1837 color drawing, a plan of the interior of the Tomba delle Bighe (Tomb of the Chariots) showing the frescos, the sarcophagus (now in the British Museum 1838,0608.8) and its contents. It can easily be printed and cut out, everything folding into place to form a 3D version of the tomb. Other cut-outs include all four sides and top of the sarcophagus and the grave goods - mostly armor. Pen and ink and bodycolour inlaid into a second sheet of paper. Verso: faint graphite sketch of the interior of the tomb. British Museum, London (2016,5002.1)

Here's some paper cut-out fun for the whole family: an #Etruscan tomb, complete with 3D sarcophagus, frescoes, *and* grave goods!

This print in the #BritishMuseum was probably from Campanari's 1837 exhibition of Etruscan and Greek antiquities at Pall Mall, London. Print it out! 🏺 1/

#Archive30 #ArchiveConservation Here is an image from the restoration & conservation of the Round Reading Room ceiling, part of the Great Court millennium project, & an original design drawing for the windows by Sydney Smirke from 1856. #britishmuseum #archives

#Archive30 #UnusualArchives This is the childhood autograph book of Dame Kathleen Kenyon from c.1918. She was an eminent archaeologist, Museum trustee & had lived at the Museum when her father was Director. It’s full of notes & sketches, some of which are quite unusual! #britishmuseum #archives

#Archive30 #ColourfulArchive These lovely coloured pages of hand printed & embossed paper are from Lady Banks’s Dairy Book, her study of her collection of china kept in her dairy at Spring Grove. #britishmuseum #archives #arascot

#Archive30 #SomethingBig This is the biggest item in the #britishmuseum archive. It’s a phased site plan for an archaeological excavation at Mucking in Essex from the 1970s. Staff feet in the image for scale! #archives

Catching up on #archive30 with #ArchiveAnimals. Here are the stuffed animals on display on the staircase of Montagu House in 1845 & the natural history galleries in the new building, photographed in 1875. #britishmuseum #archives

A little behind on #archive30 but this pamphlet from the Frederic Kenyon archive on the game of #football at Winchester College in 1876 is an early account of the rules of the game & is a great entry for #sportarchives #britishmuseum #archives

Large gold ring with chased decoration on the hoop, set with an amethyst engraved with Cupid riding on a lion. The hoop is hollow, with a D-shaped cross-section; it expands evenly towards the shoulders. The large oval setting is surrounded by a border with dog-tooth ornament. The hoop is decorated with chased ornament in the form of pointed, heavily-veined leaves and small circles made with a ring-ended punch. The gem is a somewhat pale mauve amethyst with a convex surface, engraved with a leaping lion ridden by a Cupid who brandishes a whip. Traces of the sulphur backing can be seen through the translucent stone. There is no evidence of wear on the ring. The gem is Severan in date. There is no close parallel for the leaf pattern on this ring, except on the other rings in the Thetford hoard.

Just because I can now *see* such vibrant colors and details, here's a chonky Romano-British gold ring with an engraved amethyst depicting Cupid riding a lion. There is no ancient parallel for the leaf decoration on the ring. 🏺 1/

Part of the 4th c. CE Thetford Hoard. #BritishMuseum
📸 me

Nothing in the British Museum is
British
#britishmuseum #uk #thebritishmuseum
#london #rosettastone

Nothing in the British Museum is
British 😂
#britishmuseum #uk #thebritishmuseum
#london #rosettastone

So, heute stand ausschließlich das #BritishMuseum auf der Agenda - jetzt habe ich einen eine cultural overflow - aber wow, wow, wow.

