A friend’s son comes to stay from Spain. He’s studying art and culture and so we spent two days, from 10am till chucking out time at 5.30pm, on a mission to visit every room in the British Museum. And we did it.

The British Museum owns some 8 million artefacts, of which fewer than 1% are on display, amounting to around 50,000 objects. It is the most popular tourist attraction in the UK with nearly 7 million visitors annually. Before the doors even opened at 10, the crowds flocking into the main forecourt reminded me of the crowds heading for the turnstiles at a football match.

Confusing layout

The official floorplan gives 95 numbered rooms, but closer examination shows several are missing. For example, I couldn’t find mention of the 80s, whereas some numbers are used two or three times: eg 18, 18a and 18b are the rooms dedicated to the Elgin Marbles – or 33, 33a and 33b, sound like one number but turn out to label the long hall running along the north wing of the building, the room at the end and a long narrow hall running south from it, which between them contain all of India and China: two distinct and massive subjects/areas, covering a profusion of sub-subjects – all contained by one innocent sounding 33.

The collection is spread vertically between levels -2 to level 5, so there are lots of floors and lifts. But not all the stairs give access to all the levels ie some stairs only go from one level to another, or only to one or a few room: like the steps which only go from room 21a down to rooms 77 and 78 (devoted to Greek and Roman architecture, an interesting collection of just the tops of classical columns which allow you to get close to the various decorative styles and patterns, and to classical inscriptions). Or the one staircase (the North stairs) which are the only way to get up to the Japan displays (rooms 92 to 94).

The way some rational sequences of numbered rooms are suddenly interrupted or require a detour up or down back stairs, give the place a pleasing element of chance or randomness eg the way room 67 (the Korea Foundation Gallery) continues seamlessly into room 95 (the Sir Joseph Hotung Centre for Ceramic Studies). But overall, the visit prompted two big questions:

Why are the Egyptian and Roman and Greek collections split up?

The massive long hall-type room 4 contains a wonderful collection of Egyptian sculptures and next to it are rooms displaying the similarly huge Assyrian sculptures (rooms 6 to 10) and then loads of rooms – 11 to 23 – displaying the development of Greek sculpture (including the vast Duveen Galleries showing the Elgin Marbles). But then you have to go across the Museum and up to level 3 to visit the completely separate suite of rooms – 61 to 66 – displaying Egyptian mummies and sarcophaguses, in carefully explained chronological order. Why are the Egyptians split up like this? Why not have everything Egyptian all together? Similarly why, after you’ve done the evolution of Greek sculpture, do you have to go across and up to level 3 (rooms 69 to 73) to see more Greek pots and find out about the Greek colonies in the south of Italy before the rise of Rome?

Why is the chronological account of civilisations sometimes done in rooms numbered sequentially, but sometimes done against the order of the rooms?

For example, rooms 11 to 23 on the ground floor take you through the history of Greek art in a nice logical sequence, from the earliest, primitive cycladic figures through to the artistic heights of the Parthenon, then on to Alexander the Great and the Romans. Whereas on the third floor, rooms 52 to 59 have to be visited in reverse order to experience the chronological progression, with 59 introducing the Levant ie Mesopotamia, Persia, Turkey – and then rooms moving forward in time as the numbers decrease (room 56 Mesopotamia 6000 to 1500, room 55 Mesopotamia 1500 to 539 and so on). Similarly, the history of Europe starts in room 51 (Europe and Middle East 10,000 to 800) then proceeds through rooms which count downwards: room 50 for Britain and Europe 800BC to 43 AD, room 49 for Roman Britain. Just when you’re getting used to this backwards progression, you have to leap straight to room 41 (Sutton Hoo and Europe 300 to 1100) and room 40 (Medieval Europe 1050 to 1500), because the missing rooms in between – rooms 46, 47, 48 (admittedly off to one side) turn out to contain rather unexpected and rather odd displays of Europe 1400 to 1800, Europe 1800 to 1900, and Europe 1900 to the present, respectively (mostly made up of ceramics, pottery, vases and plates).

In other words, finding your way around the British Museum is neither logical nor intuitive, making the visit of anyone with a limited amount of time really quite demanding. Especially if you’re trying to please impatient hectoring children. Don’t give up! It’s not you, it’s the museum.

On the other hand, if you do have the time or the opportunity to visit more than once, then the quirky layout, with countless unexpected and hidden treasures to stumble upon, maybe adds to the mystery and romance of the place…

Highlights

Obviously, not any kind of official highlights, this is a list of things that made me stop and think or want to make a note:

A dentil is a small block used as a repeating ornament in the ‘bedmould’ of a cornice. Picture of dentils.

African wooden fetishes contained the spirits of gods, ancestors or spirits. Banging nails or bits of metal into them activated the god, woke up the spirit. Photo of African fetish

Porcelain was invented around 600AD in China and was a practical cheap new way of making dishes, pots, cups etc.

In a traditional Korean house the male area or sarangbang, was prized for its simplicity and clarity: here the man of the house studied, worked, wrote poetry. The woman’s room, or anbang, was highly decorated, painted, adorned and ornamented.

Ganesh, the Hindu god, has the head of an elephant because his father, Shiva, cut off his human head in a fit of anger and said he’d replace it with the head of the first thing he saw.

The Buddhist chant Om mani padme om means ‘hail to the jewel in the lotus’.

The hands of the Buddha in statues can represent a number of meanings, in fact they are broken down into categories. The palm raised towards the viewer is the abhayamudra, which symbolises reassurance. (The right hand in this image.)

