British Museum Department of the Middle East facts for kids

The Department of the Middle East at the British Museum holds an amazing collection of about 330,000 ancient objects. It's one of the biggest collections of items from Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) outside of Iraq itself! This department shows off the history of ancient civilisations from the ancient Near East and nearby areas.

These areas include places like Mesopotamia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia (modern Turkey), the Caucasus mountains, parts of Central Asia, Syria, the Holy Land, and even Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean. The objects cover a huge time span, from prehistoric times all the way to the beginning of Islam in the 7th century AD. The museum's collection of items from Assyria, Babylonia, and Sumeria is among the best in the world. You can even see entire rooms decorated with huge stone carvings (called bas-reliefs) from ancient Assyrian palaces found in cities like Nimrud, Nineveh, and Khorsabad. Only the Middle East collections in the Louvre museum in Paris and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin are as impressive.

History of the Collection

The British Museum started collecting objects from Mesopotamia in 1825, with items from Claudius James Rich. But the collection really grew thanks to the exciting digs by A. H. Layard. He explored ancient Assyrian cities like Nimrud and Nineveh between 1845 and 1851.

At Nimrud, Layard found the North-West Palace of King Ashurnasirpal II, plus three other palaces and several temples. Later, he uncovered the Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, which had an incredible seventy-one rooms! Because of his work, many huge human-headed winged statues called Lamassus, along with stone carvings (bas-reliefs) and tall stone slabs (stelae), were brought to the British Museum. This included the famous Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III.

Layard's assistant, Hormuzd Rassam, continued the work from 1852 to 1854. He discovered the North Palace of King Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. This palace had many amazing carvings, including the famous Royal Lion Hunt scenes. Rassam also found the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal. This was a massive collection of cuneiform clay tablets, which are ancient writings. Today, there are about 130,000 pieces from this library in the museum.

W. K. Loftus also dug in Nimrud between 1850 and 1855. He found a remarkable collection of ivory carvings in a place called the Burnt Palace. Later, from 1878 to 1882, Rassam added even more beautiful objects to the museum. These included the Cyrus Cylinder from Babylon, bronze gates from Balawat, important items from Sippar, and a great collection of Urartian bronzes from Toprakkale.

In the early 1900s, more excavations happened in Carchemish, Turkey, led by D. G. Hogarth and Leonard Woolley. Woolley was even helped by T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia!). After the First World War, the Mesopotamian collections grew even more thanks to digs in southern Iraq. From a site called Tell al-Ubaid, H. R. Hall found bronze decorations from a Sumerian temple in 1919–24. These included life-sized lions and a panel showing a lion-headed eagle god named Imdugud.

Woolley then went on to dig at Ur between 1922 and 1934. There, he discovered the 'Royal Cemeteries' from about 4,500 years ago! Some of the most famous items found there include the 'Standard of Ur', the 'Ram in a Thicket', the 'Royal Game of Ur' (an ancient board game), and two lyres (like harps) with bull heads. The department also has three dark stone statues of the ruler Gudea from the ancient state of Lagash. There are also several limestone kudurrus, which were boundary stones from different places in ancient Mesopotamia.

Even though the main focus is Mesopotamia, many surrounding areas are also well represented. The collection from the Achaemenid (ancient Persian) Empire got bigger with the Oxus Treasure in 1897. More items came from the digs of German scholar Ernst Herzfeld and Hungarian-British explorer Sir Aurel Stein. Stone carvings and sculptures from the city of Persepolis were given to the museum by Sir Gore Ouseley in 1825 and the 5th Earl of Aberdeen in 1861. The museum also has one of the best collections of Achaemenid silverware in the world.

The later Sasanian Empire (another Persian empire) is also well shown with fancy silver plates and cups. Many of these show kings hunting lions and deer. Phoenician objects come from all over the region, but the collection from Tharros in Sardinia and the many Phoenician stelae from Carthage are especially important. Another cool part of the collection is the Yemeni antiquities, which is the best collection outside of Yemen itself. The museum also has items from Dilmun and the Parthian period, found in burial mounds at ancient sites in Bahrain like A'ali and Shakhura.

From modern Syria, there are almost forty burial busts from Palmyra. There's also a group of stone reliefs from the digs of Max von Oppenheim at Tell Halaf, bought in 1920. More items arrived from the excavations of Max Mallowan at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak in 1935–1938, and from Woolley at Alalakh just before and after the Second World War. Mallowan returned with his wife, the famous writer Agatha Christie, to dig more at Nimrud after the war. They found many important artefacts for the museum.

