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113-411: As a group, the treasure is the most important survival of what was once an enormous production of Achaemenid work in precious metal. It displays a very wide range of quality of execution, with the many gold votive plaques mostly crudely executed, some perhaps by the donors themselves, while other objects are of superb quality, presumably that expected by the court. The British Museum now has nearly all

226-683: A London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster . During the course of his lifetime, and particularly after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter, Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities , and not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II , for the nation, for a sum of £20,000. At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan , Egypt , Greece , Rome ,

339-495: A battle scene. The griffin-headed bracelets were also the most complex objects to manufacture, being cast in several elements, then worked in many different techniques, and soldered together. Some of the surfaces are very thin, and show signs of damage, and in one place repair with a soldered patch. A "Gold plaque in the form of a lion-griffin, with the body of an ibex and a leaf-shaped tail", with missing inlay, has two prongs behind for attaching it, and may have been an ornament for

452-453: A buildings committee was set up to plan for expansion of the museum, and further highlighted by the donation in 1822 of the King's Library , personal library of King George III's, comprising 65,000 volumes, 19,000 pamphlets , maps, charts and topographical drawings . The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke , was asked to draw up plans for an eastern extension to the museum "... for

565-406: A bunch of twigs called a barsom used in offerings; these probably represent the offeror. The dress of the figures shows the types known as "Median" and "Persian" to modern historians, and the quality of the execution is mostly relatively low, but varies greatly, with some appearing to have been incised by amateurs. Three show animals, a horse, a donkey and a camel; possibly it was their health that

678-478: A cap or the hair, or part of an object. The animal's legs are folded beneath its body in a way characteristic of the Scythian animal style of the southern Russian steppes, an influence also seen in other pieces such a ring with a lion. A stylized birds-head ornament can be recognised, like the finely-decorated scabbard of "Median" shape, as very similar to that of a soldier from a Persepolis relief, where it forms

791-559: A display of objects from the South Seas brought back from the round-the-world voyages of Captain James Cook and the travels of other explorers fascinated visitors with a glimpse of previously unknown lands. The bequest of a collection of books, engraved gems , coins, prints and drawings by Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode in 1800 did much to raise the museum's reputation; but Montagu House became increasingly crowded and decrepit and it

904-479: A distinct style of their own. The griffin-headed bracelets from the hoard are typical of the 5th to 4th century BC court style of Achaemenid Persia. Bracelets of a similar form to ones from the treasure can be seen on reliefs from Persepolis being given as tribute, whilst Xenophon writes that armlets (among other things) were gifts of honour at the Persian court. Glass, enamel or semi-precious stone inlays within

1017-424: A gold tiger, and other objects not tallying with the surviving pieces. One large group of objects, perhaps the bulk of the treasure, was bought from locals by three merchants from Bokhara in 1880, who unwisely left their convoy on the road south from Kabul to Peshawar and were captured by Afghan tribesmen, who carried them and their goods into the hills, but allowed a servant of the merchants to escape. News of

1130-464: A griffin's head similar to that on the bracelets in the treasure. A hollow gold fish, apparently representing a species of carp found only in the Oxus, has a hole at its mouth and a loop for suspension; it may have contained oil or perfume, or hung as one of a group of pendants. The association of surviving coins with the treasure is less generally accepted than for the other items, and O. M. Dalton of

1243-437: A king (see illustration below; Bes is centre in the top row, the king at bottom right). The British Museum has 51 thin gold plaques with incised designs, which are regarded as votive plaques left by devotees at a temple as an offering to the deity. They are mostly rectangular with the designs in a vertical format, and range from 2 to 20 cm (0.79 to 7.87 in) tall. Most show a single human figure facing left, many carrying

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1356-453: A location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The trustees rejected Buckingham House, which was later converted into the present day Buckingham Palace , on the grounds of cost and the unsuitability of its location. With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. At this time,

1469-610: A major part of Sir John Evans 's coin collection, which was later sold to the museum by his son J. P. Morgan Jr. in 1915. In 1918, because of the threat of wartime bombing, some objects were evacuated via the London Post Office Railway to Holborn, the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth) and a country house near Malvern . On the return of antiquities from wartime storage in 1919 some objects were found to have deteriorated. A conservation laboratory

1582-687: A million books, opened in 1857. Because of continued pressure on space the decision was taken to move natural history to a new building in South Kensington , which would later become the British Museum of Natural History . Roughly contemporary with the construction of the new building was the career of a man sometimes called the "second founder" of the British Museum, the Italian librarian Anthony Panizzi . Under his supervision,

1695-400: A number of groups. There are a number of small figurines, some of which may have been detached from larger objects. The single male figures appear to show worshippers rather than deities. The largest is most unusual for Persian art in showing a nude youth (in silver) standing in a formal pose, with a large conical hat covered in gold foil. The statuette shows Greek influence, in the figure and

