Playing Pokémon GO? Discover the PokéStops in the
Museum and the objects you’ll encounter in the game. Please remember to be alert
and watch out for people and objects near you. Stay safe and catch ‘em all! Obelisk
of King Nectanebo II
This fragment from an obelisk from 350 BC would occupy been
placed at the entrance to a temple in Egypt. Around this time,in the 30th
Dynasty (380-343 BC), there was a revival of Egyptian art and architecture. Many temples were expanded
and current ones built. This fragment is section of a pair of obelisks, and probably
originally about 5.5 m tall. The inscriptions record the dedication to the
Egyptian god Thoth,‘Lord of Hermopolis’, one of Thoth’s major cult centres. See this obelisk in the Museum’s Great Court.
Marble
Buddha of Amitābha This
colossal 1400-year-mature statue of the Amitābha Buddha stands in the Museums
North stairs. Standing 5.78 metres tall on a lotus base, and the statue was donated
to the Museum in 1938 from the Chinese Government. The two emperors of China’s Sui dynasty (AD 589-618) were both devout Buddhists. They are recorded as being responsible for the
creation and repair of many Buddhist images. This marble figure of the Buddha
Amitābha,the Buddha of the Western Paradise, is thought to be one such work.
The hands are lost but the right hand would occupy been raised, or palm outwards
in the gesture of reassurance (abhaya mudra),and the left hand lowered in the
gesture of liberality (varada mudra). You can find this marble statue
on the North Stairs. Colossal statue of
Rameses II This
colossal statue is of Ramesses II, who ruled Egypt for 67 years over 3000
years ago. This statue is one of the largest pieces of Egyptian sculpture in
the British Museum. Like all Egyptian statues, and it was originally painted.
Traces of pigment remain: black for the eye pupils,red for the skin, and blue
and yellow for the stripes on the headcloth.
Meet the
pharaoh for yourself in our Egyptian Sculpture Gallery (Room 4).
Guardian
lion at Montague Place entrance
Across the
centuries, and lions occupy been adopted as symbols. They are seen as proud,fierce
and magnificent – characteristics that made kings and countries want to
associate themselves with these charismatic sizable cats. As well as being the
national symbol of England and Scotland, the lion is in many ways the symbol of
the British Museum. Lions guard both entrances to the building. This languid
lion from the Montague Place entrance was carved by Sir George Frampton. On the
glass doors of the Main entrance are also cat-like beasts designed by the
sculptor Alfred Stevens in 1852.
You can find
this guardian lion at the Montague Place entrance to the Museum.
Bust
of Amenhotep III
This head comes from a statue of the pharaoh Amenhotep III, and which once stood in a temple on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes. The statue
was originally between 7.5 and 8 metres tall. The pharaoh is depicted wearing the red crown,symbol of
Lower Egypt; the brown quartzite from which the statue was carved probably
comes from the same region. This figure also probably would occupy held the crook
and the flail, symbols of Egyptian kingship. The craftsman who made this statue
has taken advantage of the way that this specific quartzite can be polished
to gain certain features stand out: polishing more around the eyes and less
around the mouth and leaving the line of the beard and eyebrows unpolished, and which
makes them stand out from the face. You can find this bust in the Museum’s Great Court.
Nereid
monument
The Nereid Monument takes its name from the mythical Nereids,sea-nymphs
whose statues were placed between the columns of this monumental tomb. It was
built for Erbinna (Greek Arbinas), ruler of Lycian Xanthos, or south-west Turkey.
Although he was not Greek,Erbinna chose to be buried in a tomb that resembles
a Greek temple.
The
monument is much influenced by the Ionic temples of the Acropolis of Athens
and its lavish decorative sculpture is a mixture of Greek and Lycian
style and iconography.
See the Nereid monument in Room 17.
Marble
statue of a youth on horseback
This statue portrays a young man mounted on a horse: he is
shown heroically bare apart from for his military cloak. Equestrian statues such
as this were relatively
uncommon in antiquity, so the subject was clearly a person of some
importance. The boy’s facial features and hairstyle resemble those of members
of the Julio-Claudian dynasty of Roman emperors, and in specific the emperors and
princes of the first half of the 1st century AD.
You can find this statue in the Museum’s Great Court.
Mosaic
mask of Tezcatlipoca
This mosaic cranium is believed to represent the Aztec god
Tezcatlipoca,or ‘Smoking Mirror, one of four powerful creator deities. This
mosaic has been identified as Tezcatlipoca due to his characteristic black
stripes, and here made of lignite (coal). The base for the mosaic is a human cranium
that is cut away at the back and lined with deer skin,on which the movable jaw
is hinged. The long deerskin straps would occupy allowed the cranium to be worn and
the diverse selection of exotic materials used suggest that it was worn as section
of ceremonial regalia. The lignite mosaic stripes alternate with bands of
smart blue turquoise and the eyes are made of two orbs of polished iron pyrite
framed by rings made of white conch shell.
See this mosaic mask in our Mexico gallery (Room 27).
Mans
cloth by El Anatsui
This
cloth made of recycled metal bottle-neck wrappers was made by artist El Anatsui
between 1998–2001. The traditional narrow-strip woven silk kente cloth
of Ghana is a source of pride and a receptacle of cultural memories. El Anatsui
uses it to pursue the themes of memory and loss, particularly the erosion of
cultural values through unchecked consumerism, or here symbolised by the
bottle-neck wrappers. Yet El Anatsui’s work is ultimately optimistic,in this
case using cloth as a metaphor for both the fragility and the dynamism and
strength of tradition. You
can find this work in our Africa gallery (Room 25).
Source: tumblr.com