The Top Ten Treasures in the British Museum - An In-Depth Museum Tour

Welcome to the British Museum. I'm Jessica, the museum guide, and today I'm going to give you a tour of my top 10 must-see items at the British Museum. We're going to see some of the most famous and most controversial items on our tour today, which starts off with the Sutton Hoo helmet, followed by the statue of Tara, the Ife head, the Lewis Chessmen, the Vindolanda tablets, the Aztec double-headed serpent, the Parthenon sculptures, Hohahakananaya, the Egyptian mummies collection, and finally, the Rosetta Stone. If you enjoy this video, make sure you like and subscribe. Very soon, I'll be releasing another video on the controversies of the British Museum. Of course, there are countless items that I could have included in this video, so let me know in the comments below what I missed. We're going to start our British Museum top 10 list off with a bang. Let's look at the Sutton Hoo helmet. The Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in British history. Today, we're going to focus just on the spectacular helmet, which was discovered by archaeologist Basil Brown on the land of Edith Pretty in 1939. The entire hoard has since been dated to around 600 CE. That's during the Anglo-Saxon period, which is chronicled in the epic poem Beowulf. This discovery rocked the world, because until this point, a lot of people still thought of the so-called Dark Ages as a time of isolation and ignorance. However, this discovery shows us that this time was anything but. The people who made this helmet were sophisticated, trading with cultures all around Europe and Asia. Now, this helmet here is designed to show us what archaeologists think the original would likely have looked like when it was first buried. Let's move over to the real helmet in more depth, which had to be pieced back together. Looking at the eyebrows, the end of each one depicts a wild boar. And then look at the dragon's head that's formed at the intersection of the eyebrows. Combining them all together, the mustache, nose, and brows make the shape of a large flying dragon. The eyebrows are lined with dazzling garnets, but only one of the brows is backed with gold foil reflectors. Picture yourself around a crackling fire in an Anglo-Saxon log house, with the light of the flames hitting this helmet and reflecting off of just one eye. You would feel that you were in the presence of the one-eyed god Woden. Now, who does this helmet belong to? Clearly, it was someone important, but we don't know who. That said, we have some good guesses. Sutton Hoo was likely the final resting place of Anglo-Saxon king Greidwald, who ruled East Anglia around 600 at the time that this was buried. Some theories say that it was never there in the first place, and this was a burial in absentia, while others believe that the acidic soil ate away at the body. Of course, I always try not to pick favorites, but I'd be lying if I said the Sutton Hoo wasn't my favorite object on this tour. If you'd like to see a tour just of the Sutton Hoo, I think I could talk about it for at least half an hour, so let me know in the comments if you'd like to see that. Coming in at number nine on our list, we have the statue of Tara. We're lucky to be able to see her now, but for the first century she was here, she was kept in something called the Porn Room, which I'll tell you about shortly. This is a three-quarter life-size statue depicting the meditation deity Tara, and she dates to around 700 CE. That's almost the same time as the Sutton Hoo. She was discovered buried beneath the ground in Sri Lanka in the 18th or early 19th century. She's an aspect of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, and meditating upon her kind gaze is meant to make us realize our most compassionate selves. Tara's discovery shows us that there was an ancient tradition of Mahayana Buddhism in Sri Lanka, and that's only one of the reasons why she's so fascinating. Sir Robert Brownrig, the lieutenant general of Ceylon, which was the colonial name for Sri Lanka, sacked the king's palace when the British took the mountain kingdom of Kandy. This statue was his stolen piece de resistance. Brownrig gifted the statue to the British Museum in 1830, but the museum curators didn't know quite what to do with her, because, well, just look at her figure. Now you and I know that this is not an object of titillation, but rather for deep meditation, but curators knew that Tara would stoke controversy. So for Tara's first 120 years in the museum, she was stored in a special museum within a museum called the secretum, also known as the porn room. Only men who were known to be of a suitable moral character were allowed in. And no, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Yes, that is an ancient Roman winged phallus wind chime, which was in the secretum. Thankfully, the objects in the secretum were incorporated back into the wider museum in the 50s. If you want to watch a video about the strangest items in the museum, including a pornographic plate that was in the secretum, click on the link in the top right corner. For object number eight, we're heading downstairs to the Africa Galleries to look at one of the most contested items in the British Museum. It's one of the Benin bronzes, and it's