British Museum

British Museum A museum of the world, for the world. Discover over two million years of human history and culture.
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🚴‍♀️ 🚴‍♂️It’s estimated that there are more than one billion bicycles in use around the world. Whether you’re a fair-w...
03/06/2026

🚴‍♀️ 🚴‍♂️
It’s estimated that there are more than one billion bicycles in use around the world. Whether you’re a fair-weather cyclist, just learning to ride, commuting to work, or cycling competitively, today is the perfect day to get out and enjoy a ride.

🚲 Artist Postcard; lithograph. Young woman dressed in the fashion of the 1910s riding a bicycle accompanied by a dog, from a collection of 389 early 20th century Japanese postcards.

🐦‍⬛Maire Littledale’s illustrated alphabet of British birds runs from A for avocet to Y for yellowhammer.There is a Z in...
02/06/2026

🐦‍⬛Maire Littledale’s illustrated alphabet of British birds runs from A for avocet to Y for yellowhammer.

There is a Z in Littledale's collection, but as Britain declines to provide a bird for the alphabet's final letter, she adds an unknown bird of her own invention for the final illustration in the series.

Can you identify the birds for B, C, D, E , F, G and H? 🐦🔍

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Littledale was a British printmaker working in linocut in the early 20th century. Little is recorded about her life and career. She's primarily known through surviving examples of her work.

Her prints emerge from a boom in British linocut printmaking between the 1920s and 1940s. These prints are nearly a century old but still feel incredibly modern.

This medal is engraved with a portrait of the ‘MOOST HAPPI’ Anne Boleyn 👑 On this day in 1533, nearly 500 years ago, Ann...
01/06/2026

This medal is engraved with a portrait of the ‘MOOST HAPPI’ Anne Boleyn 👑

On this day in 1533, nearly 500 years ago, Anne Boleyn, daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and second wife of Henry VIII, was crowned and anointed Queen of England. This medal is thought to commemorate her coronation, though it may have been devised to celebrate the birth of Anne and Henry’s second child, who was either sadly miscarried or stillborn. Boleyn would later be executed just three short years later, having failed to provide Henry VIII with his much-desired male heir.

She wears a pedimental headdress, which was common at the time, with a large veil at her back, a cross hanging from a necklace, and a low dress and mantle over her shoulders, all of which correspond with contemporary records of the ceremony that day.

The most likely interpretation of the inscribed letters ‘A . R’ is that they refer to Anne herself as ANNA REGINA (Queen Anne)

🪙 Medal of Anne Boleyn. Lead, England, 1534.

Carefully carved over 11,000 years ago, this is the oldest known sculpture of two lovers. Made of sparkling calcite, it ...
31/05/2026

Carefully carved over 11,000 years ago, this is the oldest known sculpture of two lovers.

Made of sparkling calcite, it shows the lovers face-to-face. One person has their arms around the shoulders of the other, whose legs are drawn up around the first's waist.

The figures are positioned together so intimately in this tender sexual embrace that it is impossible to make out their genders. It is made more explicit because the sculpture is ingeniously ph***ic, whichever way you look at it.

The sculpture dates to the early Natufian period, when people in West Asia still lived by hunting gazelle but had begun to domesticate sheep and cattle.

🫂 The Ain Sakhri Lovers. Calcite, West Asia, c. 9000 BC.

On this day in 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. A patron saint of France, Joan left her peasant family aged 1...
30/05/2026

On this day in 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

A patron saint of France, Joan left her peasant family aged 17 to lead a French army during the Hundred Years' War. After a series of campaigns, she was eventually captured by Burgundian forces, before being handed over to the English in 1430 and placed on trial for heresy. She was declared guilty by a pro-English ecclesiastical court at Rouen and executed by burning aged just 19.

Pope Benedict XV officially proclaimed her a saint of the Roman Catholic Church on May 16, 1920.

⚔️ John Everett Millais (1829–96), Joan of Arc at prayer. Autotype on paper, England, c. 1883–99.

28/05/2026

In ancient Egypt, cartonnage was often used to manufacture funerary masks . Consisting in layers of textile or recycled papyrus, glue and plaster-like material moulded over a core of mud, masks were then painted and placed over the wrapped mummy. These coverings were often gilded, linking them with the gods, who were believed to have skin made of gold, and therefore transforming their owners into a divine being.

This stunning mummy mask belonged to a women called Aphrodite.

27/05/2026

The Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic World at the British Museum offers a fresh look at the Islamic world through galleries 42-43.

The collection includes objects from the 7th century to today, covering regions from West Africa to Southeast Asia. It features everything from archaeological finds and royal artworks to everyday objects, showing how different cultures and communities were connected across time and place.
Have a look at some highlights

In September, the Bayeux Tapestry experience will be opening at the British Museum. But if you’re a History teacher or s...
27/05/2026

In September, the Bayeux Tapestry experience will be opening at the British Museum. But if you’re a History teacher or school in the UK, how can you see it, learn about it, and make the most of this incredible opportunity?

Well, we’re pleased to say that school bookings for the experience itself in London, and our broadcast for schools anywhere in the UK, are now open!

Check out our website for full details: https://ow.ly/AkFx50Z47kA

in 1897, Dracula was published.Bram Stoker never visited Transylvania. One of literature’s most enduring monsters emer...
26/05/2026

in 1897, Dracula was published.

Bram Stoker never visited Transylvania. One of literature’s most enduring monsters emerged from years of meticulous archival digging, through folklore, travel accounts, maps, railway timetables and historical sources.

In 1905, Stoker re-applied for his British Museum Reading Room ticket, writing that he had not seen it for 20 years but had used the Reading Room ‘since 1879 or thereabouts’. On the application, he describes himself as ‘a Barrister at Law’, perhaps feeling that this professional qualification would carry more institutional weight with the Museum than merely writing fiction.

☀️ With temperatures soaring, deciding what to wear to work becomes increasingly difficult🌡️Director John Forsdyke had s...
26/05/2026

☀️ With temperatures soaring, deciding what to wear to work becomes increasingly difficult🌡️

Director John Forsdyke had some strong thoughts on what not to wear. Forsdyke was so concerned that he issued this memo to Keepers of departments to filter down to their teams 🥵

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