A Guided Tour of the Controversial British Museum

https://youtu.be/76Uv2rNmAzU

Nothing is more budget friendly than free, and the British Museum is always free. It is a world class museum, it is the oldest museum in the world and it is full of stuff that did not originate in England. 

Visiting the British Museum

The British Museum opens at 10 am local London time and admission is free, so you don't need to get tickets in advance. You can go to the website and get tickets in advance but it won't make any difference, because you will still wait in line. I got here when the museum opened and the line was already out to the street, so you're going to want to get to the museum at least 30 minutes before the time you actually want to be here.

The building itself, which is massive, was built in 1823 in neoclassical style, which means It was made to look Greek. However, the story of the British Museum really begins in 1753. This is when the British Parliament created an act to begin a free public museum. This would establish the first national public museum in the world.

And over the years, England started to kind of hold that up as an excuse for some real atrocities and yes, we're going to get into it.

A Guided Tour of the World's Oldest Museum

When you enter the building and move forward, you'll find yourself in the Great Court. It's a big circle with a central stairway and all the gift shops. There's even a little cafe area area around this central area. There are also bathrooms here, which is good to know. 

Enlightenment Exhibit

To the right is the Enlightenment Exhibit, which is in King George III's former library. But to the left is the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, and that is an area you do not want to miss. Now, there is a lot more to the Egyptian collection at the museum, but this is where you'll find the biggest pieces. These are large sculptures and big items, and it's really something to see.

The Rosetta Stone

This is where you will find the famous Rosetta Stone, considered to be one of the most important ancient artifacts ever discovered. The Rosetta Stone contains the same inscription in three different languages, and because of this it is the key that unlocked ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. This stone is the reason we can read and translate ancient Egyptian texts. It was carved around 200 B.C.E. and then, it was lost to history for 2,000 years. 

The stone was rediscovered when Napoleon decided to take over Egypt so for a little while, the Rosetta Stone was in possession of France. When England and its allies defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, England decided they wanted the Rosetta Stone...so, they took it.

And now it sits in the British Museum, where it received a new inscription. Walk around the stone and you will see it: Property of the British Museum, carved right into one of the world's most important pieces of history. 

Welcome to London, y'all. 

A Walk Through Greece in London

We're going to circle back to Egyptian artifacts at the British Museum, trust and believe, so stay tuned to find out why England is ate up. But before we do that, if you continue in this area, and remember we have gone off to the left of the main entrance and we're still on the ground floor, you'll find yourself in ancient Greece.

And if you keep on keeping on through this exhibit, you will find one of the most controversial and talked about exhibits in the whole huge museum. You will find the Parthenon marbles. You'll know you're there because it's an enormous room, a huge display of flat, marble pieces sculpted in relief. 

So, what are the Parthenon marbles? 

The Infamous Parthenon Marbles, and Why They Aren't in Greece

You have probably heard of the Parthenon. It's in Athens, Greece and it's one of the most recognizable buildings on the planet. Many, many, many buildings have been inspired by its design.

It was a monument built for the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece but primarily for Athena, who was the patron Goddess for the city of Athens, which is the modern capital city of Greece.

So in the 1700s and 1800s, and actually for a long time, Athens and all of Greece was occupied by Turkey. This means they were under Turkish rule and did not want to be. Okay, so Turkey was their overlords and to this day, there is bad blood there. 

Now, in England we've got this dude Lord Elgin. He's a high ranking member of the British military and he gets sent to Greece for whatever reason. At this time in the world, which was the early 1800s, there was a great deal of interest in classical Greece. Ancient Greece was very fashionable, especially in England. We talked earlier about how the museum itself was designed in that Greek style, because everything ancient Greece was very stylish at this time.

So Lord Elgin sees the Parthenon, which at this point had been very badly damaged due to the Turkish occupation. Lord Elgin saw the Parthenon and was like, 

"Wow, that thing should be in England."

The Parthenon is too big to move the whole thing to England, so he did the next best thing and decided to pry the marble sculptures right off the building. On all four sides of the Parthenon, all along the top of it, there were these amazing marble sculptures that depicted important events in Greek history and mythology. Each side of the building told a different story, basically.

Lord Elgin decided to just rip all those off, put them in a boat, and present them as a gift to the King of England. They got put in the British Museum and they are still here to this day.

Yes, Athens and Greece as a whole have made repeated requests for these ancient treasures to be returned to their country of origin. If you go to Athens, or if you watch my videos and go with me to Athens, you will see an enormous and quite beautiful museum that is right there next to the Parthenon. Athens specifically built this museum in order to house the Parthenon marbles. They have a huge room dedicated to this.

