British Museum Collections
The British museum's collections – among the largest and most comprehensive in the world – recall a time when their Empire controlled 24% of the world's land and 23% of its people.
The collection database is derived from staff collection data so it is full of specialized terms, abbreviations and shorthand as well as words and concepts now recognized as offensive. (There is a link to report offensive language.) Although there are over two million records in the database it only covers about half of the collection.
Highly regarded and controversial objects include The Rosetta Stone and the "Elgin marbles": Classical Greek statuary taken from the Acropolis in Athens by Lord Elgin in the early 19th c.
The collection's strengths -- which are extensive and remarkable – fall into the following departments, which also reveal its overall cultural and historical approach:
• Africa, Oceania and the Americas (around 350,000 objects)
• Ancient and contemporary civilizations and cultures of the Middle East
• Ancient Egypt and Sudan (10,000 BCE to 12th c. CE)
• Britain, Europe and Prehistory
• Coins and Medals (one of the world's finest numismatic collections)
• Greece and Rome and the Ancient Mediterranean
• Material and visual cultures of Asia
• One of the world's greatest collections of prints and drawings