Британский музей Лондона

4.2 Department of Antiquities of Western Asia

This is a collection of works of ancient civilizations of the Middle East: Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, the Hittite kingdom, Assyria, Urartu, Syria, Palestine, Phenicia, South Arabia, Ancient Iran from 6-5 thousand BC. up to 7th century The English archaeologist Austin Henry Layard (1817–1894) found the Northwestern Palace of Ashurnasirpal at Nimrud, built in 883–879 BC. and decorated with reliefs and sculpture. Shedu , giant bulls with eagle wings and human heads, stood in pairs in front of the entrance to the palace and were called upon to protect the sacred person of the king.

The highest achievement of Assyrian art was monumental relief, which flourished in the 9th–7th centuries. BC. Stone panels decorated the interiors of the palaces of the Assyrian kings. The subjects were scenes of numerous battles and campaigns, bloody battles: Siege of the city, Attack of the chariots , Fugitives crossing the river - reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II in Nimrud (883–859 BC). Ritual scenes in honor of the gods: Winged deity with an eagle head , Winged deity , Ritual scene – reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud (883–859 BC). Monumental scenes of hunting, the favorite pastime of the Assyrian rulers: A king on a chariot killing lions with arrows , a wounded lioness , a dead lion , a hunt for wild donkeys , a lion emerging from a cage - reliefs from the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh (669–635 BC). There are about 250 reliefs in total.
The Department of Antiquities has the world's largest collection of clay tablets with cuneiform texts, covering all aspects of life in Mesopotamia 3-1 thousand BC. (more than 150 thousand). The pride of the museum is the world famous Nineveh library of King Ashurbanipal (7th century BC) – 20 thousand tablets of various contents.

4.3 Art of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome

Presented in the museum is a collection ranging from monuments of the Aegean world (3-2 thousand BC) and ending with works created at the end of the Roman Empire. The collection of Greek-Roman antiquities occupies room 12. It included the so-called. "Phigalion marbles" (from the Temple of Apollo in Phigalia), "Elgin marbles" (mainly from the Athenian Parthenon; these masterpieces of Greek art were taken from Greece by the English ambassador in Constantinople, Lord Elgin, and sold by him to the Museum in 1816), "Xanthian", or "Lycian marbles" (works of Lycian sculpture, which were donated to the Museum by Charles Fellowes in 1845), found by Charles Newton on the ruins of an ancient mausoleum in Halicarnassus: "Halicarnassian marbles"; further, it is necessary to note the remains of the famous temple of Diana in Ephesus, which in 1869-71. found one of the officials of the Wood Museum, and a collection of classical antiquities from the time of the Roman emperors, which was mainly composed of a collection purchased in 1806 from the heirs of the famous collector Tonley. In 1864, part of the antiquities located in the Farnese Palazzo in Rome and belonging to the former king of Naples was purchased.

Greek archaic (7th–6th centuries BC) is represented by monumental Sculptures from sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma , Apollo of Strangford , reliefs from the parapet of the Harpy Monument - tomb from Xanthus (c. 480 BC).
The art of Greek classics (5th–4th centuries BC) is especially fully exhibited. In 1801, the British ambassador to Turkey, Lord James Bruce Elgin (1811–1863), brought to London the famous sculptural decorations of the Parthenon , created by Phidias (c. 490 BC–431 BC) in 447–432 BC . Now the museum houses 15 metopes (square panels placed on the outside of the building), 17 badly damaged statues from the pediments and 75.3 m of frieze tape that ran along the inner perimeter of the temple: the Battle of the Lapiths with the centaurs (metopes), the Panathenaic procession (frieze) . One of the Caryatids of the southern portico of the Erechtheion (421–406 BC), called the portico of the Caryatids, is on display.
Extensive collection of ceramics from Ancient Greece: Black-figure amphora Exekia (c. 525 BC), Red-figure plate of Epictetus (525–520 BC), Panathenaic amphora (late 5th century BC), Athenian red-figure krater , painted by the "Berlin Master" ( ca. 490 BC).
Among the works of late classics, architectural fragments and sculptural decorations of one of the seven wonders of the world - the tomb of King Mausolus in Halicarnassus, called "Mausoleum" - stand out. Frieze slabs, architectural fragments, statues have been preserved: Statue of Mausolus (c. 350 BC), Battle of the Greeks with Amazons (slabs of the eastern frieze of the Mausoleum) (c. 350 BC), made by the sculptor Scopas (380–330 BC).
Among the works of art of Ancient Rome, the museum contains sculptural portraits of Roman emperors: Head of Emperor Augustus (early 1st century), Bust of Emperor Hadrian (117–138). On display: a wall painting from the Villa Boscoreale near Pompeii (c. 30 BC) and a mosaic floor (1st century BC) of a Roman house from Pompeii or Herculaneum.
Decorative and applied arts and jewelry art of the ancient world, gems, glass vessels, terracotta figurines are exhibited. Among the masterpieces is the Portland Vase made of double-layered opaque glass (c. 25). The complex technique of glass carving is reminiscent of how jewelers work on cameos.