The Parthenon marbles you see in Athens are the fake ones. They are plaster casts made to look like the real marbles that are sitting in London. And if that seems super weird and wrong to you, please allow me to remind you that we are still just on the ground floor of the British Museum. And it's going to get a whole, whole lot worse. 

We have hardly even scratched the surface of the horrible things that England has done and now has on display for the world to see at the British Museum. 

So let's roll on, and try to pace out any anger you feel because I'm gonna keep hitting you with horrible stories, so get prepared. England really shows their a— in this museum, okay? It's a lot. Brace yourself. Because if you're a fan of history or just of basic decent behavior, you're gonna get worked up as we tour the British Museum together.

In the Greek area of the museum, you will also see a whole temple. This is known as the Nereid Monument and it's billed as the largest and finest Lycian Tomb in the region. So at some point, someone just removed this whole tomb, somebody's final resting place, and deposited it here at the British Museum.

Venturing Into the Far East

If you go behind the Great Court on the ground level, you'll find the Asian and Indian exhibits. There's a really huge collection of Chinese jade here, Chinese ceramics and many other Chinese artifacts. The Chinese government has requested the return of more than 2,000 of their historic artifacts and there were a lot of media articles about this in 2023, but everything is still here at the British Museum.

The Easter Island Head

This is also where you can find the Living And Dying exhibit, which is where the moai is kept. This is one of the huge stone heads taken from the island of Rapa Nui, which is also called Easter Island.

While researching my trip to London, I learned a lot about this statue and I discovered one of the most gut-twisting stories I have ever experienced. So, please allow me to tell you this story now. This is the journey of the moai to the British Museum. 

Carved between 1000 and 1200, the moai on display is one of two that were taken off the island in 1868 by a British survey ship. The captain of the ship saw the statues, one of which was inside a little stone house. He dismantled the house and dragged the statues down the beach. The leader of the tribe living on the island at the time tattooed the scene on his body, so as to record it.

The way I heard the story, villagers who saw this happening went running down to the beach in tears, begging the men from the ship not to take the statues. They screamed and cried in pure desperation. 

Their very clear grief needed no translation.

You see, to the people of Rapa Nui, these are not statues. These are their ancestors. These statues house the eternal spirits of their ancestors. The way it was described to me is, imagine some strangers coming into your home and carrying your grandfather away and putting him in a boat and sailing him to England, where he is then put on display in a museum. This is what it feels like for them.

A few years ago, a special delegation from Rapa Nui came to London to meet with museum officials. They brought with them their mostly highly skilled sculptor. And they told the museum that they would happily recreate the moai to perfection, down to every detail, completely free of charge.

The statue would look exactly the same as the one in the museum. The difference would be, of course, this recreated statue would not contain an ancestral spirit. So, the statue containing the spirit could then go home, and London would still have something to display in its museum.

The British Museum declined the offer.

Finding the British Stuff at the British Museum

If you go up the stairs to level 3, you'll find the Great Court Restaurant and the coffee lounge, which is where I had lunch. The selection is not awesome but the prices are okay. The Great Court Restaurant is a little pricey for me.

You'll also find two of the museum's famous treasures here. To the right, you'll find the European and England galleries, along with artifacts from Roman Britain. This is where you will see the famous Sutton Hoo warrior and the Lewis Chessman, a famous chess set.

If the British Museum displayed only British history instead of everyone else's history, these galleries would be the whole museum. But they are not. There is much more.

Going Deeper Into the Museum

The left galleries are where you will find artifacts from ancient Greece and Rome. The Portland vase, one of the most visited objects in the museum, is here in room 70.

This is also where you will find the enormous Egyptian exhibit, the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in the world outside of Cairo. There are sarcophaguses, or is it sarcophagi, either way, there are many of them here. 

You will also see actual Egyptian mummies. These are deceased Egyptian people who were removed from their tombs and brought very far from their homeland to be put on display in London.

There is an old joke about the British Museum that goes like this: why are the Great Pyramids in Giza? 

....Because they wouldn't fit in the British Museum. 

If you think it's a bit weird and gross for England to have so many Egyptian artifacts when London is quite clearly extremely far away from Egypt, you are correct. Egypt built the Cairo museum, which is a world class museum and quite stunning, in order to display their fascinating ancient history. 

A lot of that history is here at the British Museum. And no matter how many formal requests Egypt has made to have these objects returned, they have not been. The museum has become the final resting place for many dozens of Egyptian mummies and incredible pieces of history. Actual Egyptians would no doubt love to see these objects.

They'll have to come all the way to London to do it.

A History of Not English Stuff at London's Museum

You may have noticed a bit of a theme at this point. And if you'd like to learn more about why in the world England has all of these things that have nothing whatever to do with British history and how the museum justifies the fact that they refuse to return items, I've got you covered.