1808-542: A number of other bracelets, some perhaps torcs for the neck, several with simpler animal head terminals variously depicting goats, ibex, sheep, bulls, ducks, lions, and fantastic creatures. Many have inlays, or empty cells for them; it used to be thought that this technique was acquired from Ancient Egyptian jewellery (as in some of Tutankhamun 's grave goods), but Assyrian examples are now known. There are 12 finger rings with flat bezels engraved for use as signet rings , and two stone cylinder seals , one finely carved with

1921-566: A number of recently discovered hoards which demonstrated the richness of what had been considered an unimportant part of the Roman Empire. The museum turned increasingly towards private funds for buildings, acquisitions and other purposes. In 2000, the British Museum was awarded National Heritage Museum of the Year . Today the museum no longer houses collections of natural history , and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of

2034-654: A parlay Burton recovered a good part of the treasure, and later a further portion, which he restored to the merchants. In gratitude, they sold him the bracelet which he sold to the Victoria and Albert Museum (now on loan to the British Museum) for £1,000 in 1884. The merchants then continued to Rawalpindi in modern Pakistan to sell the rest of the Treasure; Cunningham acquired many of these pieces, and through dealers, Franks others. The robbers evidently considered

2147-432: A rider that may belong to this or other model groups, as may two other horses cut out from sheet gold. The wheels of the complete chariot would originally have turned freely, and it had received at least one repair in antiquity. It is pulled by four horses (rather small, and with only nine legs surviving between them) and carries two figures, a driver and a seated passenger, both wearing torcs . The chariot has handrails at

2260-547: Is a characteristic building of Sir Robert Smirke , with 44 columns in the Ionic order 45 ft (14 m) high, closely based on those of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Asia Minor . The pediment over the main entrance is decorated by sculptures by Sir Richard Westmacott depicting The Progress of Civilisation , consisting of fifteen allegorical figures, installed in 1852. The construction commenced around

2373-617: Is derived from the Scythian endonym Skuδa , meaning lit.   ' archers ' which was derived from the Proto-Indo-European root skewd- , itself meaning lit.   ' shooter, archer ' . This name was semantically similar to the endonym of the Sauromatians, *Saᵘrumata , meaning "armed with throwing darts and arrows." From this earlier term Skuδa was derived: The Urartian name for

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2486-648: Is in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg , and other collections have examples. Achaemenid style arose rapidly with the very quick growth of the huge empire, which swallowed up the artistic centres of the ancient Near East and much of the Greek world, and mixed influences and artists from these. Although continuing influences from these sources can often be detected the Achaemenids formed

2599-585: Is preferred by Scythologists such as Askold Ivantchik . Within this broad use, the Scythians proper who lived in the Pontic Steppes are sometimes referred to as Pontic Scythians . Modern-day anthropologists instead prefer using the term "Scytho-Siberians" to denote this larger cultural grouping of nomadic peoples living in the Eurasian steppe and forest steppe extending from Central Europe to

2712-569: Is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. Established in 1753, the British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. In 2023, the museum received 5,820,860 visitors, an increase of 42% from 2022. It was the most popular attraction in the United Kingdom according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA). At its beginning,

2825-620: Is today Tajikistan but was in the 1870s in the Emirate of Bokhara , which was in the process of being swallowed up by the Russian Empire . Then as now, the south bank of the Oxus was Afghanistan ; at the period when the treasure originated the whole area was part of the Persian Empire. The approximate area of the discovery is fairly clear; it was near, perhaps some three miles south of, Takhti-Sangin , where an important temple

2938-763: The Ancient Near and Far East and the Americas . On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his royal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library , assembled by Sir Robert Cotton , dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library , the collection of

3051-510: The Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo (1939) and late Roman silver tableware from Mildenhall , Suffolk (1946). The immediate post-war years were taken up with the return of the collections from protection and the restoration of the museum after the Blitz . Work also began on restoring the damaged Duveen Gallery. In 1953, the museum celebrated its bicentenary . Many changes followed:

3164-589: The Coins and Medals office suite, completely destroyed during the war, was rebuilt and re-opened, attention turned towards the gallery work with new tastes in design leading to the remodelling of Robert Smirke's Classical and Near Eastern galleries. In 1962 the Duveen Gallery was finally restored and the Parthenon Sculptures were moved back into it, once again at the heart of the museum. By

3277-532: The Duke of Blacas 's wide-ranging and valuable collection of antiquities. Overseas excavations continued and John Turtle Wood discovered the remains of the 4th century BC Temple of Artemis at Ephesos , another Wonder of the Ancient World . The natural history collections were an integral part of the British Museum until their removal to the new British Museum of Natural History in 1887, nowadays

3390-709: The Earls of Oxford . They were joined in 1757 by the "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts , assembled by various British monarchs . Together these four "foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving manuscript of Beowulf . The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to

