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109-569: Carausius was of humble origin, a Menapian who distinguished himself during Maximian 's campaign against the Bagaudae rebels in northern Gaul in 286. This success, and his former occupation as a pilot , led to his appointment to command the Classis Britannica , a fleet based in the English Channel , with the responsibility of eliminating Frankish and Saxon pirates who had been raiding

218-477: A Proto-Celtic form reconstructed as * Menak ī or * Manak ī , whose meaning remains uncertain, perhaps the 'mountain people' or the 'high-living people' (from the root * mon - 'mountain'; cf. MWelsh mynydd , OBret. monid , OCo. menit ), or from the root * men - ('think, remember'; cf. OIr. muinithir 'think', Welsh mynnu 'wish'). The city of Cassel , attested on Peutinger's Tabula as Castellum Menapiorum ( Cassello in 840–75, Cassel in 1110),

327-420: A Golden Age. 'The rule of Saturn over a golden age is a literary commonplace ... as is the association of any emperor's reign with the same thing'. An imperial panegyric to Maximian states 'Indeed, as the fact is, those golden ages which once flourished briefly in the reign of Saturn, are now reborn under the perpetual guidance of Jove and Hercules.' Lactantius , a Christian writer of the period and opponent of

436-599: A Scottish prince, exiled on suspicion of involvement in his brother's murder, who entered Roman service passing himself off as a commoner, and later allied with his nephew King Crathlinthus against the Romans. The assassination of Carausius is central to Rosemary Sutcliff 's 1957 novel, The Silver Branch . Carausius features as the character 'Caros' in James Macpherson 's Fingal, An Epic Poem in Six Books (1761), in which he

545-449: A buildings committee was set up to plan for expansion of the museum, and further highlighted by the donation in 1822 of the King's Library , personal library of King George III's, comprising 65,000 volumes, 19,000 pamphlets , maps, charts and topographical drawings . The neoclassical architect, Sir Robert Smirke , was asked to draw up plans for an eastern extension to the museum "... for

654-547: A display of objects from the South Seas brought back from the round-the-world voyages of Captain James Cook and the travels of other explorers fascinated visitors with a glimpse of previously unknown lands. The bequest of a collection of books, engraved gems , coins, prints and drawings by Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode in 1800 did much to raise the museum's reputation; but Montagu House became increasingly crowded and decrepit and it

763-448: A location for the museum, which it bought from the Montagu family for £20,000. The trustees rejected Buckingham House, which was later converted into the present day Buckingham Palace , on the grounds of cost and the unsuitability of its location. With the acquisition of Montagu House, the first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759. At this time,

872-591: A major part of Sir John Evans 's coin collection, which was later sold to the museum by his son J. P. Morgan Jr. in 1915. In 1918, because of the threat of wartime bombing, some objects were evacuated via the London Post Office Railway to Holborn, the National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth) and a country house near Malvern . On the return of antiquities from wartime storage in 1919 some objects were found to have deteriorated. A conservation laboratory

981-494: A member of the Tetrarchy's college of emperors, issuing coins with the legend CARAVSIVS ET FRATRES SVI, 'Carausius and his brothers' with portraits of himself with Diocletian and Maximian . Carausius appears to have appealed to native British dissatisfaction with Roman rule; he issued coins with legends such as Restitutor Britanniae (Restorer of Britain) and Genius Britanniae (Spirit of Britain). Some of these silver coins bear

1090-523: A military victory. Eutropius says that hostilities were in vain thanks to Carausius's military skill, and peace was agreed. Carausius began to entertain visions of legitimacy and official recognition. Coinage is the main source of information about the rogue emperor; his coinage was issued from mints in Londinium , Rotomagus (Rouen) and a third site, possibly Colonia Claudia Victricensis (Colchester). He also used them for sophisticated propaganda. He issued

1199-660: A million books, opened in 1857. Because of continued pressure on space the decision was taken to move natural history to a new building in South Kensington , which would later become the British Museum of Natural History . Roughly contemporary with the construction of the new building was the career of a man sometimes called the "second founder" of the British Museum, the Italian librarian Anthony Panizzi . Under his supervision,

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1308-467: A new generation is let down from Heaven above". Virgil's works, or at any rate quotations from them, were current in Roman popular culture. Suetonius cites three instances in which Virgilian lines were quoted. Cassius Dio cites an instance of a praetorian tribune quoting Virgil as a means of criticising Septimius Severus after an attack on Hatra went badly in 199. Copper-alloy medallions already existed in

1417-556: A number of recently discovered hoards which demonstrated the richness of what had been considered an unimportant part of the Roman Empire. The museum turned increasingly towards private funds for buildings, acquisitions and other purposes. In 2000, the British Museum was awarded National Heritage Museum of the Year . Today the museum no longer houses collections of natural history , and the books and manuscripts it once held now form part of

