Because of the long, long history of British shipping, immigration, trade, empire, missionaries, you can have a better shot at telling a… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share Image
For many, the icon of the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone, that administrative by-product of the Greek imperial adventure in Africa. — Neil MacGregor Copy Share Image
A collection that embraces the whole world allows you to consider the whole world. That is what an institution such as the… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share Image
It is a standing source of astonishment and amusement to visitors that the British Museum has so few British things in it:… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share Image
The British Museum was founded with a civic purpose: to allow the citizen, through reasoned inquiry and comparison, to resist the certainties… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share Image
“And the more you look at the history of Homo sapiens, it’s all about movement, right from the very first time they decided to… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
In the world of the Middle East at the moment, the debates are shrill. But ... the wisest voice of all of them may… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
The focus in the Western pictorial tradition is on the body of Christ, the bit you can paint, the Nativity and the infancy, but… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
For the Greeks, there was no single canonical version of creation, but a number of overlapping stories. — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
The deciphering of ancient scripts changed forever the way Europeans were able to imagine the story of humanity, destroying centuries of received authority about… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
The distinction between a gallery and a museum is enormous. The gallery is about looking at a thing of beauty; the purpose of the… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
While there are few records of Viking women participating in battle, they certainly held positions of high status in society as human sorceresses known… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
“Gold was the attribute of the great Inca sun god and represented his generative powers – gold was described as the ‘sweat of the… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
Creation stories, so central in the religions of the Middle East, play a surprisingly marginal part in Greek myth. The Greeks had nothing to… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
The collapse of the Tower of Babel is perhaps the central urban myth. It is certainly the most disquieting. In Babylon, the great city… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
The spread of Viking bling is a good indication of the spread of its culture. — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
Our collective memories are welcoming places, and one image, that of Jesus, has absorbed and appropriated elements of other traditions and aspirations in order… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
The things we make have one supreme quality - they live longer than us. We perish, they survive; we have one life, they have… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
In 1600, when Shakespeare's audience at the Globe heard 'Hamlet' for the first time, every one of them knew very well what it meant… — Neil MacGregor Copy Share
