Main Collection
An encyclopedic record of human culture across two million years. Search over one million objects charting the rise of cities, empires, faiths, and everyday life.
Bust of Ramesses II, the 'Younger Memnon'about 1250 BC
Bust of Ramesses II, the 'Younger Memnon'about 1250 BC
Two million years of things people made to make sense of themselves.
ounded in 1753 from a single collector's bequest, the British Museum expanded through scholarship, exchange, and imperial reach into an encyclopedic record of human culture.
From early Olduvai handaxes to Tang funerary horses, an Egyptian sarcophagus to a Benin bronze—these objects are not merely relics of the worlds that made them, but living records of where we come from.
