The collection was later dramatically enlarged by the excavations of A. H. Layard at the Assyrian sites of Nimrud and Nineveh between 1845 and 1851. [23] Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt, British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, laid the foundations of the collection of Egyptian Monumental Sculpture. The science department[94] has and continues to develop techniques to date artefacts, analyse and identify the materials used in their manufacture, to identify the place an artefact originated and the techniques used in their creation. There are plans in place to develop permanent galleries for showcasing art from Oceania and South America. Take a virtual tour of the galleries. Woolley went on to excavate Ur between 1922 and 1934, discovering the 'Royal Cemeteries' of the 3rd millennium BC. A pressing problem was finding space for additions to the library which now required an extra 1 1⁄4 miles (2.0 km) of shelving each year. Between six and eight titles are published each year in this series.[98]. Around this time, the American collector and philanthropist J Pierpont Morgan donated a substantial number of objects to the museum,[36] including William Greenwell's collection of prehistoric artefacts from across Europe which he had purchased for £10,000 in 1908. [27] The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke, was asked to draw up plans for an eastern extension to the museum "... for the reception of the Royal Library, and a Picture Gallery over it ..."[28] and put forward plans for today's quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. Highlights of the African collection include objects found at megalithic circles in The Gambia, a dozen exquisite Afro-Portuguese ivories, a series of soapstone figures from the Kissi people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, hoard of bronze Kru currency rings from the Sinoe River in Liberia, Asante goldwork and regalia from Ghana including the Bowdich collection, the rare Akan Drum from the same region in west Africa, pair of door panels and lintel from the palace at Ikere-Ekiti in Yorubaland, the Benin and Igbo-Ukwu bronze sculptures, the beautiful Bronze Head of Queen Idia, a magnificent brass head of a Yoruba ruler and quartz throne from Ife, a similar terracotta head from Iwinrin Grove near Ife, the Apapa Hoard from Lagos and other mediaeval bronze hoards from Allabia and the Forçados River in southern Nigeria, an Ikom monolith from Cross River State, several ancestral screens from the Kalabari tribe in the Niger Delta, the Torday collection of central African sculpture, textiles and weaponry from the Kuba Kingdom including three royal figures, the unique Luzira Head from Uganda, processional crosses and other ecclesiastical and royal material from Gondar and Magdala, Ethiopia following the British Expedition to Abyssinia, excavated objects from Great Zimbabwe (that includes a unique soapstone, anthropomorphic figure) and satellite towns such as Mutare including a large hoard of Iron Age soapstone figures, a rare divining bowl from the Venda peoples and cave paintings and petroglyphs from South Africa. In reply the museum said: “We are aware of the comments from the PCS union and will continue to liaise with the British Museum PCS branch and our staff more generally.”[123], According to The Guardian, the UK government rejected the appointment of classicist Mary Beard as a British Museum trustee in 2019, due to her pro-European beliefs. 6–7 (Julian Reade, 2004. [69] These were donated by Professor Fred Wendorf of Southern Methodist University in Texas, and comprise the entire collection of artefacts and environmental remains from his excavations at Prehistoric sites in the Sahara Desert between 1963 and 1997. Egyptian antiquities have formed part of the British Museum collection ever since its foundation in 1753 after receiving 160 Egyptian objects[67] from Sir Hans Sloane. Highlights of the collections include:[86], Room 33 - Cubic weights made of chert from Mohenjo-daro, Pakistan, 2600-1900 BC, Room 33 - One of the hu from Huixian, China, 5th century BC, Room 33 - A hamsa sacred goose vessel made of crystal from Stupa 32, Taxila, Pakistan, 1st century AD, Room 33 - Stone sculpture of the death of Buddha, Gandhara, Pakistan, 1st-3rd centuries AD, Room 91a - Section of the Admonitions Scroll by Chinese artist Gu Kaizhi, China, c. 380 AD, Room 33 - Gilded bronze statue of the Buddha, Dhaneswar Khera, India, 5th century AD, The Amitābha Buddha from Hancui on display in the museum's stairwell, China, 6th century AD, Room 33 - The luohan from Yixian made of glazed stoneware, China, 907-1125 AD, Sculpture of Goddess Ambika found at Dhar, India, 1034 AD, Sculpture