British Museum

Sunni's reflections on the British Museum

One of the largest museums of its kind, the British Museum houses more than 8 million works and documents the history of human culture from the beginning to its present. It is really the biggest collection of human artifacts, and one could spend the whole day inside and not be able to see everything. I was only able to spend two hours walking around the museum, so while I saw most of the famous artifacts, I know that I missed a lot of what was inside. The first thing that I saw inside of the museum may be the most popular item (as it was plastered all over the gift shop!). The Rosetta Stone is a large Egyptian artifact that has the same message written in 3 different languages – including ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. This was the first key is deciphering those hieroglyphics. Another interesting aspect of the stone is that many countries have fought over its possession, but it has now been housed in the British museum since 1802. Other than wartime, it has only left the museum one time to be displayed at the Louvre in 1972.

After exploring the ancient Egyptian and Grecian artifacts, I had already been in the museum for an entire hour and was getting tired even though I had seen practically nothing. A couple other students and I began to speed walk through the other floors to see some of the highlights of the museum before getting too tired to continue.  We saw Japanese samurai armor, a mummified cat, and the statues from Easter Island. All in all, I enjoyed the little time that I spent in the museum because it was great to see all of the famous artifacts up close, but I wish that I had had more time and energy to really explore the whole building.