We're going to get into the whole thing. But for now, let us continue our tour and go meet an ancient Greek who is being eternally  punished. 

Greece's Lost Sister, the Caryatid

One of the most important artifacts in all Greek history is shoved into a stairwell of the British Museum. Just sitting there with no fanfare, no special place. It's just in a stairwell. It is 2500 years old and it once stood on top of the famous Acropolis in Athens. And it is very, very missed by the people of Athens and all of Greece. 

Come with me to meet the lost sister.

There is a famous building on the Acropolis of Athens that has the porch of the Caryatids. These are six women sculpted in marble who stand as pillars to hold up the roof of the building. They are standing there in punishment. They are members of a Greek city state that sided against Athens and fought against Athens and their fellow Greeks with the Persians, who were ultimately defeated. For their disloyalty, these maidens are now eternally doomed to hold up the building which they guard.

But one has suffered a fate that is even worse than eternal punishment. One of these maidens was taken from her perch at the top of the Acropolis by none other than Lord Elgin, our good friend from earlier.

Along with the marble sculptures he pried off the walls of the Parthenon itself, Lord Elgin removed about half of all the surviving statues from the Acropolis. Including the lost sister, who now stands unceremoniously in a stairwell of the British Museum. 

She was quite badly damaged in the 1930s, along with the Parthenon marbles, when restorers attempted to clean up the marble for a new display Aat the British Museum. So not only was this history taken from Athens, London was also irresponsible with it. 

If you go from Room 73 to the nearest stairs that lead down to Room 19, you will see her. 

Visiting the Most Scandalous Part of the Museum

The back galleries on level 3 will take you into ancient Mesopotamia and the Middle East, which is full of ancient treasures. Level 4 and Level 5 are much smaller. This is where you will find the Japan galleries.

It is on the lower floor that you will find the Africa exhibit and the most controversial out of all the highly controversial items in the entire British Museum. 

You're about to get a look at the Benin Bronzes. 

The ancient land on Benin is in modern day Nigeria, Africa. Between the 13th and 16th centuries, over 5,000 bronze sculptures were created here by indigenous people in the historic Kingdom of Benin. 

As part of England's ongoing quest to colonize the world at the time, British troops entered the historic kingdom by force in 1897 and basically looted the palace and the capital city, taking with them thousands of the bronzes, along with ivory sculptures and basically anything of value that they found. 

Many of these items were presented to Queen Victoria in England as a gift and from there, they were spread out all over England. Items were sent to several museums and to places like Oxford College, so they could be displayed. Many others were sold to museums around the world, primarily to museums in Germany and the United States. 

The Nigerian government has been trying to get these items back since the 1930s.

Many of the museums that originally purchased the bronzes and other items from the Kingdom of Benin have since returned them. Oxford College, Germany, museums in England, many places have given them back, so they could be placed in the  Benin City National Museum. Nigeria has also recently built and opened the Edo Museum of West African Art to display the Benin bronzes.

To date, the British Museum has not returned a single one of these items. Others have, but not the British Museum. You can see them on the lower floor, just below the Great Court and ground floor of the museum.

The Reasons Why London Has Everyone Else's History

So, you know how these controversial items and disputed items made their way to the museum and some of these backstories are pretty rough. We have spoils of war, stuff that was frankly stolen from native peoples, items that London acquired by hook or by crook. So why in this modern age of diplomacy and the United Nations and the European Union and multi country trade deals, why won't England just give this stuff back to the various places where it came from?

The British Museum has justified it, inasmuch as they can, in a few different ways. So I will present these arguments to you. 

One thing that has been put out repeatedly is that the British Museum is a world class museum and one of the most visited museums in the world. So naturally, the British Museum is a perfect place to display the world's history. The museum is more than a century old and it has been safely housing the world's treasures all this time. They say these items are handled with respect and care, and they are safe here. 

Multiple items from antiquity have been damaged by the British Museum, so I'm not sure how strong this argument is.  

In the same vein, the museum has also argued that, look, hey, these countries where this stuff came from, they ain't even got appropriate places to show it off. Where would they display it if they had it?

Athens, Greece and Cairo, Egypt, got tired of this lame argument some time ago. Both cities built huge and beautiful museums and both museums made space to house the items from the British Museum that they feel should rightfully be in their countries of origin. These two museums have become huge attractions in their respective cities. These two museums have made repeated requests to have specific items returned to their original countries, including the Parthenon marbles and the Rosetta Stone. 

To date, these items have not been returned.

