Curator Naomi Speakman sheds light on a few of her favourite medieval gems in the collection.

Curator Irving Finkel may have joined the wrong department to look after the Lewis Chessmen, but that hasn’t stopped him writing a book on them, and having a surprising connection to a film about a certain boy wizard.

Curator Naomi Speakman explores the fantastical world of medieval bestiaries and the mythical creatures found within.

Curator of horology Oli Cooke takes a closer look at a beautiful 17th-century clock that presents a novel way to tell the time in the middle of the night.

The statue of King Idrimi arrived at the British Museum in 1939. The inscription that stretches across the front of the statue is now recognised as one of the 20 most important cuneiform documents ever found. James Fraser, Project Curator, Middle East Department, discusses the importance of Idrimi’s story, and how new scanning techniques are allowing us unravel the inscription in more detail.

When archaeologists found what looked like a collection of footprints on a beach at Happisburgh (pronounced Haze-borough) in Norfolk, they were unaware they’d discovered tracks of early humans that were a million years old.

As the year of the rooster approaches, the Chinese scroll mounters in the Hirayama Studio have plenty to crow about…

Bink Hallum and Marcel Marée discuss hieroglyphic texts on display in the Egypt: faith after the pharaohs exhibition and in particular the 18th-century copy of the Book of the Seven Climes.

Curator Julia Farley explores the fashion world of 2,000 years ago and answers that eternal question: how should you wear a torc? 

Ian Jenkins, Exhibition Curator, at the British Museum is currently working on Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art. In this blog Ian discusses the role of nudity and the male body in Ancient Greek society as an expression of social, moral and political values.

The Early Egypt Gallery (Room 64) has undergone a full-blown refurbishment with new themes and displays throughout. Here Renée Friedman explains some of the highlights of the gallery including the new acquisitions from the site of Jebel Sahaba and the return of the popular virtual autopsy table allowing a deeper look into the Gebelein Man.

Using a CT scanner to look beneath the surface, Alexandra Fletcher was able to reveal new details about one of the the oldest human remains in the British Museum collection, the Jericho skull.

Alexandra Fletcher discusses some of the ethical and practical issues associated with caring for and displaying human remains in the British Museum collection.

The intricate designs of Anglo-Saxon brooches, buckles, and other pieces of decorative metalwork are not just pretty decoration, they have multi-layered symbolic meanings and tell stories. Curator Rosie Weetch and Illustrator Craig Williams team up to decode some key Anglo-Saxon objects.

The Vandals have a reputation for wanton violence and destruction but was there more to them than that? Barry Ager explains how new archaeological discoveries might help us to see them from a more balanced perspective.

Gareth Williams is working on the BP exhibition Vikings: life and legend, the largest Viking exhibition in the UK for over 30 years. In this blog Gareth discuses what we can expect from the exhibition along with the challenges of incorporating a 37 metre-long Viking ship into the new Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery.

Tom Williams explains how objects in the new exhibition, the BP exhibition Vikings: life and legend indicate that the Vikings were working their way up and down the river systems of Russia and Ukraine more than a thousand years ago.

In May 2013 a team of scientists led by the British Museum, Natural History Museum and Queen Mary University of London discovered a series of footprints left by early humans in ancient estuary mud over 800,000 years ago at Happisburgh, Norfolk. Nicholas Ashton, Curator of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic collections at the British Museum has been working on the Happisburgh Palaeolithic excavations.

The Department of the Middle East have been preparing to display a panel showing a pacing, roaring lion that was once was part of King Nebuchadnezzar II’s throne room in his palace in the ancient city of Babylon, Iraq. Alexandra Fletcher explains how the panel has been pieced together to be displayed for the very first time in London.

Jago Cooper has just returned from an exploratory research visit to the uninhabited national park on the island of Mona in Puerto Rico. In this blog, Jago details his findings which were rather unexpected. 

Many of the objects in the Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition help tell extraordinarily human stories of the inhabitants of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In this blog, Vanessa Baldwin describes some of her favourites.

David Prudames discusses what we can learn about Roman civilastion from the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum featured in the exhibition Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum

A free exhibition, opening on 24 May 2012 at the British Museum will celebrate the epic story of the horse – a journey of 5,000 years that has revolutionised human history. Nigel Tallis gives us a preview of what to expect.

John Taylor is the curator of the ‘Journey through the afterlife: ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead’ exhibition, a hugely popular programme that opened at the British Museum in November, 2010. In this article he expands on one of the most popular and fascinating objects to have appeared: The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead.