Museum

Europe without borders

The exhibition Iron Age – Europe without Borders is divided into cultural-historical, chronological, and geographical sections. In addition to relics of largely unknown cultures, the exhibition focuses on the legacies of peoples such as the Celts, Etruscans, Scythians, and Sarmatians.

ABOVE Visitors can walk through the large ship structure that runs down the centre of the exhibition space to learn more about the journey and the

Mayflower 400: Legend & Legacy

On entering the gallery, visitors are reminded that, despite their prominence in the story of the early colonists, the passengers of the Mayflower were not the first Europeans to settle in the ‘New World’.

Above Some of the small gold boats from Bronze Age Nors, which represent the ship that carried the sun through the darkness of the underworld at night. below There are a large number of amber artefacts on display at the museum, including Mesolithic and Neolithic pendants and figurines, like this bear.

National Museum of Denmark

The National Museum of Denmark has one of the oldest established collections of prehistoric artefacts in the world. It dates back to King Frederik VI, who set up The Royal Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities in 1807. More than 200 years after the Commission’s founding, the ground floor of the Prince’s Palace (where the collection moved in 1855) beautifully presents artefacts from across Denmark, which offer a detailed look at the people who lived there, as well as further objects from the land that once connected Denmark to Britain.

RIGHt This sculpted stucco Maya head excavated at Uxmal, Mexico, may have once decorated the House of the Governor.

Infinity of Nations

Around 700 objects from more than 200 Indigenous communities give a glimpse of the people who have interacted across these diverse environments over thousands of years.

Above left This image from c.1875 of Isabel, Maud, and Robert Routh is perhaps the oldest family photograph taken at Stonehenge. above Martin Parr’s photo of a couple taking a selfie at the 2019 Autumn Equinox.

Your Stonehenge

Visitors to Stonehenge have been taking photographs of the monument – and themselves – for almost 150 years. Lucia Marchini visited the site to explore a new exhibition showcasing some of these images, and the stories they tell.

Right Found at the Housesteads Mithraeum, this partially reconstructed relief shows Mithras’ slaughtering of the bull as an act of creation.

Great North Museum: Hancock

From Roman temples dedicated to Mithras to Anglo-Saxon stone crosses, Newcastle’s Great North Museum: Hancock explores an array of beliefs and ways of life in the north of England, as Lucia Marchini found out.

ABOVE An early example from Nepal of a ‘Tantra’ that is, a religious text. BELOW A 13th century temple sculpture showing Bhairava. His impassive expression is undercut by the pair of fangs projecting from his mouth and the severed head clutched in his hand. Members of the demonic dead stand to Bhairava’s left and right.

Tantra: an archaeology of enlightenment

Tantra’s appeal has proven remarkably broad. What began on the margins of Indian society went on to command the patronage of royalty and transform Hinduism and Buddhism as it spread across Asia. Along the way, it created a rich archaeological legacy, capable of provoking radically different reactions from its audiences, as Imma Ramos told World Archaeology.

Above Homes in Pompeii were decorated with frescoes celebrating food and feasting. This AD 45 79 still life wall panel from the House of the Chaste Lovers depicts a cockerel pecking at pomegranates, figs, and pears on a shelf.

Last Supper in Pompeii

The extraordinary levels of preservation at the relatively ordinary Roman city of Pompeii and other sites in the Bay of Naples, where the eruption of Mount Vesuvius devastatingly interrupted the inhabitants as they went about their daily lives, provide remarkable insights into the production, distribution, and conspicuous consumption of food and wine.

Left Charterhouse Square is the final resting place of many of London’s plague dead. Walter Manny founded a Carthusian monastery at the site in 1371. above A fragment from Manny’s painted tomb.

The Charterhouse

A recently opened museum at London’s Charterhouse illuminates centuries of life at this former medieval monastery. Lucia Marchini explores some of the highlights.

Above Painted sculptures sealed burial shafts in grand tombs, some of them towers, outside the ancient city of Palmyra. Here, a range of portraits of men and women, young and old, are presented in rows to give an idea of how they were arranged in the tower tombs.

The Road to Palmyra

Halfway between the Mediterranean and the River Euphrates, the Efqu spring offered refreshing respite for ancient traders crossing the dusty Syrian desert. The city of Palmyra flourished at the oasis, its merchants amassing their wealth through trade networks that brought…

The Rothschild Pentateuch

The text contains features that indicate it may have been written in France for Jewish emigrés who had been expelled from England in 1290.

Picasso – half man, half bull

Picasso never visited Greece, let alone Crete. He didn’t need to do so. He re-created it on paper. The drawings and prints in our show reveal how Picasso evoked the ancient world and peopled it with gorgeous girls who resembled his mistresses.

Ancient America: following the Thunderbird

Well-known for his television programmes on the archaeology of South America, curator Dr Jago Cooper now focuses on the ancient cultures of the northwest coast of North America in his new exhibition at the British Museum, as he tells Diana Bentley

Isis in Italy

Dalu Jones follows on the trail of the Ancient Egyptian goddess to Pompeii, Naples and Turin

Above Inside the Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum at New Scotland Yard, 2015.

The Crime Museum Uncovered

In October, the contents of the Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum went on public display for the first time at the Museum of London. This teaching collection has amassed artefacts from a succession of notorious crimes, but it also invites us to reflect on their legacy, as Jackie Keily told Matthew Symonds.

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Steve hurst: war toys

A new exhibition featuring the work of war artist Steve Hurst was recently on display at Pangolin London, a Kings Cross gallery devoted to sculpture. Bringing together four decades of Hurst’s own personal imagery, which he admits is inextricably linked…

War Games

A new V&A Museum of Childhood exhibition is taking a radical look at children’s war play. MHM Editor Neil Faulkner has just visited with two of his children.