Many of the Indian statues are posed in the traditional tribhanga posture where the body is slightly bent at the neck, waist and knee, giving it a sensuous S shape. Tribhanga Wikipedia article

The Egyptian cat god was named Bastet. Epitomised by the famous Guyer-Andersen cat. The udjat-eye hieroglyph on its chest is a symbol of protection.

Egyptians were buried on the west bank of the Nile (eg the Valley of the Kings) right on the edge of the desert. They were buried facing east, facing back towards the living.

No-one knows who the mysterious figurines found in earliest cycladic sites represent or why they were nearly all female. Cycladic figure.

King Ashurbanipal of Assyria (685 to 627 BC) held lion hunts, where caged lions were brought to an enclosure and released so the king could chase after them on his chariot. He is depicted with one lion leaping up into the chariot and, while two soldiers hold it back with spears, Ashurbanipal in person leans forward to deliver the coup de grace with a short sword. Ashurbanipal killing a lion 640BC.

Egyptians believed the scarab beetle symbolised the sun, because each day as the sun rose beetles emerged from their dung balls or holes. Egyptian scarab statue.

At the temple complex of Kom Ombo in Upper Egypt, where crocodiles were worshipped as symbols of caring and nurturing, but also images of fear (?), over 300 mummified crocodiles have been found. The mummies include mummified versions of their tiny baby crocodiles, placed along the mother croc’s back. The crocodile god is Sobek.

My favourite thing in the Japanese gallery wasn’t the magnificent Samurai armour, it was the painted screen, ‘Pine trees at Maiko-no-hama beach‘, by Mori Ippo (1847).

Farming was invented about 12,000 years ago. Writing was invented about 5,000 years ago. Money was invented around 600AD.

The Queen of the Night dates from 1800 BC in Mesopotamia.

The walls of ancient Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire in the 7th century BC, are now cheek-by-jowl with the modern Iraqi city of Mosul, which is currently held by forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The most beautiful statue I saw was of Antinous, the young man beloved of the Roman emperor Hadrian.

I learned that it was during the Hellenistic period after the death of Alexander the great (323BC) that Greek art became more individualised. When Greek statues reached their peak in the Athens of Pericles (495 to 429 BC) they depicted idealised images of power which reflected the communal values of the city state. After Alexander the Great (died 323 BC) effectively unified the Mediterranean world in one cosmopolitan culture, the rich became more individualistic, collecting rare and precious objects, and wanted to be depicted as they actually appeared. So by the time the Roman republic reached its peak and then became the Empire (27 BC), although bodies were still depicted with the Greek idealism – the super-defined muscles and bone structure etc – the faces had become the faces of individuals. Hence the faces of the Roman emperors, which are so individualised and evocative.

The invention of the pendulum clock in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens was a massive step forward in accurate measure of time and therefore of all kinds of processes, from the movement of the planets to new industrial or chemical processes. The super-accurate telling of time was one of the foundations of the industrial revolution and of the West’s dominance over the rest of the world.

When wound up this Mechanical Galleon, made in Germany in the 1590s, played music from a little organ as it trundled over the dinner table until it came to a stop and the model guns fired little puffs of gunpowder.

The Ram in a Thicket is one of a pair of figures excavated in Ur in southern Iraq. They date from 2600 to 2400 BC.

I’d heard of most of the other cultures mentioned here, but never of Urartu, a kingdom in the east of Turkey near Mount Ararat. This is a bronze winged bull’s head from the handle of a large cauldron, 8th to 7th century BC.

King Ashurbanipal established the world’s first library (as far as we know) consisting of thousands of clay tablets from the 7th century BC. The British Museum is embarked on a large project working with the University of Mosul to digitise the original texts and translations, making the entire library available online.

The double headed snake was important in Aztec mythology. The Museum houses an elaborate sculpture of a double headed snake covered in hundreds of tiny fragments of turquoise. What interested me is that this nearby mosaic skull also has snake motifs curling around the eyes of the nose and down to the lips.

A cabinet of curiosities is a display case an Enlightenment or Victorian collector might use to display his collection of interesting and unusual objects. It is in stark contrast to a ‘treasure room’ (exemplified by room 2, the The Waddesdon Bequest, donated by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild MP (1839 to 1898)) which contains objects of exquisite beauty and craftsmanship designed to highlight the owner’s refined taste. I preferred the cabinets.

Room one

Room 1 runs the length of the ground floor, along the right hand side as you enter the courtyard. The entry, opposite the east part of the bookshop, looks like a dusty old library, but don’t be put off: room 1 is dedicated to a permanent exhibition, in seven themed sections, showing why the Enlightenment period (roughly the 1700s) saw a new fashion among the rich and educated for collecting everything – stones, flints, flowers, trees, books, manuscripts, languages, paintings, sculptures, machinery, statues – you name it, someone somewhere, rich aristocrat or modestly funded vicar, was collecting it.

And how it was from the urge to collect and assess and categorise and compare all these innumerable specimens, that many of the disciplines we know today emerged – most notably archaeology, the science of dating and naming and categorising and understanding all the objects from the human past.

It may look a bit unexciting, but room 1 not only contains many objects which are fascinating in their own right, but provides just the right introduction, not just to the museum but to the whole ‘idea’ of a museum and what museums are for. And since the British Museum was founded with the bequest of one such personal collection, that of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane, in 1753, room 1 is the ideal place to begin to understand the urge to collect and the urge to view, see and understand, which underlies the whole place and explains why you’re there.

Related links

• The British Museum
• View the British Museum collection online on the Google Cultural Institute
• British Museum floor plans

Other British Museum reviews

• More British Museum reviews on my Art and Exhibitions page