1526-488: A propaganda theme that was already current in Tetrarchal publicity which corresponds with the use of similar literary allusions. An alternative school of thought exists which argues the medallions must be eighteenth-century fantasy pieces on the basis that such arcane literary allusions would have been too obscure to Carausius and his army. This argument contends that the antiquarian William Stukeley or someone like him found

1635-621: A quadriga pulled by Victory with the legend TRIVNF.QVADOR, 'the triumph over the Quadi tribe', and is clearly similar in tone to the Carausian INPCDA medallion. Although the Virgilian reference might seem remarkable in the context of late third century Roman Britain it is apparent from other contemporary literature that the Tetrarchy legitimist regime was utilising Virgilian allusions and references in its propaganda, and claiming itself to have restored

1744-471: A rough and thuggish man; his later coins show him as trim and beneficent. He struck coins that showed three portrait heads on the reverse instead of the usual one, and a legend on the obverse including PAX AVGGG, the peace of three Augusti. This would imply that he was recognized by the other two current Augusti, Diocletian and Maximian, but their own coins of the time proclaim the attributes of only two Augusti, PAX AVGG. Carausius also had himself depicted as

1853-537: Is a characteristic building of Sir Robert Smirke , with 44 columns in the Ionic order 45 ft (14 m) high, closely based on those of the temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Asia Minor . The pediment over the main entrance is decorated by sculptures by Sir Richard Westmacott depicting The Progress of Civilisation , consisting of fifteen allegorical figures, installed in 1852. The construction commenced around

1962-840: Is attested by inscriptions dating to the 2nd century in Britain . Carausius , the 3rd century commander of the Roman fleet who declared himself emperor of Britain and northern Gaul, was a Menapian, born in Batavia . A legion called the Menapii Seniores is mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum , a 5th-century register of Roman government positions and military commands. They are mentioned as Menapii by Caesar (mid-1st c. BC) and Orosius (early 5th c. AD), Menápioi (Μενάπιοι; var. Μονάπιοι, Μενάσπιοι) by Strabo (early 1st c. AD) and Ptolemy (2nd c. AD), as Menapi by Pliny (1st c. AD) and

2071-646: Is defeated by the blind poet Ossian 's son, Oscar. Menapii The Menapii were a Belgic tribe dwelling near the North Sea , around present-day Cassel , during the Iron Age and the Roman period . The Menapii were persistent opponents of Julius Caesar 's conquest of Gaul, resisting until 54 BC. They were part of the Belgic confederacy defeated by Caesar in 57 BC, contributing 9,000 men. The following year they sided with

2180-680: Is indirectly named after the tribe. According to descriptions in such authors as Strabo , Caesar , Pliny the Elder and Ptolemy their territory had stretched northwards to the mouth of the Rhine in the north, but more lastingly it stretched along the west of the Scheldt river. In later geographical terms this territory corresponds roughly to the modern Belgian coast, the Belgian provinces of East and West Flanders . It also extended into neighbouring France and

2289-399: The Notitia Dignitatum (5th c. AD), and under the accusative forms Menapios by Tacitus (early 2nd c. AD) and Menapíous (Μεναπίους) by Cassius Dio (3rd c. AD). The Gaulish ethnonym Menapii has been phonetically compared with Manapii , the name of a tribe from southeastern Ireland mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. These tribal names may ultimately derive from

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2398-735: The Americas . On 7 June 1753, King George II gave his royal assent to the Act of Parliament which established the British Museum. The British Museum Act 1753 also added two other libraries to the Sloane collection, namely the Cottonian Library , assembled by Sir Robert Cotton , dating back to Elizabethan times, and the Harleian Library , the collection of the Earls of Oxford . They were joined in 1757 by

2507-500: The Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo (1939) and late Roman silver tableware from Mildenhall , Suffolk (1946). The immediate post-war years were taken up with the return of the collections from protection and the restoration of the museum after the Blitz . Work also began on restoring the damaged Duveen Gallery. In 1953, the museum celebrated its bicentenary . Many changes followed:

2616-569: The Coins and Medals office suite, completely destroyed during the war, was rebuilt and re-opened, attention turned towards the gallery work with new tastes in design leading to the remodelling of Robert Smirke's Classical and Near Eastern galleries. In 1962 the Duveen Gallery was finally restored and the Parthenon Sculptures were moved back into it, once again at the heart of the museum. By

2725-521: The Duke of Blacas 's wide-ranging and valuable collection of antiquities. Overseas excavations continued and John Turtle Wood discovered the remains of the 4th century BC Temple of Artemis at Ephesos , another Wonder of the Ancient World . The natural history collections were an integral part of the British Museum until their removal to the new British Museum of Natural History in 1887, nowadays

2834-522: The Natural History Museum in South Kensington . With the departure and the completion of the new White Wing (fronting Montague Street) in 1884, more space was available for antiquities and ethnography and the library could further expand. This was a time of innovation as electric lighting was introduced in the Reading Room and exhibition galleries. The William Burges collection of armoury

