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Buy tickets to Vikings Live  

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To celebrate Vikings Live, we have replaced our Roman alphabet with the runic alphabet used by the Vikings, the Scandinavian ‘Younger Futhark’. The ‘Younger Futhark’ has only 16 letters, so we have used some of the runic letters more than once or combined two runes for one Roman letter.

For an excellent introduction to runes, we recommend Martin Findell’s book published by British Museum Press.

More information about how we have ‘runified’ this site

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Parthenon Sculptures

Playwright, author and British Museum trustee, Bonnie Greer celebrates the enduring beauty and humanity of the Parthenon Sculptures.

The Parthenon was built as a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena. It was the centrepiece of an ambitious building programme on the Acropolis of Athens. The temple’s great size and lavish use of white marble was intended to show off the city’s power and wealth at the height of its empire.

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Parthenon Sculptures

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All object videos

  The Discus Thrower

The Discus Thrower

The dynamic art of discus throwing inspired a number of ancient Greek sculptors.
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Parthenon Sculptures

Playwright, author and British Museum trustee, Bonnie Greer celebrates the enduring beauty and humanity of the Parthenon Sculptures.
Play video 

 

A Parthenon Metope

History of a metope sculpture from the Parthenon and an animation of how it would look reconstructed
Play video 

 

Chiseldon cauldron

The excavation and conservation of an Iron Age cauldron.
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Conserving Gan Ku's Tiger

A British Museum video about the conservation of Gan Ku's 'Tiger' painting.
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Holy Thorn Reliquary

Curator Dora Thornton explains the detailed elements of The Holy Thorn Reliquary.
Play video 

 

A story: How Mitra became Mithras

The story of the Sun God Mitra, and how he came to be known as Mithras.
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Egyptian blue on the Parthenon sculptures

A new technique unveils ancient colour at the British Museum.
Play video 

A History of the World

 

A 100 part series by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, exploring world history from two million years ago to the present.
Listen to the programmes  

Talking Objects

 

Young people discover the stories behind objects and voice opinions about their relevance today.
See all Talking Objects videos 

British Sign Language

  The Rosetta stone

British Sign Language

Over 200 BSL descriptions of objects in the British Museum collection.
See all BSL videos