the magnificent Ife head, made of a copper and bronze alloy and created using the lost wax technique, just like Tara was. This head was excavated amongst 17 others in 1938, buried on palace grounds in Ife, Nigeria. The archaeologist was called Laio Frobenius, remember that name. This was in the former royal center of the Yoruba people, a place of rich culture, both then and now. Just look at the peaceful expression on the statue's face. He's calmly powerful and serene, and he seems to be regarding us from slightly above. As you can see, his face is decorated with ritual scarification, which would have been considered exceptionally beautiful. His crown would have been painted red and black. This piece of art dates to the late medieval period, around the 14th or 15th century. However, Laio Frobenius simply refused to believe that this was the case, and he came up with alternate theories to discount its Nigerian origins, including that it was ancient Greek. We know that this is not true, but it shows you the mental gymnastics that early 19th century archaeologists were willing to go to, to deny the existence of African antiquities. Like so many other objects in this museum, the Ife head and other Benin bronzes are controversial and were acquired through theft, which the museum does not deny. Let me know if you'd like to see a video specifically on the controversies of the British Museum. Here we are at lucky number seven, with these delightful Lewis chessmen. These are located in the medieval Europe gallery, one of my favorite places. These strange and wonderful little game pieces were discovered on a beach in the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides in 1831, and they soon became a beloved exhibit here at the museum. However, the chess pieces date much earlier to the 12th century. That's not too long after chess was first invented, which was in India in the 8th century. Ninety-three pieces in total were discovered in Lewis. Most of the pieces are made from walrus tusk ivory, and a few of them are actually made from whale's teeth. So they were discovered on the Isle of Lewis, but where were they made? The most likely theory is that they were brought by a Norwegian merchant to the busy Isle of Lewis, and then stored away for safekeeping and forgot. Let's take a closer look at the skilled artistry and craftsmanship of the pieces. You might recognize many of them from the modern game of chess, but there are also warders and these strange men. They're berserkers. This is a knight ready to go to battle, and he's so amped up and filled with rage that he's biting the edge of his shield to bare his teeth at us. Berserk is one of the few Icelandic loanwords that we use in English. It means to go on a rampage, just like this dude is ready to do. You might recognize this chess set as the one used in the Philosopher's Stone film. Number six on our top 10 list, and we're heading into the Roman Britain Gallery to see the Vindolanda tablets, hailing from near Hexham in Northumberland, towards the Scottish border. While these objects may lack the name recognition of some of the other entries on our list, they were voted the most important objects in the British Museum by the British public in 2017. They're also actually from our island, which probably has something to do with it. The Vindolanda tablets feature some of the earliest known examples of Latin writing by a woman. They date to the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, which makes them contemporary with nearby Hadrian's Wall, and they were the oldest handwritten documents in Britain at the time of their discovery in 1973. The Vindolanda tablets give us a snapshot of what life was like on Roman Britain's northern frontier. While tablets continue to be found at the archaeological site in Vindolanda, to date 753 tablets have been painstakingly transcribed. The document written by a woman that I mentioned above? It's from a woman called Claudia Severa, who was the wife of commander of a nearby fort, inviting her to a birthday party held around 100 CE. I mean, that's a real party to remember! We're still talking about it today. Of course, living in London, you're always aware that you live in an ancient place, but something like the Vindolanda tablets really puts things into perspective. For number five, we're heading into a dimly lit room. That's because the object is kept in low light for conservation reasons. Now, I know it's pretty dark, but it's really remarkable. Let me show you a brightly lit photo so you can see what I'm talking about. This undulating snake is an Aztec sculpture dating to the 16th, or maybe even the 15th century. It's made of turquoise pieces applied to a wooden base. It was likely used for religious ceremonies. It's made from more than 2,000 tiny pieces of turquoise, spiny oyster shell, and conch shell adhered to the wood with resin. The eyes may once have had orbs of iron pyrite, pool's gold. These turquoise sculptures were brought to Europe by Spanish conquistadors in the 1520s, likely by Hernan Cortes. It may have been looted, or Cortes may have been given this as a gift by Aztec ruler Moctezuma II, who may have believed that Cortes was the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl. For all of their generosity and hospitality, the Aztecs were