Talk:British Museum

Deprecated maps

@Murgatroyd49 Hi, pushpin maps lack a lot of metadata, additionally they are not zoomable. For other museums like Louvre Museum, this method is applied correctly. You should compare it with other museums, not with map used for other London venues. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 19:17, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

It's a London venue, other London museums have pushpin maps. To change it, it would be advisable to seek concensus from other editors involved. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 19:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

A non-encyclopedic approach and information without evidence

For the second time, you're backtracking on my edit. What I don't understand is what you mean by "sources"? Where am I supposed to put those sources? Should I put sources about the Grand Egyptian Museum in the British Museum article to prove that it doesn't have the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities? That's illogical. There's a whole article about the Grand Egyptian Museum with all the sources; go and check it out. The British Museum doesn't have the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities, nor does it have the "most diverse" and valuable collection as it claims in the article. Besides that misinformation, this is also an unencyclopedic tone in writing. You should stop backtracking on my version. are we good? Murgatroyd Egyptiankeng (talk) 15:05, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Read WP:Referencing for beginners. No you are not good. You have been asked a number of times to provide sources for your claims, you haven't bothered. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 15:14, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Are you done? I read this a long time ago. What do you want now? Should I put the sources here or in the summary of the edits? I didn't understand and didn't benefit at all from what you said. Egyptiankeng (talk) 15:29, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

If you don't understand the basics perhaps you shouldn't be attempting to edit Wikipedia articles. Have you read the help guide I linked to? Murgatroyd49 (talk) 15:33, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Dear, would you please be brief and answer my question? I don't have time for this discussion for the rest of the day. Egyptiankeng (talk) 15:41, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

What question? all you have done is bluster. I have supplied a link to the help guide. Read it and you should understand how to go about things. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 15:57, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

We're not in kindergarten here. I know Wikipedia's rules very well; I know how to add sources. What I don't understand is, when I remove incorrect information, where do I put the source? Do you mean putting a source within the article saying that the British Museum doesn't have the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities, or do you mean clarifying it in the edits page? Your statement is vague and completely incomprehensible. Egyptiankeng (talk) 16:05, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

When challenged, link the sources here on the talk page and quote if you’re feeling generous. See WP:BRD Kowal2701 (talk) 16:12, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Neither of the two primary sources of the paragraph say anything about it being the "largest outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo", as far as I can tell. Hypnôs (talk) 12:10, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

No, neither source supports this and per WP:BURDEN it is the responsibility of those who want to include a disputed fact to provide a reliable source for it, not those challenging it to prove that it is not true. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 12:14, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

The latest source I can find is Egypt's Grand Museum opens, displaying Tutankhamun tomb in full for first time which claims the GEM has 100,000 objects. Presumably taken from the appropriate press release. I was trying to add the reference inside the relevant note but nesting refs doesn't seem possible. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 10:41, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

We shouldn't claim "largest" based only on the counts we find for individual museums - that's WP:OR - so I've removed it and prefaced the footnote with "For comparison", though I could see a case for simply removing it. I've trimmed some other unsourced puffery from "A collection of immense importance for its range and quality, it includes objects of all periods from virtually every site of importance", and I see other sections making similar unsourced claims, e.g. "one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world" sourced only to the BM's own "one of the most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world, with over 100,000 objects", and "the world's largest and most important collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. A collection of immense importance, the holdings of Assyrian sculpture, Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities are among the most comprehensive in the world", unsourced.

I've changed the long note from <ref> to {{efn}} syntax, which I think may allow easier nesting. NebY (talk) 11:18, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

As none of the claims in the note are supported by cites, I'd go for removing it completely. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 11:46, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree. I'll do that now, but I'm happy to discuss here if anyone finds it a valuable note that doesn't breach WP:OR (esp. WP>SYNTH]]). NebY (talk) 12:18, 11 November 2025 (UTC)

Grand claims

The sections on the departments make grand claims, which perhaps could each be tagged as {{citation needed}} but taken together seem so consistently promotional, they should simply be removed. Should we tag them and wait? Here are some:

Department of Egypt

Department of Greece and Rome: "one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world" citing the BM's own website in 2019 "has one of the most comprehensive collections of antiquities from the Classical world", which the current website doesn't say.