The main argument the British Museum likes to make now is, for my money, just as flimsy as the others. Now, the main line of reasoning you will hear goes a little something like this:

London is a tourist city. Millions of people come here from all over the world every year, and millions walk through the doors of the British Museum. London is centrally located and easy to get to, and it's much easier for people to come here and see all these items together in one place.

Now on the surface, you can kind of get what they're saying. If you're in Europe or Asia, you can hop a train and get to London, a place that's full of hotels and stuff for tourists to enjoy. 

But let's be real. London is expensive to be in. I've spent weeks making videos about how to save money when you travel to London but no matter how much you budget, this is an expensive town. It costs money to stay here, to eat here, to travel from one spot to another here and yeah, the museum is free. 

But every darn thing else ain't free. 

And realistically speaking, how many regular everyday people living in West Africa are able to afford that trip? How many people living and working in Egypt can afford a trip to London? How about people in Central America, South America? They gotta get across the ocean to go find their history in the British Museum and even though I did not include the America galleries on this tour, they are there.

Tons of items from the Americas and the Caribbean islands are sitting in the British Museum because England showed up in these places to colonize them, too. They took things they liked and put them on a boat and now they're sitting in this museum all the way in London.

I watched a video of a man from the Middle East. And I'm sorry, I don't remember which part of the Middle East it was or even what it was he came to see. But there were some particular items from his homeland he wanted to see at the British Museum. So he made a video about his trip. He saved up his money and then took a long trip to get to London, where he finally got to go to the museum.

And he stood there looking at these items he came to see, and you could see the emotion of it on his face. As a person who truly loves history, I totally felt what he felt. Standing close to history like that, especially if it's history that feels personal to you, is very powerful.

And this man looked at the camera and he said he was so happy to see these things, finally. Then he said, "I just wish more people from my country could see it."

And my heart just broke. 

Because he's right. People from his country should be able to stand in front of their history and see it in person. People from Egypt and Greece and South America and Africa and China and Japan and all these countries that are not England, they should be able to see these things and they should be able to do it without visiting one of the most expensive cities in the world. 

The argument that the museum itself is free and that London has put these items together to display the history of the world without charging people for it is pure flimflam. Because food in London is not free. Accommodations are not free. Getting there is not free. 

Let's talk about the real reason London won't give these things back. You may have caught on to the fact that I am not British, so I have no problem with speaking frankly on this topic. No offense to the British. 

The British Museum is the fifth most-visited museum in the world. Almost 7 million people walk through its doors every year. And when they come here, the vast majority are coming to see the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon marbles, the statue from Easter Island, the Egyptian mummies and the ancient Mesopotamia gallery. These are among the most visited items in the world. In the world.

And as I pointed out earlier, the British history part of the British Museum is two galleries. Okay, in the entire museum, they have two galleries of their own stuff. So if you take away all these hugely popular items and give it all back to where it came from, they've got a big ole museum without a lot of stuff in it. People who want to see the Rosetta Stone will go to Cairo. They'll visit the Parthenon marbles at the museum in Athens, which by the way is a much more budget friendly destination than London. 

England's history is a history of colonization. That was pretty much their bag for centuries. And the history of all that colonization lines the walls of the British Museum. 

In 2023, 20 million international visitors traveled to London. A huge majority of these visitors came from the United States, France, Germany and Spain. A very small number came from Asia, Africa, South and Central America and Greece. Very few people living in these places will ever go to London. 

So is Britain really doing the world a favor by housing all this history here? Is it really so easy to see and enjoy? 

I'll let you decide. And please let me say that, perhaps in spite of all the things I've said today, I did enjoy the British Museum. It is truly remarkable and beautiful and I was blown away by the things I saw here. I took hundreds of pictures and ran around the museum with my eyes as big as saucers, talking the entire time about all the history I got to see. 

But I'm not an Egyptian, or a Greek, or a Native American or a West African. So, I think some of it probably hits me a little differently because it's not MY history. The moai statue isn't my ancestor. The Parthenon marbles didn't come from a temple my ancestors built. The Benin bronzes were not looted from the place where my people have lived for generations. So, I think I might feel differently if I was any of these things. 

And I personally think that historical objects belong in the places where they were made. It's nice to see all these things in London because I was already going to London and because these things are not personal to me. But they are personal to billions of people around the world who will never go to London. 

And if the British Museum’s official position truly is that history should be free and accessible and available to everyone, they are failing to live by their own arguments. The reasons they give for hanging onto these items are nullified entirely because if you believe history should be enjoyable and accessible and shared and enjoyed, then the history of a country should be left in that country...so that it can be all of these things for the people to whom it matters the most.

What do you think? Do you think London should give everything back to their counties of origin? Let me know in the comments and share your thoughts about the British Museum.