B is for ...Brit ...Bet ...n ...Bah

 

Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V...

All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't been able to visit yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what those peoples want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!

B is for the British Museum, but of course!

The British Museum is the first national public museum, also one of the oldest and largest in the world making it to every top ten world list on many criteria. I have visited it several times from the 1970s onwards as a kiddie kid first, then taken my child there as a kid and a teen and an adult too. The very first Egyptian mummy I've seen has been here, not at the museum in Calcutta and nor in Egypt, though I've seen those too at some point. The Brit Museum was probably my first proper museum visit and the first is always super special. No visit to London feels complete without walking around to it.  I was there again yesterday, it was super crowded what with the Easter holidays and the war preventing all but the most intrepid travellers. 

The building facade. From a 2018 visit. 

I spent most of my time on the last visit in the Asian Galleries - on the Indian and Chinese exhibits. As the British were  so intertwined with the history of my own hometown, a lot of the artefacts hit an immediate chord. Ravi Shankar's sitar! Amravati marbles! 

The label on this says this is an architectural fragment from a monastery
near Bodhgaya in Eastern India, specifically from a sculpture workshop
that thrived around 800-1000 AD. It was collected by a colonial officer
called Markham Kittoe in 1848 and presented, with many other such
fragments, to the Bengal Asiatic Society, Kolkata. 

Rabi Thakur! that's the Bengali version of his name.

The museum has a comprehensive site which allows any visitor to check out the galleries from anywhere in the world. Click here to read more. 

The Rosetta Stone. Probably the most famous
collection in the Museum. From y'day's visit.

The British Museum got roughly 6.5 million visitors in 2024, continuing to recover strongly after the pandemic. It is the most visited attraction in the UK and ranked only after the Louvre in Paris and the Vatican museum globally.

One cannot bring up the British Museum without touching upon the controversies surrounding the acquisition of much of its contents. Many of the artefacts have been contested by the originating countries because Britain's colonial history has meant that they were acquired under circumstances that would definitely be considered dodgy nowadays. Most well known among these are the Parthenon Marbles and the Benin Bronzes. Read an interesting debate for  the 'Elgin' Marbles' return vs retain here. As far as I know, some of the Benin Bronzes, which were scattered across Europe and the USA, have been sent home to Nigeria but have been mired in inter-Nigerian wrangling as to who gets what. Read more about that here and here. 

One of the fragments of the Amravati Marbles.
India wants them back!

India has pushed for some returns as well, including the Amravati Marbles and more famously the Koh-i-Noor (which is not held by the British Museum but is part of the Crown Jewels.) Restitution is a complex issue, see Benin Bronzes above - for example, which country should the 'looted' objects be returned to? They were taken from an undivided India in the 18th/19th centuries but now there are at least three claimants - India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.  My own two cents is that we have enough on our plates in the subcontinent without creating more gratuitous grounds for conflict, ill-will and political point scoring. 

B is for the Betsy Ross House

Who on earth was Betsy Ross? She was an American seamstress and upholsterer who sewed the first American flag for General George Washington. The house where she lived and worked in Philadelphia has been turned into a museum showcasing not just her life but the life of working class women in the 18th century. Read more about the Betsy Ross House by clicking the link here. 

Outside the Betsy Ross House

Showcasing the way 18th century  life would have been.

And it wasn't an easy life 

Especially for women, but it wasn't a cakewalk for
working class men either..

The first American flag. Different from the
current one, obviously.

How the story was told

The myth of the first flag maker is not 100% proven, historians have varied views. But it's a nice story and a lovely little museum, pleasant and atmospheric. The Betsy Ross House receives over 250,000 visitors annually and a further 500,000 virtual visitors. 

Finally, B is for Bahrain

Bahrain has a supertiny but awesome neat museum called the Bahrain National Museum as befits a supertiny country with a deep, deep history going back more than 5000 years. It has been a major trading centre since the 3rd millennium BCE. In antiquity Bahrain was known as Dilmun and/or Awal. It has been under Greek control and Persian and Portuguese and Omani and finally British. It has had trade relations with the East and West. The Museum presents this eventful timeline in a concise and appealing way. I've been there countless times, with our visitors and guests from India as well as on my own and in company of local friends. 

Museum entrance. The ticket costs BHD 1 (USD 2.65) The part of
the ticket that's retained by the visitor is a picture postcard and
has the image of a museum exhibit. 

Seals from the Dilmun period i.e. 3000-600 BCE

Grave treasures from 1500-1300 BCE

Glass vessels from the medieval Islamic era.

Bahrain National Museum gets around 200,000 visitors annually. Note that the total tourist number is around 4 million in Bahrain. and the local resident population is around 1.67 million, of which roughly 50-55% are expats.  That country is in the news right now for an agonising reason, prayers for its safety and that of all its citizens and residents. 

Read more about the Bahrain National Museum here. 

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Do you believe that artefacts obtained during colonial rule should be returned to their original cultures? Should this be a blanket policy or decided on a case to case basis? 

One of the exhibits in the Parthenon Galleries.
Greece wants them back!

This has turned out to be a lo-o-o-ng post. Thank you for your patience if you've read the whole! Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026