2943-827: The Nervii , and near the Meuse river. While these authors make it clear that the Menapii still lay north of the Nervii in Roman times, it is not clear if they still bordered directly upon the former territory of the Eburones , as they had been in Caesar's time, and which in imperial times was within the Civitas Tungrorum , or civitas of the Tungri . In any case as mentioned above they bordered in Roman times upon

3052-678: The Oxus Treasure . In 1898 Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild bequeathed the Waddesdon Bequest , the glittering contents from his New Smoking Room at Waddesdon Manor . This consisted of almost 300 pieces of objets d'art et de vertu which included exquisite examples of jewellery, plate, enamel, carvings, glass and maiolica , among them the Holy Thorn Reliquary , probably created in the 1390s in Paris for John, Duke of Berry . The collection

3161-668: The Roman empire was Cassel in northern France, and later this was moved nearer to a river in Tournai , in present-day Belgium, on the Scheldt. Both of these are near Thérouanne , which was the civitas of the neighbouring Morini tribe, and indeed in the Middle Ages Cassel became part of the Catholic Diocese of Thérouanne . Cassel was therefore in the southern extreme of the Menapii lands. A pattern of placing Roman tribal capitals in

3270-642: The Scheldt , in Strabo 's 1st-century Geographica , they are situated further away than the Nervii and on both sides of the Rhine near its outlets to the sea, apparently not far from the Germanic Sigambri . Apparently following Caesar he said that they "dwell amongst marshes and forests, not lofty, but consisting of dense and thorny wood". They are also referred to in Ptolemy 's 2nd century Geographia , situated "above"

3379-659: The Speaker of the House of Commons . The board was formed on the museum's inception to hold its collections in trust for the nation without actually owning them themselves, and now fulfil a mainly advisory role. Trustee appointments are governed by the regulatory framework set out in the code of practice on public appointments issued by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Greek Revival façade facing Great Russell Street

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3488-660: The Toxandrians , who apparently lived in the north of the lands of the Nervii and Tungri. South of the Menapii were the Atrebates in Artois, and south-west along the coast were the Morini . The boundary with the Morini in classical times appears to have been the river Aa . In the later Roman empire, The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites reports that "Cassel was superseded as capital of

3597-490: The Veneti against Caesar. Caesar was again victorious, but the Menapii and the Morini refused to make peace and continued to fight against him. They withdrew into the forests and swamps and conducted a hit-and-run campaign . Caesar responded by cutting down the forests, seizing their cattle and burning their settlements, but this was interrupted by heavy rain and the onset of winter, and the Menapii and Morini withdrew further into

3706-587: The "Old Royal Library", now the Royal manuscripts , assembled by various British monarchs . Together these four "foundation collections" included many of the most treasured books now in the British Library including the Lindisfarne Gospels and the sole surviving manuscript of Beowulf . The British Museum was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to

3815-553: The 1970s, the museum was again expanding. More services for the public were introduced; visitor numbers soared, with the temporary exhibition "Treasures of Tutankhamun " in 1972, attracting 1,694,117 visitors, the most successful in British history. In the same year the Act of Parliament establishing the British Library was passed, separating the collection of manuscripts and printed books from

3924-469: The American architect John Russell Pope , it was completed in 1938. The appearance of the exhibition galleries began to change as dark Victorian reds gave way to modern pastel shades. Following the retirement of George Francis Hill as Director and Principal Librarian in 1936, he was succeeded by John Forsdyke . As tensions with Nazi Germany developed and it appeared that war may be imminent Forsdyke came to

4033-686: The British Library to a new site at St Pancras, finally achieved in 1998, provided the space needed for the books. It also created the opportunity to redevelop the vacant space in Robert Smirke's 19th-century central quadrangle into the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court – the largest covered square in Europe – which opened in 2000. The ethnography collections, which had been housed in the short-lived Museum of Mankind at 6 Burlington Gardens from 1970, were returned to new purpose-built galleries in

4142-556: The British Museum . The British Museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport through a three-year funding agreement. Its head is the Director of the British Museum . The British Museum was run from its inception by a 'principal librarian' (when the book collections were still part of the museum), a role that was renamed 'director and principal librarian' in 1898, and 'director' in 1973 (on

4251-522: The British Museum Library (now part of the British Library ) quintupled in size and became a well-organised institution worthy of being called a national library, the largest library in the world after the National Library of Paris . The quadrangle at the centre of Smirke's design proved to be a waste of valuable space and was filled at Panizzi's request by a circular Reading Room of cast iron, designed by Smirke's brother, Sydney Smirke. Until

4360-539: The British Museum was founded as a "universal museum". Its foundations lie in the will of the Anglo-Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), a London-based doctor and scientist from Ulster . During the course of his lifetime, and particularly after he married the widow of a wealthy Jamaican planter, Sloane gathered a large collection of curiosities , and not wishing to see his collection broken up after death, he bequeathed it to King George II , for

4469-433: The British Museum. This left the museum with antiquities; coins, medals and paper money; prints and drawings; and ethnography . A pressing problem was finding space for additions to the library which now required an extra 1 + 1 ⁄ 4 miles (2.0 km) of shelving each year. The Government suggested a site at St Pancras for the new British Library but the books did not leave the museum until 1997. The departure of

