Facts about The British Museum

1. 10

   Cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia, numbering over 130,000 pieces, form the British Museum's substantial collection documenting 3,000 years of Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian civilization.

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2. 09

   Wealthy collector Hans Sloane bequeathed his 71,000-item personal collection to the British Museum in 1753, providing the initial foundation for the institution's establishment in 1759.

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3. 08

   Ninety-two Egyptian mummies are displayed in the British Museum's Egyptian Galleries, spanning periods from the New Kingdom through the Greco-Roman era.

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4. 07

   Parthenon marbles from ancient Greece have remained at the British Museum since 1816, when diplomat Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, acquired approximately 247 sculptures and architectural fragments.

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5. 06

   Approximately 7 million visitors annually pass through the British Museum's Great Court, which was redesigned and reopened in 2000 with a striking glass roof covering 6,112 square meters.

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6. 05

   Augustus Henry Lane Fox donated his 22,000-object archaeological collection to the British Museum in 1884, establishing one of the institution's most significant foundational holdings.

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7. 04

   The British Museum's Reading Room, opened in 1857, served luminaries including Karl Marx, who spent 30 years researching there while writing Das Kapital.

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8. 03

   Built between 1823 and 1847, the British Museum's neoclassical building features a 370-foot-wide facade with 44 iconic columns representing Greek architectural principles.

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9. 02

   In 1802, the British Museum acquired the Rosetta Stone, a 2,268-kilogram granite slab inscribed with hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek text that proved crucial to deciphering ancient Egyptian writing.

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10. 01

    Over 8 million objects fill the British Museum's collection, making it one of the world's largest and most visited museums with 5.8 million annual visitors in 2019.

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