The world's oldest national public museum the British Museum
will display part of its collection in China for the first time
this month.
Exhibits covering a vast range of time from two million years
ago to the present can be viewed at Capital Museum of Beijing from
March 18.
A total of 272 priceless articles, collected from the world's
five continents by the museum since it was founded in 1753, will be
on show at a 1,400 square-meter exhibition hall in the newly-built
museum until June 5, said Director of the museum Guo Xiaoling.
"Each of the 272 items is a masterpiece from the British
Museum's vast collections and together they demonstrate the long
history of human civilization worldwide," said Guo.
Including sculptures, paintings, jewelry, porcelain, and stone
artefacts, the treasures on show are divided into 13 parts based on
their origins and dates, such as ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome,
Europe in the Middle Ages, and modern art.
Several renowned items will be on display at the coming
exhibition "Treasures of the World's Cultures the British Museum
after 250 years."
"The exhibition will include the Rosetta Stone from Egypt, which
is a slab dating back to around 200 BC.
"With a text written in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek, it
enabled the crucial breakthrough in deciphering Egyptian writing,"
Guo said
"And a stone chopping tool from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, which
is the oldest object in the British Museum, will also travel to
China and join the exhibition," said Guo with excitement.
"The item was made nearly two million years ago and is so far
the first known technological invention by human beings."
World-famous sculptures from ancient Greece and Rome, and
paintings from Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello Sanzio and Rembrandt
Van Rijn, will also be on display, Guo added.
"This is the first cooperation between our museum and the
British Museum, and I hope we will have more exchanges in the
future," Guo said.
(China Daily March 3, 2006)
