Il British Museum which is now 266 years old, having been founded in 1753 by Sir Hans Sloane, a wealthy physician and scientist to George II and who had put away a fortune on quinine from Jamaica. Sloane had collected nearly 50 books and manuscripts as well as rare objects, which he bequeathed to Parliament in his will for £20.
With a public lottery, 100 pounds were collected which were used to purchase, in addition to Sloane's, two other collections and thus arrange them in the most suitable location. These formed the first nucleus of the British Museum.
In 1757 the Museum was also enriched by the contribution of the Old Royal Library, thanks to George II, who also instituted the obligation that a copy of every book protected by copyright be deposited with it, an obligation then extended to all libraries published in Great Britain.
The 800th century was the golden age of archaeological discoveries and many wealthy English collectors donated various treasures collected inside and outside the borders of the Empire to the British Museum.
For example, the so-called Elgin Marbles, brought to England in the early 800s by Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, British diplomatic representative in Constantinople. The Turks who were occupying Athens at the time gave him permission to remove the frieze panels, metopes and frontal statues from the Parthenon and send them all to England, where he was accused of having committed arbitrary vandalism. Lord Elgin later sold the sculptures to the state for £35, half of what it had cost him to bring them to Britain.
However, history also tells us that on the eve of the Second World War, a railway carriage with shielded lights furtively left London, under guard, carrying some of the most precious works that constitute the heritage of all humanity. Packed and sealed, there were priceless treasures, Shakespeare's first folio, the Magna Charta and the Assyro-Babylonian tablets from 2500 years ago which narrate, in cuneiform characters, the story of the creation of the universal flood.
Warned by the Home Office of the approaching danger, the British Museum was saving its treasures according to pre-established plans down to the smallest detail. On 26 August 1939, eight days before the declaration of war, a hundred tonnes of precious objects were already safe in the anti-aircraft tunnel near Alberyzwyth, Wales. Meanwhile, museum staff worked tirelessly to move important sculptures, including the famous ones from the Acropolis in Athens, to a disused sandbag-stuffed gallery in the London Underground. A timely measure, because during the Nazi bombing, the British Museum was hit by seven incendiary bombs.
Il British Museum represents a rich chest of Western and Eastern culture, as well as being a national library, a national archaeological museum and a museum of art ranging from prehistory to the present day.
Visitors to the reading room of the library, where a dome decorated in gold and blue rises which is well over that of St. Peter's by 67 cm, have at their disposal kilometers of book shelves and this increases every year. Here they searched for documents and studied characters such as Charleston Dickens, Robert Browning or Johannesburg Ruskin. Marx is also said to have written The capital at the M-7 table has become almost a relic for many Russian communists. Lenin also came to study in this hall but under the name of Jacob Richter.
Two important destinations that have always attracted visitors to the Museum are the Magna Charta and the Rosetta stone. The most important document of the Magna Charta (the charter of freedom granted in 1215 by King John the Landless), namely that of the Clause of the Barons, went to enrich the collection of the British Museum in 1769.
The Rosetta Stone was acquired by England as war booty. Discovered in 1799 by Napoleon's soldiers during excavations for the construction of a fort on a mouth of the Nile, Rashid - is a black basalt slab with an inscription, dating back to 196 BC, in three different scripts: Hieroglyphic Egyptian, Demotic Egyptian and Greek. After Napoleon's defeat at Alexandria the stele was transferred to England and George III donated it to the British Museum. For almost twenty years the stone was the subject of study of many scholars then later thanks to Egyptologists, including the French François Chamellion, it was possible to decipher the secret of these hieroglyphics.
But how to go about discovering the fabulous treasures of the British Museum? It is useless to try to see everything at once, a good method may be to start with some collections of specific interest and then gradually move on to other more demanding collections. For example, among the documents of literary interest there is an atlas almost two meters high, given to Charles II in 1660 and believed to be the largest book in the world; Nelson's battle instructions which were to lead to the resounding defeat of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar; and, the last moving page of the diary kept by Scott during the ill-fated expedition to Antarctica.
In 1939 the British Museum was enriched with an important archaeological treasure. Intrigued by the presence of some strange hills on her Sutton Hoo land in Suffolk she undertook excavations with the help of experts from the Ispwich museum. Ancient bronze and iron objects were found, called the British Museum experts understood that this was the burial of a Saxon king in a XNUMXth century vessel. Although the wooden planking was completely destroyed, next to it were gold and silver jewels, fragments of cloth and leather, bronze and iron dishes, two enormous drinking vessels made from the horns of a large wild ox of the Northern Europe, now extinct.
And the visit continues, because there are still many objects and works to be discovered in the British Museum and perhaps this museum more than others bears witness to the differences and fundamental similarities between men from all over the world.
