大英博物馆

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What is the Pathenon and how did the sculptures come to London?

The Parthenon is Athens has a long and complex history. Built nearly 2,500 years ago as a temple dedicated to the Greek goddess Athea, it was for a thousand years the church of the Virgin Mary of the Athenians, then a mosque, and finally an archaeological ruin. The building was altered and the sculptures much damaged over the course of the centuries. The first major loss occure]red around AD 500 when the Parthenon was converted into a churce. When the city was under siege by the Venetians in 1687, the Parthenon itself was used as a gun powerder store. A huge explosion blew the roof off and destroyed a large portion of the remaining sculptures. The building gthas been a ruin ever since. Archaeologiest wouldwide are agreed that the surviving sculptures could never be  re-attached to the structure.

By 1800 only about half of the original sculptural decoration remained. Between 1801 and 1805 Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, acting with the full knowledge and permission of the Ottoman authorities, removed abuot half of the remaining sculpture from the fallen ruins and from the building itself Lord Elgin was passionate about ancient Greek art and transported the sculpture to Britian. Their arrival in London was to make a profound impression upon western ideas of art and tasted. It promoted th high regard that he European Enlightenment already had for ancient Greek civilization. The public display of the scuptures from spring 1807 encouraged Hellenists in their love of ancient Greece while, at the sae time, I inspired the Phihellene movement in its sympathy for the inhabitants of modern Greece and their struggle for independence. Since  then the sculptures have always been on display to the public in the British museum, free of charge

What has the Greek government asked for?

Since the early 1980s, Greek governments have argued for the permanent removal to the Athens of all the Parthenon sculptures in the ritish Museum. The Greek government has also disputed the BM Trustees’ legal title to the scupptures

What is the Rosetta Stone?

It carries an inscription in different language, which helped decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic scripts. It is the only surviving figment of a larger stone slab recording a decree on 27 March 196 BC.

At the top the decree was written in hieroglyphs, the traditional script of Egyptian monuments; then already 3000 years old. In the middle the same decree was written in Demotic, the everyday script of literate Egyptians, and at the bottom in Greek, the language used by the government.

At this time Egypt was ruled by the Greek dynasty, and the decree was issued in honor of the boy-king Ptolemy. It records the descipion of the Egyptian priests to establish a royal


The British Museum was founded in 1753, the first national public museum in the world. From the beginning it granted free admission to all 'studious and curious persons'. Visitor numbers have grown from around 5,000 a year in the eighteenth century to nearly 6 million today.