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4578-463: The Menapii by Tournai after Gaul was reorganized under Diocletian and Constantine the Great . The civitas Menapiorum became the civitas Turnencensium ." By medieval times, when these Roman districts evolved into medieval Roman Catholic dioceses, Cassel had in fact become part of the diocese of Thérouanne , which had been the civitas of the Morini. Their civitas , or administrative capital, under

4687-662: The Menapii. South of the delta, east of the river Scheldt from the Menapii, and therefore apparently south of the Frisiavones, Pliny mentions the Toxandri , in a position apparently on the northern edge of Gaul. It is known that the Toxandri were associated with the civitates of both the Nervii and the Tungri, so they presumably had a presence in both. While in Pliny the Menapii do not stretch beyond

4796-541: The RSR on Carausius's silver coinage, and noted that this matched the Redeunt Saturnia Regna (RSR) of the 6th line of the Fourth Eclogue. Thus inspired, the medallions were created with the next line of the Eclogue included on one of them. The central points of this argument are that Stukeley had published a detailed book on Carausius and his coinage, and that the medallions have no known provenance. However, this published argument does not offer any evidence to support Stukeley's involvement or motives (since Stukeley never mentions

4905-450: The Rhine. British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history , art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. Established in 1753, the British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. In 2023,

5014-406: The South Wing with its great colonnade, initiated in 1843 and completed in 1847, when the Front Hall and Great Staircase were opened to the public. The museum is faced with Portland stone , but the perimeter walls and other parts of the building were built using Haytor granite from Dartmoor in South Devon, transported via the unique Haytor Granite Tramway . In 1846 Robert Smirke was replaced as

5123-414: The Tetrarchs, makes a number of disparaging references to the Tetrarchs and their Saturnian pretensions which seem to be a refutation of official propaganda. Carausius was claiming to represent a revival of traditional Roman virtues and the great traditions of the Empire as established by Augustus in the last decades of the first century BC, not in Rome but in Britain. However, he appears to have adopted

5232-457: The UK. In 1816 these masterpieces of western art were acquired by the British Museum by Act of Parliament and deposited in the museum thereafter. The collections were supplemented by the Bassae frieze from Phigaleia , Greece in 1815. The Ancient Near Eastern collection also had its beginnings in 1825 with the purchase of Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities from Mary Mackintosh Rich, the widow of Assyriologist Claudius James Rich . In 1802

5341-415: The antiquities displays. After the defeat of the French campaign in the Battle of the Nile , in 1801, the British Museum acquired more Egyptian sculptures and in 1802 King George III presented the Rosetta Stone – key to the deciphering of hieroglyphs. Gifts and purchases from Henry Salt , British consul general in Egypt, beginning with the Colossal bust of Ramesses II in 1818, laid the foundations of

5450-549: The architect Sydney Smirke , opened in 1857. For almost 150 years researchers came here to consult the museum's vast library. The Reading Room closed in 1997 when the national library (the British Library) moved to a new building at St Pancras . Today it has been transformed into the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre. With the bookstacks in the central courtyard of the museum empty, the demolition for Lord Foster 's glass-roofed Great Court could begin. The Great Court, opened in 2000, while undoubtedly improving circulation around

5559-448: The area was threatened by Frankish tribes from outside the empire. The economic activity of the Menapii was primally extraction of wool from sheep, and the fabrication of primitive cloths, and these were perfected while the Roman Reign in the Region. These cloths were one of the most rare things in terms of goods, because of the geographical location where they were made. Besides, these cloths were exported to Italy and other regions through

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5668-488: The block on which the museum stands. The architect Sir John James Burnet was petitioned to put forward ambitious long-term plans to extend the building on all three sides. Most of the houses in Montague Place were knocked down a few years after the sale. Of this grand plan only the Edward VII galleries in the centre of the North Front were ever constructed, these were built 1906–14 to the design by J.J. Burnet, and opened by King George V and Queen Mary in 1914. They now house

5777-429: The coasts of Armorica and Belgica . He was suspected of allowing pirates to carry out raids and collect loot before attacking them, then keeping captured treasure for himself, and Maximian ordered his execution. In late 286 or early 287 Carausius learned of this sentence and responded by declaring himself Emperor in Britain and northern Gaul. His forces comprised not only his fleet, augmented by new ships he had built and

5886-433: The collection occupies room 2a. By the last years of the 19th century, The British Museum's collections had increased to the extent that its building was no longer large enough. In 1895 the trustees purchased the 69 houses surrounding the museum with the intention of demolishing them and building around the west, north and east sides of the museum. The first stage was the construction of the northern wing beginning 1906. All

5995-425: The collection of Egyptian Monumental Sculpture. Many Greek sculptures followed, notably the first purpose-built exhibition space, the Charles Towneley collection , much of it Roman sculpture, in 1805. In 1806, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin , ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803 removed the large collection of marble sculptures from the Parthenon , on the Acropolis in Athens and transferred them to

