Series: Objects in Focus

The Rosetta Stone contains a decree written three times in Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphic that provided the key to the mysterious hieroglyphic script of ancient Egypt, and opened up 3,000 years of the country's history and culture. This book tells the fascinating story of one of archaeology's icons, from its creation in the second century BC, to its discovery in...

A new title in the British Museum's Object in Focus series that unpacks the history of a fascinating vessel and its journey from medieval England to West Africa and back. The fourteenth-century metal jug today popularly known as the Asante Ewer has a remarkable story. It was made in medieval England but transported to West Africa, possibly at some point...

Model of a Summer Camp is an intriguing object with a range of stories to tell. Originating in the Sakha (Yakutia) region of far northeastern Russia, it depicts a yhyakh celebration — a festival of huge cultural importance to the region. This concise book takes a detailed look at the object, revealing the intricacies of the yhyakh and the model's...

Lindow Man was accidentally discovered by peat-cutters in Cheshire in the 1980s. He was first thought to be a modern murder victim, but scientific investigations soon proved that he had died in the first century AD, around the time of the Roman conquest of Britain. The environment of the peat bog had kept his body in a remarkable state of...

The Great Wave is a colour woodblock print designed by Japanese artist Hokusai in around 1830. The print, of which numerous multiples were made, shows a monster of a wave rearing up and about to come crashing down on three fishing boats and their crews. One of a monumental series known as Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Hokusai's Great Wave...

The Admonitions Scroll is an internationally recognised masterpiece of narrative painting and is arguably the earliest surviving Chinese painting. Painted in ink and colour on silk and traditionally attributed to the 'founding figure' of Chinese painting, Gu Kaizhi (c.345-c.406), the scroll entered the British Museum in 1903 and has become one of its most famous objects. The scroll illustrates a...

This lively book considers the various fascinating stories which have evolved to explain the ownership, concealment and discovery of the pieces, whilst also placing them in the wider context of the ancient game of chess and secular art of the Middle Ages. The Lewis Chessmen consist of elaborately worked walrus ivory and whales' teeth in the forms of seated kings...