3503-538: The Natural History Museum in South Kensington . With the departure and the completion of the new White Wing (fronting Montague Street) in 1884, more space was available for antiquities and ethnography and the library could further expand. This was a time of innovation as electric lighting was introduced in the Reading Room and exhibition galleries. The William Burges collection of armoury

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3616-624: The Natural History Museum in 1881. Some of its best-known acquisitions, such as the Greek Elgin Marbles and the Egyptian Rosetta Stone , are subject to long-term disputes and repatriation claims. In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as

3729-706: The Oxus Treasure . In 1898 Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild bequeathed the Waddesdon Bequest , the glittering contents from his New Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor . This consisted of almost 300 pieces of objets d'art et de vertu which included exquisite examples of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica , among them the Holy Thorn Reliquary , probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry . The collection

3842-653: The Pontic Scythians , were an ancient Eastern Iranic equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC from Central Asia to the Pontic Steppe in modern-day Ukraine and Southern Russia , where they remained established from the 7th century BC until the 3rd century BC. Skilled in mounted warfare , the Scythians replaced the Agathyrsi and the Cimmerians as

3955-678: The Speaker of the House of Commons . The board was formed on the museum's inception to hold its collections in trust for the nation without actually owning them themselves, and now fulfil a mainly advisory role. Trustee appointments are governed by the regulatory framework set out in the code of practice on public appointments issued by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Greek Revival façade facing Great Russell Street

4068-728: The Viceroy of India at the time, Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton (son of the bestselling novelist ) by Sir Louis Cavagnari , the British representative in Kabul after the Second Anglo-Afghan War . Cavagnari, his mission and their guards were all massacred in Kabul on 3 September 1879. Lytton's rider was acquired by the British Museum in 1931, and the chariot group in 1953. The Achaemenid kings, at least after Cyrus

4181-513: The 1970s, the museum was again expanding. More services for the public were introduced; visitor numbers soared, with the temporary exhibition "Treasures of Tutankhamun " in 1972, attracting 1,694,117 visitors, the most successful in British history. In the same year the Act of Parliament establishing the British Library was passed, separating the collection of manuscripts and printed books from

4294-540: The 3rd century AD, last remnants of the Scythians were overwhelmed by the Goths , and by the early Middle Ages , the Scythians were assimilated and absorbed by the various successive populations who had moved into the Pontic Steppe. After the Scythians' disappearance, authors of the ancient, mediaeval, and early modern periods used their name to refer to various populations of the steppes unrelated to them. The name

4407-474: The American architect John Russell Pope , it was completed in 1938. The appearance of the exhibition galleries began to change as dark Victorian reds gave way to modern pastel shades. Following the retirement of George Francis Hill as Director and Principal Librarian in 1936, he was succeeded by John Forsdyke . As tensions with Nazi Germany developed and it appeared that war may be imminent Forsdyke came to

4520-709: The British Library to a new site at St Pancras, finally achieved in 1998, provided the space needed for the books. It also created the opportunity to redevelop the vacant space in Robert Smirke's 19th-century central quadrangle into the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court – the largest covered square in Europe – which opened in 2000. The ethnography collections, which had been housed in the short-lived Museum of Mankind at 6 Burlington Gardens from 1970, were returned to new purpose-built galleries in

4633-567: The British Museum . The British Museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport through a three-year funding agreement. Its head is the Director of the British Museum . The British Museum was run from its inception by a 'principal librarian' (when the book collections were still part of the museum), a role that was renamed 'director and principal librarian' in 1898, and 'director' in 1973 (on

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4746-532: The British Museum Library (now part of the British Library ) quintupled in size and became a well-organised institution worthy of being called a national library, the largest library in the world after the National Library of Paris . The quadrangle at the centre of Smirke's design proved to be a waste of valuable space and was filled at Panizzi's request by a circular Reading Room of cast iron, designed by Smirke's brother, Sydney Smirke. Until

4859-428: The British Museum, author of the monograph on the treasure, was reluctant to identify any specific coins as part of it, while Sir Alexander Cunningham (see below) disagreed, identifying about 200. The Russian scholar E.V. Zeymal associated 521 surviving coins with the treasure, without extending the terminus post quem for deposition of the treasure beyond Cunningham's figure of about 180 BC. The coins associated with

4972-433: The British Museum. This left the museum with antiquities; coins, medals and paper money; prints and drawings; and ethnography . A pressing problem was finding space for additions to the library which now required an extra 1 + 1 ⁄ 4 miles (2.0 km) of shelving each year. The Government suggested a site at St Pancras for the new British Library but the books did not leave the museum until 1997. The departure of