6104-410: The contemporary repertoire of imperial Roman coinage so Carausius's production should not be considered exceptional. Numerian (283-4) and his brother Carinus (283-5) both issued copper-alloy medallions of similar size and weight to those of Carausius, often depicting the three Monetae (goddesses of the mint). Another depicts Numerian in consular garb and on the reverse himself and his father Carus in

6213-419: The courtyard with the East Wing ( The King's Library ) in 1823–1828, followed by the North Wing in 1833–1838, which originally housed among other galleries a reading room, now the Wellcome Gallery. Work was also progressing on the northern half of the West Wing (The Egyptian Sculpture Gallery) 1826–1831, with Montagu House demolished in 1842 to make room for the final part of the West Wing, completed in 1846, and

6322-458: The elder lists the people in these "Gallic Islands" as Batavi and Canninefates on the largest island, Frisii and the Chauci whose main lands were to the north of the deltas, and the Frisiavones , Sturii , and Marsacii . Of these last three, the Marsaci appear to be mentioned in another place by Pliny as having a presence on the coast south of the delta, neighbouring the Menapii, within Gaul itself. The Frisiavones are also mentioned within

6431-492: The empire. He isolated Carausius by besieging the port of Gesoriacum (Boulogne-sur-Mer) and invading Batavia in the Rhine delta, securing his rear against Carausius's Frankish allies. He could not yet mount an invasion of Britain until a suitable fleet could be built. Nevertheless, Carausius's grip on power was fatally undermined. Allectus , whom he had put in charge of his treasury, assassinated him and assumed power himself. His reign would last only three years, after which he

6540-427: The few years after its foundation the British Museum received several further gifts, including the Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts and David Garrick 's library of 1,000 printed plays. The predominance of natural history, books and manuscripts began to lessen when in 1772 the museum acquired for £8,410 its first significant antiquities in Sir William Hamilton 's "first" collection of Greek vases . From 1778,

6649-425: The first full-time in-house designer and publications officer were appointed in 1964, the Friends organisation was set up in 1968, an Education Service established in 1970 and publishing house in 1973. In 1963, a new Act of Parliament introduced administrative reforms. It became easier to lend objects, the constitution of the board of trustees changed and the Natural History Museum became fully independent. By 1959

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6758-400: The first proper silver coins that had appeared in the Roman Empire for generations, knowing that good quality bullion coinage would enhance his legitimacy and make him look more successful than Diocletian and Maximian . His initial issues show him as rough and thuggish, though the technical standard of die cutting on good specimens can be seen to be excellent. The intention was to portray

6867-427: The following 250 years was largely a result of British colonisation and resulted in the creation of several branch institutions, or independent spin-offs, the first being the Natural History Museum in 1881. Some of its best-known acquisitions, such as the Greek Elgin Marbles and the Egyptian Rosetta Stone , are subject to long-term disputes and repatriation claims. In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached

6976-425: The forests. In 55 BC the Menapii tried to resist a Germanic incursion across the Rhine , but were defeated. Later that year, while Caesar made his first expedition to Britain , he sent two of his legates and the majority of his army to the territories of the Menapii and Morini to keep them under control. Once again, they retired to the woods, and the Romans burned their crops and settlements. The Menapii joined

7085-404: The group was not deposited until after Carausius's death. In Geoffrey of Monmouth 's History of the Kings of Britain (1136) Carausius is a Briton of humble birth, who by his courage persuades the Roman Senate to give him command of a fleet to defend Britain from barbarian attack. Once given the fleet, however, he sails around Britain stirring up unrest and raises an army against Bassianus ,

7194-428: The historical Caracalla, here a king of Britain. Carausius defeats Bassianus by persuading his Pictish allies to desert him in exchange for grants of land in Scotland and sets himself up as king. Hearing of Carausius's treachery, the Romans send Allectus to Britain with three legions. Allectus defeats Carausius, kills him, and sets himself up as king in his place. Hector Boece later built on this to make "Carantius"

7303-414: The independent British Library . The museum nevertheless preserves its universality in its collections of artefacts representing the cultures of the world, ancient and modern. The original 1753 collection has grown to over 13 million objects at the British Museum, 70 million at the Natural History Museum and 150 million at the British Library. The Round Reading Room , which was designed by

7412-422: The largest parts of collection were the library, which took up the majority of the rooms on the ground floor of Montagu House, and the natural history objects, which took up an entire wing on the second state storey of the building. In 1763, the trustees of the British Museum, under the influence of Peter Collinson and William Watson , employed the former student of Carl Linnaeus , Daniel Solander , to reclassify

7521-427: The legend Expectate veni , "Come long-awaited one", recognised to allude to a messianic line in the Aeneid by the Augustan poet Virgil , written more than 300 years previously. Some of the silver coins bear the legend RSR in the exergue (an area on a coin below the legend). This was considered a mystery for some time. Three Carausian copper-alloy medallions, now in the British Museum , have also survived. One has

