The British Museum's top five masterpieces

[AdamSmith]

Neat.

The British Museum's top five masterpieces

On the day the British Museum celebrates its 255th anniversary – and also a Google Doodle – here's our pick of the top five objects in its collection

Happy birthday: The façade of the British Museum, which turns 255 today

By Telegraph Reporters

12:52PM GMT 15 Jan 2014

The British Museum has today been celebrated with a Google Doodle, 255 years to the day after it first opened its doors.

Back in 1759, it was housed in the Bloomsbury mansion, Montagu House (on the same site as today's building), with a collection based on the bequest of the physician, naturalist and collector Sir Hans Sloane. Initially, it attracted 5,000 visitors per year.

How times have changed. Yesterday, the museum announced that a record 6.7 million people flocked through its doors in 2013 (beating the previous annual record of 5.9 million in 2008). This was partly attributed to a string of superb exhibitions – including Ice Age Art and Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, the latter of which was seen by 471,000 people (the third most popular show in the BM’s history, behind 1972’s Treasures of Tutankhamun and 2007’s The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army.)

As well as the temporary blockbusters, though, the British Museum has a first-rate collection on permanent display. Here below we pick our top five items.

1) The Parthenon Sculptures

Aka, the Elgin Marbles. Purchased by Lord Elgin in 1816, these sculptures survive from the ruin of the Parthenon, the fifth-century BC temple to Athena set high above Athens on the rock of the Acropolis. They are a source of continued diplomatic dispute with Greece, the British Museum refusing to countenance repatriation – and with good reason. These 75 metres of sculpted frieze are arguably the BM’s greatest treasure.

2) The Oxus Treasure

This hoard of 180 gold and silver items, dating from the Persian empire of the Fifth century BC, is perhaps the finest surviving collection of Achaemenid metalwork. One of its prize pieces is the glitteringly intricate model of a manned, four-horse chariot. Not really until the Renaissance creations of Cellini would goldsmithery reach such peaks of sophistication again.

3) The Rosetta Stone

The key to the decipherment of hieroglyphs after countless centuries of head-scratching and bemusement. The inscription on the stone isn’t especially exciting in itself: a decree affirming the royal cult of the 13-year-old Ptolemy V on the first anniversary of his coronation in 196 BC. But the fact it was written in three different scripts – hieroglyphs, demotic Egyptian and Greek – allowed modern scholars to begin to decipher hieroglyphs for the first time.

4) The Lewis Chessmen

These 82 chess pieces were carved (rather marvellously) from walrus ivory and whale tooth in the late 12th-century, and found on a beach on the windswept Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, in 1831. The pieces represent the highest classes of society and may well have been made for a medieval Norwegian king, as a symbolic display of his sovereign power (the Isle of Lewis then being part of the Kingdom of Norway).

5) Mummy of Katebet

It’s not easy picking one from the BM’s fine collection of Egyptian mummies, but this particular example from Late 18th Dynasty Thebes (1250 BC to you and me) is a longstanding favourite. It preserves the body of 'The Chantress of Amun’, a well-regarded singer who performed at temple rituals. Her mummy's rich outer trappings include a gilded mask, elaborate wig and real rings on the fingers of her carved hands.

The British Museum is open daily from 10.00 to 17.30 and is free to enter; britishmuseum.org

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/10573788/The-British-Museums-top-five-masterpieces.html

[ihpguy]

For some strange reason I ve a craving for fish and chips whilst Steve Martin's "King Tut" whirls in my head.

[RA1]

This question is only as serious as various take it to be. Why don't "liberals" and others severely frown upon such as the British Museum? After all, those "treasures" were taken in lands far away and from peoples who were not necessarily aligned with the British. Isn't this similar to folks complaining about American Indians being taken advantage of? Are we using a double standard?

OK. After making the above statement, I think mankind has to evolve and move on. We can be apologetic about past "mistakes" and do our very best to properly "remember" past folks, history and culture but, please, let's move on.

Best regards,

RA1

[RA1]

PS-

I completely enjoyed the traveling King Tut exhibit in Chicago when it was there a few years ago. Also, several others as they appeared.

The treasures of antiquity should be preserved and, sometimes, that is without the permission of those most closely involved.

Best regards,

RA1

[lookin]

Why don't "liberals" and others severely frown upon such as the British Museum?

I let slip a little moue, rather than a severe frown, when I saw the Elgin Marbles. Like the King Tut burial treasures, it would be so much more moving to see them in place where they came from.

Of course, they may have been ruined had they stayed where they were. And not as many folks would have seen them. But I can understand those who want to see them back at the Parthenon.