5085-511: The Great and Cambyses , describe themselves in inscriptions as worshippers of Ahuramazda , but it is not clear if their religious practice included Zoroastrianism . It is also evident that it was not the Persian way to impose the royal religious beliefs on their subjects (as for example the Jews, whose religious practices were not interfered with after they were conquered). Other Persian cults were

5198-525: The Hellenistic period, authors such as Hecataeus of Miletus however sometimes extended the designation "Scythians" indiscriminately to all steppe nomads and forest steppe populations living in Europe and Asia, and used it to also designate the Saka of Central Asia. Early modern scholars tended to follow the lead of the Hellenistic authors in extending the name "Scythians" into a general catch-all term for

5311-530: The Metropolitan, Philippe de Montebello , who said Muscarella, a long-standing critic of museums' tolerance and even encouragement of the trade in illegal antiquities , only remained there because of the "exigencies of academic tenure", and was himself criticised for suppressing debate. In an article on the Oxus Treasure published in 2003 Muscarella goes nothing like as far, but does fiercely attack

5424-445: The Oxus Treasure, for it has passed through places of evil repute and cannot have come out quite unscathed", as Dalton put it in 1905. Indeed, Dalton records that Indian dealers initially made copies of items and tried to pass them off to Franks, who though not deceived, bought some "at a small percentage over the gold value" and then received the genuine objects, which were easily distinguished. Considerable comfort has been received from

5537-618: The Scythians might have been Išqigulu ( 𒆳𒅖𒆥𒄖𒇻 ). Due to a sound change from /δ/ ( / ð / ) to / l / commonly attested in East Iranic language family to which Scythian belonged, the name Skuδa evolved into Skula , which was recorded in ancient Greek as Skōlotoi ( Σκωλοτοι ), in which the Greek plural-forming suffix -τοι was added to the name. The name of the 5th century BC king Scyles ( Ancient Greek : Σκυλης , romanized :  Skulēs ) represented this later form, Skula . The name "Scythians"

5650-584: The South Wing with its great colonnade, initiated in 1843 and completed in 1847, when the Front Hall and Great Staircase were opened to the public. The museum is faced with Portland stone , but the perimeter walls and other parts of the building were built using Haytor granite from Dartmoor in South Devon, transported via the unique Haytor Granite Tramway . In 1846 Robert Smirke was replaced as

5763-526: The Tajik government by the British Museum, intended for the new Tajik National Museum . 37°03′16″N 68°16′55″E  /  37.054553°N 68.281994°E  / 37.054553; 68.281994 British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history , art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works

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5876-557: The UK. In 1816 these masterpieces of western art were acquired by the British Museum by Act of Parliament and deposited in the museum thereafter. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia , Greece in 1815. The Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from Mary Mackintosh Rich, the widow of Assyriologist Claudius James Rich . In 1802

5989-739: The antiquities displays. After the defeat of the French campaign in the Battle of the Nile , in 1801, the British Museum acquired more Egyptian sculptures and in 1802 King George III presented the Rosetta Stone – key to the deciphering of hieroglyphs. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt , British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, laid the foundations of

6102-549: The architect Sydney Smirke , opened in 1857. For almost 150 years researchers came here to consult the museum's vast library. The Reading Room closed in 1997 when the national library (the British Library) moved to a new building at St Pancras . Today it has been transformed into the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre. With the bookstacks in the central courtyard of the museum empty, the demolition for Lord Foster 's glass-roofed Great Court could begin. The Great Court, opened in 2000, while undoubtedly improving circulation around

6215-423: The assumed unity of the treasure and the narratives of its provenience , and is sceptical of the authenticity of some of the votive plaques (especially the largest in the illustration above). In a follow-up article, John Curtis has argued there is overwhelming contemporary evidence that the Treasure was discovered on the north bank of the River Oxus between 1877 and 1880, and he also maintains that most if not all of

6328-488: The block on which the museum stands. The architect Sir John James Burnet was petitioned to put forward ambitious long-term plans to extend the building on all three sides. Most of the houses in Montague Place were knocked down a few years after the sale. Of this grand plan only the Edward VII galleries in the centre of the North Front were ever constructed, these were built 1906–14 to the design by J.J. Burnet, and opened by King George V and Queen Mary in 1914. They now house

6441-422: The bracelets' hollow spaces have now been lost. Sir John Boardman regards the gold scabbard, decorated with tiny figures showing a lion hunt, as pre-Achaemenid Median work of about 600 BC, drawing on Assyrian styles, though other scholars disagree, and the British Museum continues to date it to the 5th or 4th centuries. The surviving objects, an uncertain proportion of the original finds, can be divided into

6554-433: The collection occupies room 2a. By the last years of the 19th century, The British Museum's collections had increased to the extent that its building was no longer large enough. In 1895 the trustees purchased the 69 houses surrounding the museum with the intention of demolishing them and building around the west, north and east sides of the museum. The first stage was the construction of the northern wing beginning 1906. All