of the two Jain tirthankaras Rishabhanatha and Mahavira, Orissa, India, 11th-12th century AD, Room 33 - Western Zhou bronze ritual vessel known as the "Kang Hou Gui", China, 11th century BC, Room 33 - A crowned figure of the Bodhisattva Khasarpana Avalokiteśvara, India, 12th century AD, Room 33 - Covered hanging jar with underglaze decoration, Si Satchanalai (Sawankalok), north-central Thailand, 14th-16th centuries AD, Room 33 - Hu-shaped altar flower vessel, Ming dynasty, China, 15th -16th centuries AD, Room 33 - An assistant to the Judge of Hell, figure from a judgement group, Ming dynasty, China, 16th century AD, Room 33 - Statue of Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, gilded bronze. The British Museum clarified that the change was purely logistical to save space in the main museum entrance and did not reflect any escalation in threat.[119]. London: The British Museum Press, p. 327, Building the British Museum, Marjorie Caygill & Christopher Date 1999, Title deed of the 'perimeter properties' of The British Museum, BM Archives CA TD, pp. A bequest from Miss Emma Turner in 1892 financed excavations in Cyprus. In recent years, controversies pertaining to reparation of artefacts taken from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing during the Anglo-French invasion of China in 1860 have also begun to surface. The department is also responsible for the curation of Romano-British objects – the museum has by far the most extensive such collection in Britain and one of the most representative regional collections in Europe outside Italy. In 1897 the death of the great collector and curator, A. W. Franks, was followed by an immense bequest of 3,300 finger rings, 153 drinking vessels, 512 pieces of continental porcelain, 1,500 netsuke, 850 inro, over 30,000 bookplates and miscellaneous items of jewellery and plate, among them the Oxus Treasure. [b] The British Museum Act 1753 also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library, assembled by Sir Robert Cotton, dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library, the collection of the Earls of Oxford. Its head is the Director of the British Museum. Hogarth, Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence excavated at Carchemish. The latter benefited from the purchase in 1905 of the Sarawak collection put together by Dr Charles Hose, as well as from other colonial officers such as Edward A Jeffreys. During the course of his lifetime, and particularly after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter,[9] Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities and, not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II, for the nation, for a sum of £20,000. Solander return to the British Museum in 1763 and his publication on the Eocene Barton Beds of Hampshire, a layer of clays rich in mollusc fossils, was published in 1766. Although completed in 1938, it was hit by a bomb in 1940 and remained semi-derelict for 22 years, before reopening in 1962. The size of the Egyptian collections now stand at over 110,000 objects.[68]. The first significant addition of Mesopotamian objects was from the collection of Claudius James Rich in 1825. Codex Aubin, Códice Aubin 1576, Códice de 1576, Historia de la nación mexicana, Histoire mexicaine, manuscript, codex, Aztec, Colonial (Americas), Mexico | The British Museum Images. Your support is vital and helps the Museum to share the collection with the world. [25] The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia, Greece in 1815. The series is designed to disseminate research on items in the collection. Also the general museum archives which date from its foundation in 1753 are overseen by this department; the individual departments have their own separate archives and libraries covering their various areas of responsibility, which can be consulted by the public on application. It ranks as one of the largest and best print room collections in existence alongside the Albertina in Vienna, the Paris collections and the Hermitage. In 2004, the ethnographic collections from Asia were transferred to the department. Due to increasing urbanisation and the rise in industrialisation (including the spread of gas lighting in England), the evening meal was becoming later and later. [120], In February 2019, hundreds of people occupied the British Museum in protest against BP's longstanding sponsorship of the Museum. [21], From 1778, a display of objects from the South Seas brought back from the round-the-world voyages of Captain James Cook and the travels of other explorers fascinated visitors with a glimpse of previously unknown lands. In 1763, the trustees of the British Museum, under the influence of Peter Collinson and William