7630-450: The library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport . Like all UK national museums, it charges no admission fee except for loan exhibitions. Although today principally a museum of cultural art objects and antiquities ,

7739-415: The listing for Belgian Gaul, but probably therefore lived in the part of the delta south of the Batavi, northeast of the Menapii. In one inscription, from Bulla Regia , the Tungri , Batavians and Frisiavones are grouped together, apparently confirming that the Frisiavones lived inland. It is suggested that the Marsaci and the Sturii could be " pagi " belonging to the civitas of either the Frisiavones or

7848-625: The market in the twentieth century and reached the British Museum in 1972, 1967 (this one was first shown to the Museum in 1931) and 1997 respectively. All bear evidence of chemical corrosion resulting from burial of some sort as can be seen from their present appearance. Since 1998 these letters have been recognised as representing the sixth and seventh lines of the Fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which reads Redeunt Saturnia Regna, Iam Nova Progenies Caelo Demittitur Alto , meaning "The Golden Ages are back, now

7957-556: The medals or a Virgilian expansion of the RSR coins known to him), or include discussion of the literary evidence of the contemporary panegyrics or any of the scholarly publications concerning them, or explain why the medallions appear on the basis of their present appearance to have been buried and why they were unknown until 1931 when the INPCDA one was first brought to the British Museum. A milestone from Carlisle with his name on it suggests that

8066-438: The mid-19th century, the museum's collections were relatively circumscribed but, in 1851, with the appointment to the staff of Augustus Wollaston Franks to curate the collections, the museum began for the first time to collect British and European medieval antiquities, prehistory , branching out into Asia and diversifying its holdings of ethnography . A real coup for the museum was the purchase in 1867, over French objections, of

8175-575: The museum became a construction site. The King's Library , on the ground floor of the East Wing, was handed over in 1827, and was described as one of the finest rooms in London. Although it was not fully open to the general public until 1857, special openings were arranged during The Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1840, the museum became involved in its first overseas excavations , Charles Fellows 's expedition to Xanthos , in Asia Minor , whence came remains of

8284-532: The museum in 2000. The museum again readjusted its collecting policies as interest in "modern" objects: prints, drawings, medals and the decorative arts reawakened. Ethnographical fieldwork was carried out in places as diverse as New Guinea , Madagascar , Romania , Guatemala and Indonesia and there were excavations in the Near East , Egypt, Sudan and the UK. The Weston Gallery of Roman Britain, opened in 1997, displayed

8393-664: The museum received 5,820,860 visitors, an increase of 42% from 2022. It was the most popular attraction in the United Kingdom according to the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA). At its beginning, the museum was largely based on the collections of the Anglo-Irish physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane . It opened to the public in 1759, in Montagu House , on the site of the current building. The museum's expansion over

8502-454: The museum trustees a loan of £200,000 to purchase from the Duke of Bedford all 69 houses which backed onto the museum building in the five surrounding streets – Great Russell Street, Montague Street, Montague Place, Bedford Square and Bloomsbury Street. The trustees planned to demolish these houses and to build around the west, north and east sides of the museum new galleries that would completely fill

8611-681: The museum's architect by his brother Sydney Smirke , whose major addition was the Round Reading Room 1854–1857; at 140 feet (43 m) in diameter it was then the second widest dome in the world, the Pantheon in Rome being slightly wider. The next major addition was the White Wing 1882–1884 added behind the eastern end of the South Front, the architect being Sir John Taylor . In 1895, Parliament gave

8720-651: The museum, dated 31 January 1784, refers to the Hamilton bequest of a "Colossal Foot of an Apollo in Marble". It was one of two antiquities of Hamilton's collection drawn for him by Francesco Progenie, a pupil of Pietro Fabris , who also contributed a number of drawings of Mount Vesuvius sent by Hamilton to the Royal Society in London. In the early 19th century the foundations for the extensive collection of sculpture began to be laid and Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts dominated

8829-655: The museum, was criticised for having a lack of exhibition space at a time when the museum was in serious financial difficulties and many galleries were closed to the public. At the same time the African collections that had been temporarily housed in 6 Burlington Gardens were given a new gallery in the North Wing funded by the Sainsbury family – with the donation valued at £25 million. The museum's online database had nearly 4,500,000 individual object entries in 2,000,000 records at

8938-457: The nation, for a sum of £20,000. At that time, Sloane's collection consisted of around 71,000 objects of all kinds including some 40,000 printed books, 7,000 manuscripts, extensive natural history specimens including 337 volumes of dried plants, prints and drawings including those by Albrecht Dürer and antiquities from Sudan , Egypt , Greece , Rome , the Ancient Near and Far East and

9047-465: The natural history collection according to the Linnaean system , thereby making the museum a public centre of learning accessible to the full range of European natural historians. In 1823, King George IV gave the King's Library assembled by George III, and Parliament gave the right to a copy of every book published in the country, thereby ensuring that the museum's library would expand indefinitely. During

