped for a brief  minute and we talked about the royal game of er   so a few years ago when some museum conservators  were cleaning this sculpture they actually   discovered these indents in the stone and cleaning  it a little bit more cleaning it a little bit more   they uncovered millennia of dirt and grime  crusted onto it and realized that scratched   into the surface just like maybe you or i might  scratch the tic-tac-toe game into the sand   there was a board game of the royal standard of  the royal game of er or the game of 20 squares   so these guards at night were probably relying  on these big remarkable stone structures to do   the job of guarding the gates and then when  they were feeling like we can take a breather   they would go play their game which i think is  fascinating because it shows that human nature   2 700 years ago 100 years ago seven years ago  today and probably 2 700 years in the future   we're all pretty much the same now as we  head out back past these um phenomenal   greek sculptures i wanted to take this time  to say thank you so much for coming on my tour well as you can tell by the twilight coming  through these panes of glass it's the end of   the day at the british museum and it's the end of  our tour i really hope that you've enjoyed seeing   all of the highlights of the british museum as  much as i've enjoyed showing them to you and if   you'd like to leave me a tip or you want to buy me  a coffee you can do so at the links below please   remember to leave your questions in the comment  section below i'm always happy to answer them and   let me know if you'd like to see other tours of  the british museum or other museums in london in   general so it's bye for now and i hope to see you  on tour the next time you're in london thanks bye

Channel: Free Tours by Foot - London

Views: 201,676

Keywords: british museum tour, british museum, british museum london, british museum virtual tour, london walks, the british museum, london british museum, brittish museum, british museum in london, the british museum london tour, galleries of the british museum, virtual museum tour, london virtual tour, british museum interior tour, british museum walking tour, virtual tour of british museum london, walking around british museum, inside british museum london

Id: q2fBWKJL7SQ

Length: 58min 9sec (3489 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2022