Watson, employed the former student of Carl Linnaeus, Daniel Solander, to reclassify the natural history collection according to the Linnaean system, thereby making the Museum a public centre of learning accessible to the full range of European natural historians. In the same year the Act of Parliament establishing the British Library was passed, separating the collection of manuscripts and printed books from the British Museum. Mummy of a youth with a portrait of the deceased. Today, the British Museum has grown to become one of the largest museums in the world, covering an area of over 92,000 m2 (990,000 sq. The Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre, our state of the art conservation studio and storage centre, is also open to visitors and researchers. [76] The collection of drawings covers the period from the 14th century to the present, and includes many works of the highest quality by the leading artists of the European schools. On the return of antiquities from wartime storage in 1919 some objects were found to have deteriorated. The British Museum: A History. A long suite of rooms (Gallery 25) on the lower floor display African art. The newspaper said the British Museum subsequently planned to appoint her as one of the five trustees it does not need government approval for. It also created the opportunity to redevelop the vacant space in Robert Smirke's 19th-century central quadrangle into the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court – the largest covered square in Europe – which opened in 2000. In line with current government plans, we hope to reopen the Museum in May. Layard's work was continued by his assistant, Hormuzd Rassam and in 1852–1854 he went on to discover the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh with many magnificent reliefs, including the famous Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal and Lachish reliefs. More material followed from the excavations of Max Mallowan at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in 1935–1938 and from Woolley at Alalakh in the years just before and after the Second World War. However, the undoubted highlight from the early mediaeval period is the magnificent items from the Sutton Hoo royal grave, generously donated to the nation by the landowner Edith Pretty. Conservation has six specialist areas: ceramics & glass; metals; organic material (including textiles); stone, wall paintings and mosaics; Eastern pictorial art and Western pictorial art. [121], In July 2019, Ahdaf Soueif resigned from the British Museum's board of trustees in response to its "immovable" position on its sponsorship deal with BP. Key benefactors to the department have been Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, Richard Payne Knight, John Malcolm, Campbell Dodgson, César Mange de Hauke and Tomás Harris. A great addition was material amassed by Sir Henry Wellcome, which was donated by the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in 1954. The roof is a glass and steel construction, built by an Austrian steelwork company,[58] with 1,656 uniquely shaped panes of glass. [24] Many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection, much of it Roman sculpture, in 1805. This consisted of almost 300 pieces of objets d'art et de vertu which included exquisite examples of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica, among them the Holy Thorn Reliquary, probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry. Le musée a été ouvert au public le 15 janvier 1759 à la Montagu House à Bloomsbury, au même emplacement qu'aujourd'hui ; il comptait alors quelque 80 000 objets. This series was started in 1978 and was originally called Occasional Papers. Although the collections centre on Mesopotamia, most of the surrounding areas are well represented. Phoenician antiquities come from across the region, but the Tharros collection from Sardinia and the large number of Phoenician stelae from Carthage and Maghrawa are outstanding. Work was also progressing on the northern half of the West Wing (The Egyptian Sculpture Gallery) 1826–1831, with Montagu House demolished in 1842 to make room for the final part of the West Wing, completed in 1846, and the South Wing with its great colonnade, initiated in 1843 and completed in 1847, when the Front Hall and Great Staircase were opened to the public. Room 12 – A gold earring from the Aegina Treasure, Greece, 1700-1500 BC, Room 18 – Parthenon statuary from the east pediment and Metopes from the south wall, Athens, Greece, 447-438 BC, Room 19 – Caryatid and Ionian column from the Erechtheion, Acropolis of Athens, Greece, 420-415 BC, Room 20 – Tomb of Payava, Lycia, Turkey, 360 BC, Room 21 – Fragmentary horse from the