6667-425: The collection of Egyptian Monumental Sculpture. Many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection , much of it Roman sculpture, in 1805. In 1806, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin , ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803 removed the large collection of marble sculptures from the Parthenon , on the Acropolis in Athens and transferred them to

6780-419: The courtyard with the East Wing ( The King's Library ) in 1823–1828, followed by the North Wing in 1833–1838, which originally housed among other galleries a reading room, now the Wellcome Gallery. Work was also progressing on the northern half of the West Wing (The Egyptian Sculpture Gallery) 1826–1831, with Montagu House demolished in 1842 to make room for the final part of the West Wing, completed in 1846, and

6893-414: The crest to his bow-case. These seem to be the only items relating to weapons, though other pieces may have decorated horse harness. Another group of plaques were probably bracteates intended to be sewn onto clothing through the small holes round their edges. These have a variety of motifs, including the face of the Egyptian dwarf-god Bes , lion-griffins, a sphinx , and a cut-out figure apparently showing

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7006-412: The dominant power on the western Eurasian Steppe in the 8th century BC. In the 7th century BC, the Scythians crossed the Caucasus Mountains and frequently raided West Asia along with the Cimmerians. After being expelled from West Asia by the Medes , the Scythians retreated back into the Pontic Steppe in the 6th century BC, and were later conquered by the Sarmatians in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC. By

7119-402: The episode reached Captain Francis Charles Burton, a British political officer in Afghanistan, who immediately set out with two orderlies. About midnight he came upon the robbers, who had already begun to fight among themselves, presumably over the division of the loot, with four of them lying wounded on the ground. The treasure was spread out on the floor of the cave they were sheltered in. In

7232-405: The fact of being nude, but is not typical of ancient Greek art . Two hollow gold heads of young males, rather crudely executed, probably belonged to composite statues with the main body in wood or some other material. One figure in silver and gold has a headdress that suggests he may be a king. Other sculptural objects include two model chariots in gold, one incomplete, plus figures of a horse and

7345-427: The few years after its foundation the British Museum received several further gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts and David Garrick 's library of 1,000 printed plays. The predominance of natural history, books and manuscripts began to lessen when in 1772 the museum acquired for £8,410 its first significant antiquities in Sir William Hamilton 's "first" collection of Greek vases . From 1778,

7458-425: The first full-time in-house designer and publications officer were appointed in 1964, the Friends organisation was set up in 1968, an Education Service established in 1970 and publishing house in 1973. In 1963, a new Act of Parliament introduced administrative reforms. It became easier to lend objects, the constitution of the board of trustees changed and the Natural History Museum became fully independent. By 1959

7571-414: The independent British Library . The museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. The original 1753 collection has grown to over 13 million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library. The Round Reading Room , which was designed by

7684-413: The issue. Cunningham acquired many pieces himself through dealers in northern India (modern Pakistan ). Another account by a British general owning some objects said that they had been discovered in 1876, exposed by "a land slip of the river bank". Hopeful diggers continued to excavate the site for years afterwards, and perhaps objects continued to be found; accounts from locals mention many gold "idols",

7797-422: The largest parts of collection were the library, which took up the majority of the rooms on the ground floor of Montagu House, and the natural history objects, which took up an entire wing on the second state storey of the building. In 1763, the trustees of the British Museum, under the influence of Peter Collinson and William Watson , employed the former student of Carl Linnaeus , Daniel Solander , to reclassify

7910-519: The limits of the Chinese Zhou Empire, and of which the Pontic Scythians proper were only one section. These various peoples shared the use of the "Scythian triad," that is of distinctive weapons, horse harnesses and the "Animal Style" art. The term "Scytho-Siberian" has itself in turn also been criticised since it is sometimes used broadly to include all Iron Age equestrian nomads, including those who were not part of any Scythian or Saka. The scholars Nicola Di Cosmo and Andrzej Rozwadowski instead prefer

8023-438: The mid-19th century, the museum's collections were relatively circumscribed but, in 1851, with the appointment to the staff of Augustus Wollaston Franks to curate the collections, the museum began for the first time to collect British and European medieval antiquities, prehistory , branching out into Asia and diversifying its holdings of ethnography . A real coup for the museum was the purchase in 1867, over French objections, of

8136-584: The museum became a construction site. The King's Library , on the ground floor of the East Wing, was handed over in 1827, and was described as one of the finest rooms in London. Although it was not fully open to the general public until 1857, special openings were arranged during The Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1840, the museum became involved in its first overseas excavations , Charles Fellows 's expedition to Xanthos , in Asia Minor , whence came remains of

8249-492: The museum in 2000. The museum again readjusted its collecting policies as interest in "modern" objects: prints, drawings, medals and the decorative arts reawakened. Ethnographical fieldwork was carried out in places as diverse as New Guinea , Madagascar , Romania , Guatemala and Indonesia and there were excavations in the Near East , Egypt, Sudan and the UK. The Weston Gallery of Roman Britain, opened in 1997, displayed