Unten mal ein paar Eindrücke:

Small bornze figure of a Moor from the Roman province of Maurentania in North Africa. He's identified via his distinctive dreadlocks, a drooping mustache, and a full beard. His eyes appear very lifelike (difficult to see in this photo) because they are inlaid with silver. He wears a cloak, tunic, and boots and holds horizontally - originally on or above the back of his mount - a circular shield with a central boss. His right arm is missing. There is some debate about whether he once rode a horse or elephant, as the mount is now missing. Given his widely spread legs, and the horizontal placement of his shield, it could really only have been an elephant (my opinion, but if he had been on a horse, he would have had to sit on its rump to lay the shield flat). Moorish cavalrymen rode without bridles and as early as the second century BC they were famous for their nimble horsemanship. They were deployed as specialist units in the Roman army, and a detachment is clearly depicted in one of the sculpted battle scenes on Trajan's Column in Rome (erected about 113 CE). There they are shown fighting alongside Roman troops in the Emperor Trajan's Dacian Wars (101-105 CE). An altar inscription tells us that one of these Moorish units, the numerus Maurorum Aurelianorum, was in Britain from the 3rd to the 4th century CE. They were based at the fort of Aballava (Burgh-by-Sands) at the western end of Hadrian's Wall, and were probably brought over by the Emperor Septimius Severus (reigned 193-211 CE), himself a North African. Romano-British, ca. 150-300 CE. Bronze (copper alloy). Found in London. Height: 63 mm (2.48 in.) British Museum, London (1856,0701.19)

This 2nd c. CE bronze figurine of a Moorish (Roman Mauretania) cavalryman sports some great dreadlocks and silver eyes. There’s also an academic argument about whether he once rode a horse or an elephant. But the answer is clearly the latter 🐘 ... 🏺 1/

#BritishMuseum 📸 me

Tried “pano” mode in the reading room of the British Museum. Kind of like the resulting melted reality. #Photography #BritishMuseum #London 📷

侍 #BritishMuseum

[Original post] Sam Altman: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity and water, and people buy it from us on a meter" [Reply] "We stold all your knowledge and art and now we're gonna put a meter on it and sell it back to you. You're welcome."

To be fair, capitalist countries kinda do have a history of stealing knowledge and art, and then charge people for looking at it

#BritishMuseum #RijksMuseum #Louvre #TheMet #NeuesMuseum
#anticapitalism #EatTheRich #FeedThePoor #anticolonialism #activism

I love the way Anglo-Saxon helmets use fantastical beasts as the nose guards, much like the famous Sutton Hoo helmet, below.

#BritishMuseum 📸 me

How 'Chief of War' recreated the spirit and history of ancestral Hawaiʻi.
'Chief of War', Apple TV's epic drama, draws on the tumultuous period in Hawaiian history that ultimately led to the unification of the Hawaiian Islands
www.britishmuseum.org/blog/how-chi... #globalmuseum #BritishMuseum

British Museum’s controversial forecourt plans given green light.
Camden Council grants planning permission for new welcome pavilions and informal landscaping
www.museumsassociation.org/museums-jour... #globalmuseum #Britishmuseum #museums

Round-topped limestone stele with a shallow relief scene; traces of pigments can still be seen. In the top register and on the sides are rows of hieroglyphic text; in the middle register, the deceased man, User, sits before offerings of food and baked goods, with a male figure (a priest?) facing him; on the bottom register are three kneeling female figures smelling lotus-flowers. A prosperous, fruitful afterlife with three wives ... and the little dog at his feet, with upright ears and a curly tail. A translation of the inscription isn't provided by the British Museum, so we don't know if the dog's name is given.

The funerary stele of User, who lived in Egypt during the 12th Dynasty (c. 1991–1802 BCE), at the apex of the Middle Kingdom. Here he's shown seated before offerings of meat and baked goods, with three kneeling female figures smelling lotus flowers below. *AND* ... 😮 🐕 🏺 1/

#BritishMuseum 📸 me

Didn’t expect to see this fellow at the #samurai exhibition at the British Museum, but I see the influence now!

