BRITISH MUSEUM. - In London, next to the "Victoria and Albert Museum," which contains a large collection of early Christian objects, Coptic textiles (catalogue by Kendwick), ivories (catalogue by Longhurst) and glassware, with a special department for casts, the B. M. houses a marvellous collection of art from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. The B. M. was founded by the British Parliament in the year 1753 and the present building was constructed between 1823 and 1852 by Robert and Sydney Smirke.
In 1893 the early Christian and early medieval objects were arranged in special rooms, among the great collections for the history of religions. But the African mosaics, the ivories, the gems and the glassware remain scattered in other rooms, e.g.: the coins and the lead seals in the numismatic cabinet, the collection of glassware and ivories in the medieval room, the goldsmith work in the room of golds, the national antiquities in the Romano-British department, the stelae and Coptic textiles in the Egyptian rooms and the miniatures, such as the Cotton Genesis, among the manuscripts.
The Christian department is composed of three collections: early Christian, Byzantine and objects later than 1553; among these, many works coming from Abyssinia, Egypt and Russia. The arrangement and the catalogue are largely the merit of O. M. Dalton.
The collection never had the purpose of documenting the development of ancient Christian art, but it contains pieces of the very highest value, such as the treasure of the Esquiline, that of Cyprus and that of Lampsacus. Also in the collection of ivories are found masterpieces of world renown, such as the Archangel Michael, the pyx of St. Menas from the Nesbit collection (1879) and the casket with the Crucifixion from the Maskell collection. Other ivories and minor objects come, besides from the aforementioned collection (1856), also from the Slade and Hawkins collections. Rings and gems of high quality were acquired with the Hamilton collection, in 1865 with that of Castellani and in 1897 with that of Francks; glassware and especially gold-glass medallions in 1854 with the Bunsen and Disch collection and in 1863 with that of Matarozzi. Other objects, such as bronze lamps, polycandela, lamps and ceramic ampullae, are for the most part due to more recent purchases. The catalogue of O. M. Dalton accurately records the provenance of all these pieces. Scarce, on the other hand, are the sculptural material and the architectural fragments.
In July 1939, in the eastern part of Great Britain, near the estuary of the Deben at Sutton Hoo, there was discovered beneath one of the burial mounds an imposing artistic treasure in the interior of a great rowing ship, a treasure donated by the owner of the land to the British nation. After the gallery of the B. M. was reopened in 1946, the material of this treasure is exhibited there gradually as it comes out of restoration. It is the most imposing treasure in number and in value, comprising a standard-bearer, a silver disc with the seal of the emperor Anastasius I (491-518), drinking horns, a large silver basin with a classical head, silver plates, silver spoons of which two bear the inscriptions SAUL and PAUL, a helmet, a sword, a belt buckle and a great gold purse-closure, enamels and filigrees, 37 Merovingian gold coins, etc., all belonging, in all probability, to King Aethelhere, who died between 655-56, remembered by Bede (Hist. eccl., III, 24: PL 95, 156).
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Fritz Volbach