8362-458: The museum trustees a loan of £200,000 to purchase from the Duke of Bedford all 69 houses which backed onto the museum building in the five surrounding streets – Great Russell Street, Montague Street, Montague Place, Bedford Square and Bloomsbury Street. The trustees planned to demolish these houses and to build around the west, north and east sides of the museum new galleries that would completely fill

8475-526: The museum until 1997. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport . Like all UK national museums, it charges no admission fee except for loan exhibitions. Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities , the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". Its foundations lie in the will of the Anglo-Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753),

8588-522: The museum was largely based on the collections of the Anglo-Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane . It opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House , on the site of the current building. The museum's expansion over the following 250 years was largely a result of British colonisation and resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, or independent spin-offs, the first being

8701-710: The museum's architect by his brother Sydney Smirke , whose major addition was the Round Reading Room 1854–1857; at 140 feet (43 m) in diameter it was then the second widest dome in the world, the Pantheon in Rome being slightly wider. The next major addition was the White Wing 1882–1884 added behind the eastern end of the South Front, the architect being Sir John Taylor . In 1895, Parliament gave

8814-2362: The museum's collections of Prints and Drawings and Oriental Antiquities. There was not enough money to put up more new buildings, and so the houses in the other streets are nearly all still standing. Scythian West Asia (7th–6th centuries BC) Akkadian (in West Asia) Median (in West Asia) Phrygian (in West Asia) Urartian (in West Asia) Thracian (in Pontic Steppe) Ancient Greek (in Pontic Steppe) Proto-Slavic language (in Pontic Steppe) Ancient Mesopotamian religion (in West Asia) Urartian religion (in West Asia) Phrygian religion (in West Asia) Ancient Iranic religion (in West Asia) Thracian religion (in Pontic Steppe) Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Scythians ( / ˈ s ɪ θ i ə n / or / ˈ s ɪ ð i ə n / ) or Scyths ( / ˈ s ɪ θ / , but note Scytho- ( / ˈ s aɪ θ ʊ / ) in composition) and sometimes also referred to as

8927-667: The museum, dated 31 January 1784, refers to the Hamilton bequest of a "Colossal Foot of an Apollo in Marble". It was one of two antiquities of Hamilton's collection drawn for him by Francesco Progenie, a pupil of Pietro Fabris , who also contributed a number of drawings of Mount Vesuvius sent by Hamilton to the Royal Society in London. In the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated

9040-671: The museum, was criticised for having a lack of exhibition space at a time when the museum was in serious financial difficulties and many galleries were closed to the public. At the same time the African collections that had been temporarily housed in 6 Burlington Gardens were given a new gallery in the North Wing funded by the Sainsbury family – with the donation valued at £25 million. The museum's online database had nearly 4,500,000 individual object entries in 2,000,000 records at

9153-470: The natural history collection according to the Linnaean system , thereby making the museum a public centre of learning accessible to the full range of European natural historians. In 1823, King George IV gave the King's Library assembled by George III, and Parliament gave the right to a copy of every book published in the country, thereby ensuring that the museum's library would expand indefinitely. During

9266-411: The objects as bullion, and had cut up some larger ones, such as a gold scabbard now in the British Museum. Other pieces may have been cut up in antiquity (like hacksilver ), or upon discovery at the site. Franks later bought Cunningham's collection, and bequeathed all his objects to the British Museum at his death in 1897. The incomplete model chariot and a detached figure of a rider were presented to

9379-432: The objects in the Treasure are genuine. In 2007, Emomalii Rahmon , President of Tajikistan , was reported as calling for the repatriation of the treasure, despite the fact that it had been recovered and sold by local peoples and acquired by museums in the art market. However, no formal claim has been made by the Tajik government, and in 2013, "high-quality golden replicas" of pieces from the Oxus Treasure were presented to

9492-465: The objects' similarity to later Achaemenid finds, many excavated under proper archaeological conditions, which the Oxus Treasure certainly was not. In particular, finds of jewellery including armlets and torcs in a tomb at Susa by a French expedition from 1902 onwards (now in the Louvre) are closely similar to the Oxus finds. As the quality and style of the objects was generally considered to have stood

9605-558: The open rear to assist getting in and out, while the solid front carries the face of the protective Egyptian dwarf-god Bes . A leaping ibex was probably the handle of an amphora -type vase, and compares with handles shown on tribute vessels in the Persepolis reliefs, as well as an example now in the Louvre. The two griffin-headed bracelets or armlets are the most spectacular pieces by far, despite lacking their stone inlays. There are