#britishmuseum #history #museums #starwars

Frontal photo of the entire gilded cartonnage of a woman at the Brooklyn Museum. We can clearly see the looped rose petal funerary wreath clutched in her right hand, held across her left breast. It's painted with a pinkish-red pigment. She holds a sheaf of gilded wheat in her left hand, held across her body below her right arm, the wheat drooping downwards. She wears a fringed shawl across her shoulders, tied at the center of her chest into a loop that looks very like an ankh shape. Perhaps symbolizing immortality. She's probably also wearing a himation that's pulled over her head in a veil - the back of this is painted with Egyptian symbols.

Alabaster bust of the Egyptian goddess Isis, in her Greco-Roman form. She's identifiable by the fringed shawl tied in a knot between her breasts (although this could certainly also be a priestess of Isis). Note the little curls in front of her ears, which was a style specific to Roman Egypt. This bust was probably once brightly painted. Romano-Egyptian, ca. 150-250 CE. Height: 21 cm (8.27 in.) British Museum, London (1972,0817.226)

Her knotted fringed shawl identifies her as a devotee (perhaps a priestess?) of Isis. We can see the same Greco-Roman style shawl on a small 2nd c. CE alabaster bust of Isis, seen at the #BritishMuseum. The rose petal funerary wreath and wheat in her hands also connect her to Isis. 🏺 4/

📸 me

The Marbles & the Muses | James Romm A.E. Stallings’s reflections on the Elgin Marbles illustrate how beautiful objects have the power to inspire both the noblest effusions and the pettiest efforts at acquisition.

The New York Review of Books calls FRIEZE FRAME by A. E. Stallings a "lively, ingenious, humane set of essays." @nybooks.com @consortiumbooks.bsky.social #elginmarbles #parthenon #Greece #BritishMuseum #poetry
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Original post on mastodon.social

RE: https://mastodon.social/@adrianhon/116294730404430207

This is like when the BBC geolocated the Sounds content so "forrins don't listen for free" and just shrink the UK's cultural reach.

South Korea invests in it's culture and promotes it around the world, and we all know what Kimchi is […]

Aubrey Beardsley, 1895. “Atalanta”

#illustration #1890s #Atalanta #AubreyBeardsley #BritishMuseum

Closeup of the mummy portrait of the young boy, dozens of complex layers of linen wrappings holding it into place over the head of the deceased. Here we can see his straight Trajanic hairstyle framing his heart-shaped face, with its overly-large dark brown eyes and small pink bow-shaped mouth.

Museum photo of the entire mummy, showing how the portrait is incorporated into the complex wrappings, which form concentric diamond shapes down the length of the torso. Gilded studs are placed at the center of each diamond (some are missing), and gilded wooden feet emerge at the bottom.

The photos from the #BritishMuseum website give a better idea of how the portrait is incorporated into the complex layers of woven linen bandages. The gilded studs and gilded feet are symbolic of the incorruptible flesh of the gods and immortality in the afterlife. 🏺 2/ #polychromy #ancientbluesky

Year 5 enjoyed investigating artefacts from the #BritishMuseum for our topic, Ancient Greece

Beautiful when deserted like this.
#britishmuseum

Love this decorative #britishmuseum fire bucket. Made of leather, it was part of the Museum’s fire protection (with its own firemen) in Montagu House & on view here in the front hall. We have a few buckets in the collection but this is the oldest. #archives #exploreyourarchive #londonfirebrigade

Great day out seeing the ##Samurai exhibition at the #BritishMuseum

A graphic advertising the event. A stone face is in the background. In the foreground, text reads: 2-Part workshop. Open Maya Glyphs. Practical introduction to reading and writing Maya hieroglyphs. 8-10 April 2026. Booking essential. Limited places available. A UCL logo sits in the bottom right corner.

📣Open Maya Glyph Workshop (OMG)

Learn to read and write Maya hieroglyphs whilst exploring the ancient writing system of the Maya.

No prior knowledge of Maya glyphs is required!

🚨Booking essential: tinyurl.com/OMGwsko

#BritishMuseum #Archaeology #Workshops #Maya