colossal chariot group which topped the podium of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Turkey, c. 350 BC, Room 22 - Gold oak wreath with a bee and two cicadas, western Turkey, c. 350-300 BC, Room 22 – Column from the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Turkey, early 4th century BC, Room 22 - Colossal head of Asclepius wearing a metal crown (now lost), from a cult statue on Melos, Greece, 325-300 BC, Room 1 - Farnese Hermes in the Enlightenment Gallery, Italy, 1st century AD, Room 69 - Roman gladiator helmet from Pompeii, Italy, 1st century AD, Room 23 - The famous version of the 'Crouching Venus', Roman, c. 1st century AD, Room 22 – Roman marble copy of the famous 'Spinario (Boy with Thorn)', Italy, c. 1st century AD, Room 22 – Apollo of Cyrene (holding a lyre), Libya, c. 2nd century AD. There is also a large collection of medieval signet rings, prominent among them is the gold signet ring belonging to Jean III de Grailly who fought in the Hundred Years' War, as well as those of Mary, Queen of Scots and Richard I of England. The Duveen Gallery, sited to the west of the Egyptian, Greek & Assyrian sculpture galleries, was designed to house the Elgin Marbles by the American Beaux-Arts architect John Russell Pope. Last updated 5 March It is pretentious, in that it uses the ancient Marbles to decorate itself. Beginning from the early Bronze Age, the department also houses one of the widest-ranging collections of Italic and Etruscan antiquities outside Italy, as well as extensive groups of material from Cyprus and non-Greek colonies in Lycia and Caria on Asia Minor. The Natural History Museum at South Kensington is closed. However, following the founding of the National Gallery, London in 1824,[e] the proposed Picture Gallery was no longer needed, and the space on the upper floor was given over to the Natural history collections.[29]. The books arrived in January 1847 in twenty-one horse-drawn vans. Since its foundation in 1808, the prints and drawings collection has grown to international renown as one of the richest and most representative collections in the world. In the collection is a large war canoe from the island of Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands, one of the last ever to be built in the archipelago. Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities, the British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". [46] In 2013 the museum's website received 19.5 millions visits, an increase of 47% from the previous year. See the "Facilities and Services" tab on the home page for each department for details on each library; not all are kept at Bloomsbury. The department also publishes its findings and discoveries. Fondé en 1753 et ouvert en 1759, le British Museum compte dix départements géo-thématiques. These cover Mesopotamia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia, the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, Syria, the Holy Land and Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean from the prehistoric period and include objects from the beginning of Islam in the 7th century. “The World’s Museum”, the British Museum’s nickname, has over 8 million objects. Cet héritage est enrichi par plusieurs grandes collections de souches royales : Livres, manuscrits, pièces de monnaie….Certains objets exposés sont le fait de pillage et de butins de guerre (Les marbres d’Elgin) mais la charte de 1753, mentionne que le British Museum n’est autorisé à restituer aucun bien à qui que ce soit ! This was a time of innovation as electric lighting was introduced in the Reading Room and exhibition galleries. ft). Sir Thomas Grenville (1755–1846), a trustee of the British Museum from 1830, assembled a library of 20,240 volumes, which he left to the museum in his will. [32], The natural history collections were an integral part of the British Museum until their removal to the new British Museum of Natural History in 1887, nowadays the Natural History Museum. After the defeat of the French forces under Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile in 1801, the Egyptian antiquities collected were confiscated by the British army and presented to the British Museum in 1803. Other areas damaged during World War II bombing included: in September 1940 two unexploded bombs hit the Edward VII galleries, the King's Library received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb, incendiaries fell on the dome of the Round Reading Room but did little damage; on the night of 10 to 11 May 1941 several incendiaries fell on the south-west corner of the museum, destroying the book stack and 150,000 books in the courtyard and the galleries around the top of the Great Staircase – this damage was not fully repaired until the early 1960s.