9156-464: The proposed Picture Gallery was no longer needed, and the space on the upper floor was given over to the Natural history collections. The first Synopsis of the British Museum was published in 1808. This described the contents of the museum, and the display of objects room by room, and updated editions were published every few years. As Sir Robert Smirke 's grand neo-classical building gradually arose,

9265-477: The public and aiming to collect everything. Sloane's collection, while including a vast miscellany of objects, tended to reflect his scientific interests. The addition of the Cotton and Harley manuscripts introduced a literary and antiquarian element, and meant that the British Museum now became both National Museum and library. The body of trustees decided on a converted 17th-century mansion, Montagu House , as

9374-511: The reception of the Royal Library , and a Picture Gallery over it ..." and put forward plans for today's quadrangular building, much of which can be seen today. The dilapidated Old Montagu House was demolished and work on the King's Library Gallery began in 1823. The extension, the East Wing, was completed by 1831. However, following the founding of the National Gallery , London in 1824,

9483-443: The reverse legend VICTOR CARAVSIUS AVG GERM MAX with RSR in the exergue; the second has the reverse legend VICTOR CARAVSI AVG ('The Victory of Carausius Augustus') with INPCDA in the exergue; and the third is too damaged for an exergue legend to be visible but bears the reverse legend PACATOR ORBIS 'Peace-bringer to the world'. The medallions depict Carausius in consular garb and are around 34-35 mm, weighing ~22 g. The medals appeared on

9592-442: The revolt led by Ambiorix in 54 BC. Caesar says that they, alone of all the tribes of Gaul, had never sent ambassadors to him to discuss terms of peace, and had ties of hospitality with Ambiorix. For that reason he decided to lead five legions against them. A renewed campaign of devastation finally forced them to submit, and Caesar placed his ally Commius of the Atrebates in control of them. A cohort of Menapian auxiliaries

9701-633: The river deltas of the Southern Netherlands . To the north and east of the Menapii lay the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta . In the time of Caesar, the Menapii had settlements throughout this region and as far as the Rhine in present-day Germany, or at least its branch, the Waal. During Roman times these islands were under the frontier province of Germania Inferior , and inhabited partly by various groups of people who had moved there under Roman rule. Pliny

9810-697: The separation of the British Library). A board of 25 trustees (with the director as their accounting officer for the purposes of reporting to Government) is responsible for the general management and control of the museum, in accordance with the British Museum Act 1963 and the Museums and Galleries Act 1992 . Prior to the 1963 Act, it was chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury , the Lord Chancellor and

9919-403: The south is also found in the neighbouring Belgian tribal states, of the Nervii and Tungri . The positions of such Roman tribal capitals frequently didn't correspond to the centre of a tribe's territory in pre-Roman political geography. Similarly, in those neighbouring regions, the centre of Roman civilization was typically moved further south, and on to a major river, in late Roman times, after

10028-528: The start of 2023. In 2022–23 there were 27 million visits to the website. This compares with 19.5 millions website visits in 2013. There were 5,820,860 visits to the museum in 2023, a 42% increase on 2022. The museum was the most visited tourist attraction in Britain in 2023. The number of visits, however, has not recovered to the level reached before the Covid pandemic. A number of films have been shot at

10137-516: The stone was reused; the traces remaining suggest it included (translated) "... the Emperor ...". It has also been suggested that Carausius may have been responsible for the series of fortifications on both sides of the English Channel known as the Saxon Shore . This situation continued until 293, when Constantius Chlorus (Constantius I), now the western Caesar, marched into Gaul and reclaimed it for

10246-546: The three legions stationed in Britain, but also a legion he had seized in Gaul, a number of foreign auxiliary units, a levy of Gaulish merchant ships, and barbarian mercenaries attracted by the prospect of booty. British historian and archaeologist Sheppard Frere wonders how Carausius was able to win support from the army when his command had been sea-based, and speculates that he had perhaps been involved in an unrecorded victory in Britain, connected with Diocletian 's assumption of

10355-611: The title Britannicus Maximus in 285, and signs of destruction in Romano-British towns at this time. The campaign against the Bagaudae , however, was evidently land-based and may have been responsible for Carausius's popularity with the army. Equally, if the accusations of larceny are true, he could perhaps have afforded to buy their loyalty. Maximian prepared an invasion of Britain in 288 or 289 to oust him, but it failed. A panegyric delivered to Constantius Chlorus attributes this failure to bad weather, but notes that Carausius claimed

10464-556: The tombs of the rulers of ancient Lycia , among them the Nereid and Payava monuments. In 1857, Charles Newton was to discover the 4th-century BC Mausoleum of Halikarnassos , one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World . In the 1840s and 1850s the museum supported excavations in Assyria by A.H. Layard and others at sites such as Nimrud and Nineveh . Of particular interest to curators

10573-501: The view that with the likelihood of far worse air-raids than that experienced in World War I that the museum had to make preparations to remove its most valuable items to secure locations. Following the Munich crisis Forsdyke ordered 3,300 No-Nail Boxes and stored them in the basement of Duveen Gallery. At the same time he began identifying and securing suitable locations. As a result, the museum