9718-469: The proposed Picture Gallery was no longer needed, and the space on the upper floor was given over to the Natural history collections. The first Synopsis of the British Museum was published in 1808. This described the contents of the museum, and the display of objects room by room, and updated editions were published every few years. As Sir Robert Smirke 's grand neo-classical building gradually arose,

9831-481: The public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element, and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library. The body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House , as

9944-526: The reception of the Royal Library , and a Picture Gallery over it ..." and put forward plans for today's quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the King's Library Gallery began in 1823. The extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. However, following the founding of the National Gallery , London in 1824,

10057-558: The ruins of an ancient fort called " Takht-i Kuwad ", which was sold to Indian merchants. A later report by Sir Alexander Cunningham , the British general and archaeologist who was the first Director of the Archaeological Survey of India , described the finds, which he said began in 1877, as being in the river itself, "scattered about in the sands of the river", in a place exposed in the dry season, though another account he later gave, based on new information, rather confused

10170-730: The separation of the British Library). A board of 25 trustees (with the director as their accounting officer for the purposes of reporting to Government) is responsible for the general management and control of the museum, in accordance with the British Museum Act 1963 and the Museums and Galleries Act 1992 . Prior to the 1963 Act, it was chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury , the Lord Chancellor and

10283-537: The start of 2023. In 2022–23 there were 27 million visits to the website. This compares with 19.5 millions website visits in 2013. There were 5,820,860 visits to the museum in 2023, a 42% increase on 2022. The museum was the most visited tourist attraction in Britain in 2023. The number of visits, however, has not recovered to the level reached before the Covid pandemic. A number of films have been shot at

10396-510: The surviving metalwork, with one of the pair of griffin-headed bracelets on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum , and displays them in Room 52. The group arrived at the museum by different routes, with many items bequeathed to the nation by Augustus Wollaston Franks . The coins are more widely dispersed, and more difficult to firmly connect with the treasure. A group believed to come from it

10509-513: The term "Scythian" has however been criticised for lumping together various heterogeneous populations belonging to different cultures, and therefore leading to several errors in the coverage of the various warrior-nomadic cultures of the Iron Age-period Eurasian Steppe. Therefore, the narrow use of the term "Scythian" as denoting specifically the people who dominated the Pontic Steppe between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC

10622-641: The test of time, concerns over the antiquity of the great majority of the objects reduced over the years. The issue was revived in 2003 when the archaeologist Oscar Muscarella , employed by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for 40 years, was reported in The Times , in a story by Peter Watson , to have "labelled as mostly fake" the treasure. However he was attacked by the Director of

10735-572: The tombs of the rulers of ancient Lycia , among them the Nereid and Payava monuments. In 1857, Charles Newton was to discover the 4th-century BC Mausoleum of Halikarnassos , one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . In the 1840s and 1850s the museum supported excavations in Assyria by A.H. Layard and others at sites such as Nimrud and Nineveh . Of particular interest to curators

10848-502: The treasure include examples from various Achaemenid mints and dates, but also later ones from after the conquest of the Empire by Alexander the Great , with the latest being of the reigns of Antiochus the Great (r. 223–187 BC) and Euthydemus I of Bactria (r. c.  235 –200 BC). The treasure was evidently discovered by local people somewhere on the north bank of the Oxus in what

10961-557: The use of the term "Early Nomadic" for the broad designation of the Iron Age horse-riding nomads. While the ancient Persians used the name Saka to designate all the steppe nomads and specifically referred to the Pontic Scythians as Sakā tayaiy paradraya ( 𐎿𐎣𐎠 𐏐 𐎫𐎹𐎡𐎹 𐏐 𐎱𐎼𐎭𐎼𐎹 ; lit.   ' the Saka who dwell beyond the (Black) Sea ' ), the name "Saka" is used in modern scholarship to designate

11074-404: The various equestrian warrior-nomadic cultures of the Iron Age-period Eurasian Steppe following the discovery in the 1930s in the eastern parts of the Eurasian steppe of items forming the "Scythian triad," consisting of distinctive weapons, horse harnesses, and objects decorated in the "Animal Style" art, which had until then been considered to be markers of the Scythians proper. This broad use of

11187-510: The view that with the likelihood of far worse air-raids than that experienced in World War I that the museum had to make preparations to remove its most valuable items to secure locations. Following the Munich crisis Forsdyke ordered 3,300 No-Nail Boxes and stored them in the basement of Duveen Gallery. At the same time he began identifying and securing suitable locations. As a result, the museum

11300-615: The while, the collections kept growing. Emil Torday collected in Central Africa, Aurel Stein in Central Asia, D. G. Hogarth , Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence excavated at Carchemish . Around this time, the American collector and philanthropist J. Pierpont Morgan donated a substantial number of objects to the museum, including William Greenwell 's collection of prehistoric artefacts from across Europe which he had purchased for £10,000 in 1908. Morgan had also acquired

11413-419: The worship of Mithra and of Zurvan , and other local cults seem to have continued under the empire. The religious context of the treasure is unclear, although it is thought to have come from a temple. The circumstances of the discovery and trading of the pieces, and their variety of styles and quality of workmanship, cast some doubt on their authenticity from the start, and "necessitate a cautious treatment of

11526-526: Was a major ancient crossing point for the Oxus, and the treasure may have come from further afield. The first mention in print of the treasure was an article in a Russian newspaper in 1880, written by a Russian general who in 1879 was in the area enquiring into the Trans-Caspian railway that the Russians had just begun to construct. He recounted that local reports said that treasure had been found in

11639-640: Was a room originally intended for manuscripts, between the Front Entrance Hall and the Manuscript Saloon. The books remained here until the British Library moved to St Pancras in 1998. The opening of the forecourt in 1852 marked the completion of Robert Smirke 's 1823 plan, but already adjustments were having to be made to cope with the unforeseen growth of the collections. Infill galleries were constructed for Assyrian sculptures and Sydney Smirke 's Round Reading Room , with space for

11752-523: Was able to quickly commence relocating selected items on 24 August 1939, (a mere day after the Home Secretary advised them to do so), to secure basements, country houses , Aldwych Underground station and the National Library of Wales . Many items were relocated in early 1942 from their initial dispersal locations to a newly developed facility at Westwood Quarry in Wiltshire . The evacuation

11865-416: Was apparent that it would be unable to cope with further expansion. The museum's first notable addition towards its collection of antiquities, since its foundation, was by Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803), British Ambassador to Naples , who sold his collection of Greek and Roman artefacts to the museum in 1784 together with a number of other antiquities and natural history specimens. A list of donations to

11978-631: Was bequeathed to the museum in 1881. In 1882, the museum was involved in the establishment of the independent Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) the first British body to carry out research in Egypt. A bequest from Miss Emma Turner in 1892 financed excavations in Cyprus. In 1897 the death of the great collector and curator, A. W. Franks , was followed by an immense bequest of 3,300 finger rings , 153 drinking vessels, 512 pieces of continental porcelain, 1,500 netsuke , 850 inro , over 30,000 bookplates and miscellaneous items of jewellery and plate, among them

12091-443: Was excavated by Soviet archaeologists in the 20th century, producing a large number of finds of metalwork and other objects, which seem to have been deposited from about 300 BC to as late as the third century AD. While it is tempting to connect the temple and treasure, as some scholars have proposed, the range of objects found, and a founding date for the temple proposed by the excavators of about 300 BC, do not neatly match up. The area

12204-686: Was in the tradition of a Schatzkammer such as those formed by the Renaissance princes of Europe. Baron Ferdinand's will was most specific, and failure to observe the terms would make it void, the collection should be placed in a special room to be called the Waddesdon Bequest Room separate and apart from the other contents of the Museum and thenceforth for ever thereafter, keep the same in such room or in some other room to be substituted for it. These terms are still observed, and

12317-607: Was initially used by ancient authors to designate specifically the Iranic people who lived in the Pontic Steppe between the Danube and the Don rivers. In modern archaeology, the term "Scythians" is used in its original narrow sense as a name strictly for the Iranic people who lived in the Pontic and Crimean Steppes, between the Danube and Don rivers, from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC. By

12430-517: Was set up in May 1920 and became a permanent department in 1931. It is today the oldest in continuous existence. In 1923, the British Museum welcomed over one million visitors. New mezzanine floors were constructed and book stacks rebuilt in an attempt to cope with the flood of books. In 1931, the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen offered funds to build a gallery for the Parthenon sculptures . Designed by

12543-478: Was the eventual discovery of Ashurbanipal 's great library of cuneiform tablets , which helped to make the museum a focus for Assyrian studies . Sir Thomas Grenville (1755–1846), a trustee of the British Museum from 1830, assembled a library of 20,240 volumes, which he left to the museum in his will. The books arrived in January 1847 in twenty-one horse-drawn vans. The only vacant space for this large library

12656-454: Was the subject of the offering. One large figure is in shallow relief within its incised outline (illustrated). The London group includes bowls, a gold jug, and a handle from a vase or ewer in the form of a leaping ibex, which is similar to a winged Achaemenid handle in the Louvre . No rhyton drinking vessels were found, but the British Museum has two other Achaemenid examples, one ending in

12769-576: Was timely, for in 1940 the Duveen Gallery was severely damaged by bombing. Meanwhile, prior to the war, the Nazis had sent a researcher to the British Museum for several years with the aim of "compiling an anti-Semitic history of Anglo-Jewry". After the war, the museum continued to collect from all countries and all centuries: among the most spectacular additions were the 2600 BC Mesopotamian treasure from Ur , discovered during Leonard Woolley 's 1922–34 excavations. Gold, silver and garnet grave goods from

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