[56]. Important collections include Latvian, Norwegian, Gotlandic and Merovingian material from Johann Karl Bähr, Alfred Heneage Cocks, Sir James Curle and Philippe Delamain respectively. Its foundations lie in the will of the Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster. Moreover, the museum has been able to acquire one of the greatest assemblages of Achaemenid silverware in the world. The Government suggested a site at St Pancras for the new British Library but the books did not leave the museum until 1997. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely collected during the era of the British Empire. Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Colossal red granite statue of Amenhotep III, Colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Dedicatory Inscription by Alexander the Great, Bronze Head of Hypnos from Civitella d'Arna, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, Drowning of the Pharaoh's Host in the Red Sea, British Museum Department of Coins and Medals, Repatriation and reburial of human remains, Chronology of Temporary Exhibitions at the British Museum, "Museums and looted art: the ethical dilemma of preserving world cultures", "The Big Question: What is the Rosetta Stone, and should Britain return", "BBC – History – British History in depth: Slavery and the Building of Britain", "Creating a Great Museum: Early Collectors and The British Museum", "The British Museum opened on January 15th, 1759", "Specimens, slips and systems: Daniel Solander and the classification of nature at the world's first public museum, 1753–1768", "The Electric Light in the British Museum", "British Museum – Collection search: You searched for", "British Museum gets record 6.7m visitors for 2013", "Sunny weather drew record numbers to UK's outdoor tourist hotspots in 2013", "British Museum to be digitally recreated in Minecraft", http://planningonline.camden.gov.uk/MULTIWAM/doc/Supporting%20Documents-2692368.pdf?extension=.pdf&id=2692368&location=VOLUME3&contentType=application/pdf&pageCount=1, "Cross calls for new debate on stored collections", "British Museum feels privileged to put exhibition in Taiwan", "British Museum plans £100m complex for blockbusters", "British Museum unveils new £135 million wing", "Development since World War II (1945 – )", "A British Museum Egyptologist's View: The Return of Egyptian Antiquities is Not an Issue", "City fund manager in £1m Picasso giveaway", "British Museum - Ain Sakhri lovers figurine", "Department of Asia – Related Highlight Objects", "British Museum – Conservation and Scientific Research", "Where it is safe to do so, cultural artefacts should be repatriated", "The palace of shame that makes China angry", "The Chinese expedition: Victor Hugo on the sack of the Summer Palace", "China to study British Museum for looted artefacts", "British Museum 'welcomes investigation with Chinese over artefacts, "British museum agrees to return Aboriginal remains to Australia", "Breal's Silver Cup to be displayed at the New Acropolis Museum for one-year period from September 2012", "News – Getting the Nazi stolen art back", "Tajik president calls for return of treasure from British Museum", "Egypt calls for return of Rosetta Stone", "The Gweagal shield and the fight to change the British Museum's attitude to seized artefacts", "Easter Islanders Ask British Museum to Return Sacred Statue, Offering Replica in Return", "The British Museum policy on human remains", "Are the British Museum Bag Searches Getting Out of Hand? The British Museum's Oceanic collections originate from the vast area of the Pacific Ocean, stretching from Papua New Guinea to Easter Island, from New Zealand to Hawaii. London: The British Museum Press, pg 92, Wilson, David, M. (2002). [124], Main Staircase, Discobolus of Myron (the Discus-Thrower), Ceiling of the Great Court and the black siltstone obelisks of Nectanebo II, c. 350 BC, Detail of an Ionic capital on a pilaster in the Great Court, African Garden – created by BBC TV programme Ground Force, Room 4 – Egyptian Sculpture, view towards the Assyrian Transept, The British Museum, Room 6 – Assyrian Sculpture, Room 8 – Pair of Lamassu from Nimrud & reliefs from the palace of Tiglath-Pileser III, Room 7 – Reliefs from the North-west palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud, Room 89 – Nimrud & Nineveh Palace Reliefs, Room 20a – Tomb of Merehi & Greek Vases, Lycia, 360 BC, Main Staircase – Townley Caryatid, Roman, 140–160 AD, The museum has a collaboration with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the collection online. The project is a partnership between the British Museum and Google Cultural Institute. Carved in stone or