One of the most enjoyable things about working with the British Museum's Anglo-Saxon collection is having the opportunity to study the intricate designs of the many brooches, buckles, and other pieces of decorative metalwork. This is...

The Fuller Brooch is the earliest known personification of the Five Senses. This splendid circular brooch is made from hammered sheet silver. The center part is decorated with five figures who represent the five human senses. In the...

Franks Casket features scenes from Roman, Jewish, Christian and Germanic tradition. When it came to light in the nineteenth century, this magnificent rectangular casket was being used as a family workbox at Auzon, France. Some time...

This extraordinary helmet is very rare. Only four complete helmets are known from Anglo-Saxon England: at Sutton Hoo, Benty Grange, Wollaston and York. Archaeologists discovered this helmet lying in the tomb. It was also very unusual...

Wealth, and its public display, was probably used to establish status in early Anglo-Saxon society much as it is today. The purse lid from Sutton Hoo is the richest of its kind yet found. The lid was made to cover a leather pouch...

The most famous Anglo-Saxon treasures in the Museum come from the Sutton Hoo burial site in Suffolk. Here mysterious grassy mounds covered a number of ancient graves. In one particular grave, belonging to an important Anglo-Saxon...

In the fifth century C.E., people from tribes called Angles, Saxons and Jutes left their homelands in northern Europe to look for a new home. They knew that the Romans had recently left the green land of Britain unguarded, so they sailed...

The Magdeburg Panel is one of a group of sixteen ivory plaques depicting a cycle of scenes from the Life of Christ. The original set, numbering forty or fifty, decorated a large piece of church furniture in Magdeburg Cathedral.

Hunefer's high status is reflected in the fine quality of his Book of the Dead, which was specially produced for him. This, and a Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figure, inside which the papyrus was found, are the only objects which can be ascribed to...

The wall paintings from Nebamun's tomb-chapel show an idealized vision of daily ancient Egyptian life. Much less is known about the lives of the majority of society. The study of human remains in poor cemeteries is often the only way of...

The fragments from the wall painting in the tomb-chapel of Nebamun are keenly observed vignettes of Nebamun and his family enjoying both work and play. Some concern the provision of the funerary cult that was celebrated in the...

When the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, the carved characters that covered its surface were quickly copied. Printer's ink was applied to the Stone and white paper laid over it. When the paper was removed, it revealed an exact copy...

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most important objects in the British Museum as it holds the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs-a script made up of small pictures that was used originally in ancient Egypt for religious texts....

This type of portrait appeared in Egypt in the first century C.E., and remained popular for around 200 years. Egyptian mummy portraits were placed on the outside of the cartonnage coffin over the head of the individual or were carefully...

The British Museum contains 11 fragments of wall painting, some of the most famous images of Egyptian art. The fragments come from the now lost tomb-chapel of Nebamun, an ancient Egyptian scribe or, "scribe and grain accountant in the...

Ife ( pronounced ee-feh) is today regarded as the spiritual heartland of the Yoruba people living in Nigeria, the Republic of Benin and their many descendants around the world. It is rightly regarded as the birthplace of some of the...

Sowei masks -- unique to the region around Sierra Leone -- are worn by senior members of the all-female Sande Society during rite-of-passage ceremonies that signify a girl's transition to adulthood. They are carved expressions of local...

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