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Virtue & Power

Museum

British Museum

Holder of roughly half the surviving Parthenon sculptures, the Cyrus Cylinder and the Babylonian astronomical diaries — and of the most prominent restitution dispute in the museum world.

London, United Kingdom · founded 1753

Scope

Encyclopedic, with major Greek, Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian holdings.

History of the collection

Founded in 1753 on the collection of Sir Hans Sloane and opened in 1759. Its classical holdings expanded through the acquisitions of the Townley collection, the Elgin marbles and nineteenth-century excavation in Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

Collection notes

The Babylonian astronomical diaries held here are the longest continuous observational record from antiquity, and one of them independently corroborates the date and outcome of Gaugamela.

The Cyrus Cylinder is a Babylonian foundation text produced for Cyrus after 539 BCE. It is regularly described as the first charter of human rights; it is a legitimating document written by a conqueror, and the platform says so.

Contested holdings

Recorded because a collection description that omits a live claim is not describing the collection. The platform states the dispute and does not adjudicate it.

  • The Parthenon sculptures

    Claimed by: Greece

    Removed by agents of Lord Elgin between 1801 and 1812 under a disputed Ottoman authorisation, and acquired by Parliament in 1816. Greece has sought their return since the 1980s. The sculptural programme is now divided between London and Athens, which is the fact that matters for a reader whatever position they take on ownership.