The collection of Palestinian items was improved by Kathleen Kenyon's work at Jericho in the 1950s. In 1980, the museum also got about 17,000 objects found at Lachish by the Wellcome-Marston expedition from 1932–1938. Even today, archaeological digs are still happening in the Middle East where allowed. The museum continues to receive some of the finds from sites like Tell es Sa'idiyeh in Jordan.

Collections

The museum's collection of Islamic art, including archaeological finds, has about 40,000 objects. It's one of the largest collections of its kind anywhere! It includes a wide range of pottery, paintings, tiles, metalwork, glass, seals, and writings from all over the Islamic world. This stretches from Spain in the west to India in the east.

The collection is especially famous for its Iznik ceramics (the biggest collection in the world). A special highlight is a mosque lamp from the Dome of the Rock. There's also medieval metalwork like the Vaso Vescovali, which shows the Zodiac signs. You can also see a great selection of astrolabes (ancient tools for astronomy) and Mughal paintings. Plus, there's precious artwork like a large jade turtle made for the Emperor Jahangir.

Thousands of objects were found after the war by archaeologists at Iranian sites like Siraf (by David Whitehouse) and Alamut Castle (by Peter Willey). The collection grew even more in 1983 with the Godman gift of Iznik, Hispano-Moresque, and early Iranian pottery. You can see artefacts from the Islamic world in Gallery 34 of the museum.

A good selection from the Department of Middle East, including the most important pieces, is on display in 13 galleries throughout the museum. This includes about 4,500 objects. A whole set of rooms on the ground floor shows the huge carved reliefs from the Assyrian palaces at Nineveh, Nimrud, and Khorsabad. Eight galleries on the upper floor hold smaller items from ancient sites across the Middle East. The rest of the collection is kept for study and ranges in size from tiny beads to huge sculptures. It also includes about 130,000 cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia.

Key highlights of the collections include:

Nimrud:

Nineveh:

Images for kids

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  Room 6 – Pair of Human Headed Winged Lions and reliefs from Nimrud with the Balawat Gates, c. 860 BC

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  Room 52 – Ancient Iran with the Cyrus Cylinder, considered to be the world's first charter of human rights, 559–530 BC

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  Vaso Vescovali, circa 1200, Khorasan

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  Room 56 – The 'Ram in a Thicket' figure, one of a pair, from Ur, Southern Iraq, c. 2600 BC

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  Room 56 – The famous 'Standard of Ur', a hollow wooden box with scenes of war and peace, from Ur, c. 2600 BC

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  Room 56 - Sculpture of the god Imdugud, lion-headed eagle surmounting a lintel made from sheets of copper, Temple of Ninhursag at Tell al-'Ubaid, Iraq, c. 2500 BC

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  Room 56 - Statue of Kurlil, from the Temple of Ninhursag in Tell al-'Ubaid, southern Iraq, c. 2500 BC

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  Room 57 - Carved ivory object from the Nimrud Ivories, Phoenician, Nimrud, Iraq, 9th–8th century BC

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  Room 6 – Depiction of the hypocrite, Jehu, King of Israel on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, Nimrud, c. 827 BC

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  Room 10 – Human Headed Winged Bulls from Khorsabad, companion pieces in the Musée du Louvre, Iraq, 710-705 BC

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  Room 55 – Cuneiform Collection, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, Iraq, c. 669-631 BC

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  Room 55 – The Dying Lion, Nineveh, Neo-Assyrian, Iraq, c. 645 BC

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  Room 55 - Panel with striding lion made from glazed bricks, Neo-Babylonian, Nebuchadnezzar II, Southern Iraq, 604-562 BC

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  Room 52 – A chariot from the Oxus Treasure, the most important surviving collection of Achaemenid Persian metalwork, c. 5th to 4th centuries BC

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  Room 53 - Stela said to come from Tamma' cemetery, Yemen, 1st century AD

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  Room 53 - Alabaster statue of a standing female figure, Yemen, 1st-2nd centuries AD

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  Room 34 - Cylindrical lidded box with an Arabic inscription recording its manufacture for the ruler of Mosul, Badr al-Din Lu'lu', Iraq, c. 1233-1259 AD