Our new Collecting and empire trail explores, through 15 objects, the complex histories of how objects came to be in the Museum’s collection.

The way the Museum collects today is incredibly varied – sometimes objects enter the collection directly, in other instances they have passed through different owners, sometimes over a long period of time, before finally coming to the Museum. This blog looks at six key objects from the Collecting histories trail and charts their journey to the Museum.

Cultural anthropologist Veronica Strang, Executive Director of the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Durham, reveals the widespread role of water serpent beings in religious belief and ritual across the world.