brutally enslaved by the Spanish and infected by smallpox and other European diseases. Cortes' treasures were very famous in Europe at first, but after a few centuries, they fell out of favor. In fact, many of them ended up in Florence jewelry shops, where they were soon dismantled to make newer jewelry pieces. Nineteenth-century British archaeologist Henry Christie was horrified by this, and he purchased as many of the Aztec turquoise sculptures as he could get his hands on in Italy, and then he bequeathed them to the British Museum. The craftsmanship is breathtaking, and so too is the symbolism. According to Mexican author and poet Adrián Díaz Anciso, the two heads in this snake is the symbol of dualism, which was a fundamental part of the Aztec religion. All the deities have a dual nature, male-female, birth-death, night-day, generation, and destruction. Oh man, talking about the Parthenon sculptures on YouTube, I must be crazy, because nothing, and I mean nothing, in the British Museum, and I'm even going to say in any museum in the world, is as polarizing as this display here. Let me tell you why. The Parthenon sculptures are also known as the Elgin Marbles, named for Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. He claimed he had permission from Ottoman authorities to be able to draw, measure, and remove figures from the Parthenon. Although some people believe that this was not adequate permission, and others doubt the permission's existence completely. They are a collection of decorations stripped rudely from the Temple of Athena, known as the Parthenon, located on the Acropolis in Athens, where they have been left to the elements for millennia. The sculptures were carved between 447 BCE and 432 BCE. There are three main sections from the Temple that are on display here at the British Museum. That's the frieze, which depicts a procession for Athena's birthday, a number of metopes, which depict a battle between centaurs and lapids at the marriage celebration of Pyrrhithris, and the Temple pediment sculpture. I could talk at length about all of the friezes, pediments, metopes, which are all fancy words for elements of the Temple, so let me know if you'd like me to do a video just on this fascinating and controversial gallery. Though badly damaged by the ravages of time and the elements, the pediment tells the story of the birth of Athena as she springs forward, fully formed from the head of her father Zeus. Here's an artist's interpretation of what this pediment may have looked like when it was on the Temple. We're heading on to number three in our top 10 list, so we're in the homestretch, and it is another controversial item. So this is one of the museum's most famous objects, Pohahakananaya. Pohahakananaya comes from the isolated Polynesian island of Rapa Nui. It has a more common name, Easter Island, so named because the first Dutch explorers landed there on the Easter Sunday in 1722. The Dutch, and then later the Spanish and the British, encountered many people living amongst the toppled Moai. By the way, Moai is the name for this type of sculpture. The Moai date to the 12th to the 16th centuries, and they represent specific ancestors. That means they're not just sculpture. To the people of Rapa Nui, these are living beings. Their creation was incredibly labor intensive, relying a lot on cooperation and the advanced artistic and technical skill of the Rapa Nui people. However, it also heavily relied on resources and a lot of trees. So it's likely that the felled trees of the island were used as a conveyor system to move these Moai from one part of the island to the other. Gradual deforestation of the island led to an agricultural tipping point and soil erosion. By the time European explorers arrived, Pohahakananaya had been repurposed for a new religion called the Birdman religion, which worshipped a bird god called Makemake. You can clearly see the change in the carvings. The front of Pohahakananaya is deep. It's incredibly evocative and complex. That required a well-organized and a well-fed society. But look at the more recent carvings on the back of his torso. These are kind of birds, and you can even see Pohahakananaya himself up in the top right corner. These are shallow relief from a less organized and sadly less thriving society. By the way, the crescent and the circle, they're part of the original design. They're a ceremonial belt. The British ship, the HMS Topaz, arrived in 1868, and Pohahakananaya was in a ceremonial house. However, the British sailors, so interested in him, dragged him down the beach, and there were locals crying and begging after it. As a result, this is one of the most heavily contested objects in the museum, and the information panel details that the British Museum is in talks with Rapa Nui delegates for a resolution. The delegates visited Pohahakananaya here in 2018, and they brought soil from Rapa Nui as an offering. It remains to be seen what happens to this iconic sculpture in the future, but in the meantime, he's marvelous. I'd love to one day visit Pohahakananaya in Rapa Nui. Upstairs to number two on our list, and this time I really couldn't decide, so I've actually chosen two galleries. The Egyptian Death and Afterlife, which is rooms 62 and 63. I never get tired of exploring these rooms. These