10682-602: The while, the collections kept growing. Emil Torday collected in Central Africa, Aurel Stein in Central Asia, D. G. Hogarth , Leonard Woolley and T. E. Lawrence excavated at Carchemish . Around this time, the American collector and philanthropist J. Pierpont Morgan donated a substantial number of objects to the museum, including William Greenwell 's collection of prehistoric artefacts from across Europe which he had purchased for £10,000 in 1908. Morgan had also acquired

10791-726: The whole of Roman Britain was in Carausius's grasp. The inscription reads (with expansions in square brackets) "IMP[eratori] C[aesari] M[arco] | AVR[elio] MAVS[aeo] | CARAVSIO P[io] F[elici] | INVICTO AVG[usto]", this translates as "For the Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius Pius Felix Invictus Augustus". The title indicates he considered himself equal to the Tetrarchy 's senior emperors ( Augusti ), rather than their subordinate junior emperors ( Caesares ). The milestone

10900-623: Was a room originally intended for manuscripts, between the Front Entrance Hall and the Manuscript Saloon. The books remained here until the British Library moved to St Pancras in 1998. The opening of the forecourt in 1852 marked the completion of Robert Smirke 's 1823 plan, but already adjustments were having to be made to cope with the unforeseen growth of the collections. Infill galleries were constructed for Assyrian sculptures and Sydney Smirke 's Round Reading Room , with space for

11009-511: Was able to quickly commence relocating selected items on 24 August 1939, (a mere day after the Home Secretary advised them to do so), to secure basements, country houses , Aldwych Underground station and the National Library of Wales . Many items were relocated in early 1942 from their initial dispersal locations to a newly developed facility at Westwood Quarry in Wiltshire . The evacuation

11118-416: Was apparent that it would be unable to cope with further expansion. The museum's first notable addition towards its collection of antiquities, since its foundation, was by Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803), British Ambassador to Naples , who sold his collection of Greek and Roman artefacts to the museum in 1784 together with a number of other antiquities and natural history specimens. A list of donations to

11227-675: Was bequeathed to the museum in 1881. In 1882, the museum was involved in the establishment of the independent Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) the first British body to carry out research in Egypt. A bequest from Miss Emma Turner in 1892 financed excavations in Cyprus. In 1897 the death of the great collector and curator, A. W. Franks , was followed by an immense bequest of 3,300 finger rings , 153 drinking vessels, 512 pieces of continental porcelain, 1,500 netsuke , 850 inro , over 30,000 bookplates and miscellaneous items of jewellery and plate, among them

11336-427: Was defeated and killed by Constantius's subordinate Julius Asclepiodotus . In April 2010 a large hoard of over 52,500 Roman coins was unearthed in a field near Frome , Somerset . 766 of these coins were determined to have been produced during Carausius's reign, of which only 5 were silver denarii . This find roughly equates to four years' pay for a Roman legionary, but the presence of later coin issues implies that

11445-617: Was in the tradition of a Schatzkammer such as those formed by the Renaissance princes of Europe. Baron Ferdinand's will was most specific, and failure to observe the terms would make it void, the collection should be placed in a special room to be called the Waddesdon Bequest Room separate and apart from the other contents of the Museum and thenceforth for ever thereafter, keep the same in such room or in some other room to be substituted for it. These terms are still observed, and

11554-425: Was reused in about 306, burying the first inscription and adding a new one at the other end, which translates as "For Flavius Valerius Constantinus, most noble Caesar" and refers to Marcus Flavius Valerius Constantius Herculius Augustus (Constantius I). Some more text on the stone, probably a continuation of the Carausius inscription after a gap because it is orientated the same way, was chiselled away, presumably when

11663-509: Was set up in May 1920 and became a permanent department in 1931. It is today the oldest in continuous existence. In 1923, the British Museum welcomed over one million visitors. New mezzanine floors were constructed and book stacks rebuilt in an attempt to cope with the flood of books. In 1931, the art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen offered funds to build a gallery for the Parthenon sculptures . Designed by

11772-473: Was the eventual discovery of Ashurbanipal 's great library of cuneiform tablets , which helped to make the museum a focus for Assyrian studies . Sir Thomas Grenville (1755–1846), a trustee of the British Museum from 1830, assembled a library of 20,240 volumes, which he left to the museum in his will. The books arrived in January 1847 in twenty-one horse-drawn vans. The only vacant space for this large library

11881-572: Was timely, for in 1940 the Duveen Gallery was severely damaged by bombing. Meanwhile, prior to the war, the Nazis had sent a researcher to the British Museum for several years with the aim of "compiling an anti-Semitic history of Anglo-Jewry". After the war, the museum continued to collect from all countries and all centuries: among the most spectacular additions were the 2600 BC Mesopotamian treasure from Ur , discovered during Leonard Woolley 's 1922–34 excavations. Gold, silver and garnet grave goods from

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