gently etched in gold, all objects will encourage you to explore the history of humanity from two million years ago to the present time. The predominance of natural history, books and manuscripts began to lessen when in 1772 the museum acquired for £8,410 its first significant antiquities in Sir William Hamilton's "first" collection of Greek vases. However, there have been fears that the United Kingdom may be asked to return these treasures. The museum again readjusted its collecting policies as interest in "modern" objects: prints, drawings, medals and the decorative arts reawakened. The Histoire Universelle was a popular and widely circulated world chronicle covering the period from Creation to the rise of Julius Caesar. The number of Phoenician inscriptions from sites across Cyprus is also considerable, and include artefacts found at the Kition necropolis (with the two Kition Tariffs having the longest Phoenician inscription discovered on the island), the Idalion temple site and two bilingual pedestals found at Tamassos. Of particular interest to curators was the eventual discovery of Ashurbanipal's great library of cuneiform tablets, which helped to make the museum a focus for Assyrian studies.[30]. Protestors also drew attention to the fact that BP lobbied the UK government to help it gain access to Iraq's oil reserves prior to Britain's invasion in 2003. Most of the antiquities Salt collected were purchased by the British Museum and the Musée du Louvre. Main hall Ceiling of the Main Hall (HDR) Façade principale Détail de la façade Détail de la façade Détail de la façade The only vacant space for this large library was a room originally intended for manuscripts, between the Front Entrance Hall and the Manuscript Saloon. A top-10 UK visitor attraction, Royal Museums Greenwich is home to the Royal Observatory Greenwich, the iconic historic sailing ship Cutty Sark, the National Maritime Museum and the Queen’s House Art Gallery.. The museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. The extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. A real coup for the museum was the purchase in 1867, over French objections, of the Duke of Blacas's wide-ranging and valuable collection of antiquities. [92] In addition, the Māori collection is the finest outside New Zealand with many intricately carved wooden and jade objects and the Aboriginal art collection is distinguished by its wide range of bark paintings, including two very early bark etchings collected by John Hunter Kerr. South from Ephesus – An Escape From The Tyranny of Western Art, pp. With the bookstacks in the central courtyard of the museum empty, the demolition for Lord Foster's glass-roofed Great Court could begin. The principal gallery devoted to Asian art in the museum is Gallery 33 with its comprehensive display of Chinese, Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asian objects. This was perhaps rather unfortunate as the title to the house was complicated by the fact that part of the building had been erected on leasehold property (the Crown lease of which ran out in 1771); perhaps that is why. Roman sculptures (many of which are copies of Greek originals) are particularly well represented by the Townley collection as well as residual sculptures from the famous Farnese collection. >> Allez à Londres en train In 1816 these masterpieces of western art were acquired by The British Museum by Act of Parliament and deposited in the museum thereafter. Designed by the American architect John Russell Pope, it was completed in 1938. The Reading Room is open to any member of the public who wishes to read there. [39] Meanwhile, prior to the war, the Nazis had sent a researcher to the British Museum for several years with the aim of "compiling an anti-Semitic history of Anglo-Jewry". List of the Shells of Cuba in the Collection of the British Museum, collected by Ramon de la Sagra, described by Prof. Alcide D’Orbigny in the “Histoire de l’Ille de Cuba.” by British Museum (Natural History); Gray, John Edward,1800-1875; Orbigny, Alcide Dessalines d',1802-1857; Sagra, Ramón de la,1798-1871 Explore the Museum's galleries from home and get closer to the collection, using Google Street View. It is particularly famous for the large number of late Roman silver treasures, many of which were found in East Anglia, the most important of which is the Mildenhall Treasure. [48] Plans were announced in September 2014 to recreate the entire building along with all exhibits in the video game Minecraft in conjunction with members of the public. Some of the masterpieces include the 'Standard of Ur', the 'Ram in a Thicket', the 'Royal Game of Ur', and two bull-headed lyres. 33–34,(Brian Sewell, 2002, Caygill, Marjorie (2006).