galleries are the most famous and most visited in the entire British Museum. They explore death and the afterlife. Death and afterlife held a deep, important meaning for ancient Egyptians. After all, we know about their love of magic, ritual, and mummification. Again, we could spend all day, or many days, in the mummies' rooms. The Egyptian collection is utterly fascinating. There are dozens of mummies here in these rooms, and I focused on two of them in my weirdest objects video, so be sure to watch that next. But for now, let's focus in on one in particular, the mummy of Hanutmet. These are her coffins. All three of these belong to one woman. That's because Egyptian mummy coffins are almost like a Ukrainian stacking doll. There were gilded coffins and mummy covers inside sarcophagi of various sizes. It's not uncommon to have six or seven layers. Hanutmet was a Theban princess of ancient Egypt who lived during the 19th dynasty, around 1250 BCE. We know that she was very wealthy due to the high quality of her coffins, the abundant use of gold in her burial, and the quality of her grave goods. Her mummy was accompanied by four shabti boxes, which include small models, or shabtis, of Hanutmet herself worshipping deities. Included in her burial is a funerary papyrus, which includes a spell from the Book of the Dead, as well as many magic bricks made of unbaked mud. These bricks were also inscribed with magic spells. My favorite part is this wooden box, which contains enough food for one meal for her in the afterlife. It contains fowl and meat wrapped in linen. Recent studies of her organs that were found inside these canopic jars showed that she suffered from a few different chronic illnesses, including emphysema, which indicates that she did live into old age. Inscriptions describe her as a chantress of Amun-Ra at Karnak, but that was a title used for a lot of women. However, her lavish burial suggests that she was incredibly wealthy and very important, and certainly worthy of such a title. But actually, how can we read these spells and understand all of the funerary architecture here in rooms 62 and 63? Well, for that, we have to head back downstairs. All right, are you ready for number one on our top 10 list of the British Museum? That, of course, is the Rosetta Stone. Of course, it can be really hard to get up close and personal with the real Rosetta Stone, which is in the Great Egyptian Sculpture Hall. But I have a secret for you. If you come to the Enlightenment Gallery, which is one of my favorite rooms in the entire museum, you can visit this replica, and you can even touch it. So it's been in the British Museum for over 200 years, and it has always been one of the museum's most popular objects. But why are we all so fascinated by this broken slab of stone? So in 1799, some of Napoleon's men discovered that this slab was being used to hold up a wall of a fort in the village of El Rashid, which was known to the French as Rosetta. The soldiers were shocked to see three languages on the tablet, which all seemed to say the same thing. Though it was discovered by the French, they never actually had a chance to decipher it. The British acquired the stone in the Treaty of Alexandria and whisked it away to London. However, it was a French scholar, Jean-François Champollion, who had a major breakthrough, and I talk about him in my Louvre video, which I've just linked above. He realized that hieroglyphs are both pictorial and phonetic, that is, they gave clues about pronunciation. Using this knowledge, he also translated the cartouche, that's the French word for bullet, named for the shape of the proper nouns. See here where I'm pointing, you can just make out the name Ptolemy. But what does it actually say? Believe it or not, it's a tax break. Egypt was being ruled by a boy king at the time, who took to the throne just at the age of five. So the kingdom was ruled by a council, and there were a lot of people trying to overthrow him. So the writing on the stone is a decree about the king, which was then copied onto a large stone slab all around major temples across Egypt. At this time in history, only the priests could understand hieroglyphs. The average person spoke and read Demotic or Greek. So that's why you can see hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek here. The hieroglyphs are giving a priestly seal of approval. The Demotic was what most people who could read, read. And the Greek is also reminding us of Ptolemy V's ancestral connection to Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king. However, within a few hundred years more, not even the priests were using hieroglyphs in Egypt, 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 and wonders of ancient Egypt. By the way, here's a little parting trivia for you. How many languages are on the Rosetta Stone? Three, right? Wrong. The British added this inscription in the early 19th century, so there is English on the Rosetta Stone. So there you have it. That's the end of our top 10 must-see objects in the British Museum tour. If you enjoyed this tour, please like, share, and subscribe. And you can also buy me a copy or give me a tip with the details below. I hope that you enjoyed this tour, because I certainly enjoyed giving it. Now, I'll see you the next time I'm at the Museum.