Department of the Middle East: "the world's largest and most important collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. A collection of immense importance, the holdings of Assyrian sculpture, Babylonian and Sumerian antiquities are among the most comprehensive in the world", with no source.

Department of Prints and Drawings: "one of the largest and best print room collections in existence ... grown to international renown as one of the richest and most representative collections in the world", unsourced.

Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory, second paragraph: "among the largest and most comprehensive in the world ... the undoubted highlight from the early mediaeval period is the magnificent items ... one of the most wide-ranging assemblage of clocks, watches and other timepieces in Europe, with masterpieces from every period in the development of time-keeping", unsourced.

Department of Asia: comparatively humble, though the descriptions do include "particularly valuable", "unique and valuable", "comprehensive".

Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas: "one of the world's most comprehensive collections", unsourced. Of the Afica section, "the greatest permanent collection of African arts and culture in the world", unsourced. Of the Oceania section, "The Māori collection is the finest outside New Zealand". Unsourced.

Department of Money and Medals: "one of the world's finest numismatic collections", unsourced.

A lot of this content is very longstanding, including some from 2007 and 2011. NebY (talk) 16:17, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

References would be nice, but the claims seem perfectly reasonable to me, and it is important for the reader not to undersell the subject. Wikipuritanism often leads to the reader being misled in this way. Where else do you think there would be a better Māori collection outside New Zealand? The museum gets an awful lot of stick for its supposed looting of other countries stuff, so it might as well state the positive side of that. I'd oppose wholesale removal. Johnbod (talk) 17:28, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

The history section is remarkably poorly sourced, and whitewashes the history to an extent by ignoring where the artefacts actually came from and how, like the museum filled up by magic. Kowal2701 (talk) 17:59, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Aaah, the usual narrative today. An improved section would undermine this meme in most cases. The vast majority of artefacts were bought, or gifted by collectors and archaeologists. Foolishly, the museum isn't (or wasn't) at all good in releasing the statistics that would demonstrate this. I suppose you are mainly interested in the sub-Saharan African collections, which rightly or wrongly are a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole. Johnbod (talk) 18:06, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

That'd be fine, so long as it was informative. I'd expect the history section to refer to imperial history, as the growth of the collection mirrored expansion to a degree. Atm it doesn't even mention Africa or India. Obv POV, but see British Museum, Imperialism and Empire in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (2021) Kowal2701 (talk) 18:34, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

The article rightly makes no "grand claims" for the Indian collections, which are remarkably small, as the Archaeological Survey of India (est 1861) and British administrators interested in such things kept all the good stuff for the enormous museums they founded in India, just sending token pieces to England. Thanks to ruthless acquisition of smuggled items by American collectors and dealers since independence, several American museums (LA, NY etc etc) can claim to have bigger and better Indian collections than the BM (which is also rivalled by the V&A). Johnbod (talk) 18:42, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

The article rightly makes no "grand claims" for the Indian collections – I would say that The most comprehensive collection of sculpture from the Indian subcontinent in the world (inevitably not supported by the subsequent citation) is a fairly grand claim.

The article just makes so many unsupported claims about the superlativity of the BM's collections that regardless of how true many of them are, this begins to look like some marketing person's promotional efforts. If the collections really are that important – and I don't doubt that in many cases they are – it shouldn't be difficult to find sources saying so! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 12:20, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that quote should probably go, the National Museum of India in New Delhi must be more comprehensive, and just better, though I think it is about to close for no doubt several years as they rebuild. The other Indian museums concentrate on stuff from their regions, with good samples from other areas. Actually, such claims are very hard to source from quality independent sources from scratch, though one often happens upon them. Johnbod (talk) 18:24, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

A hell of a lot of peacock words there, certainly needs copyediting (wouldn't waste time with CNs), can request at WP:GOCE if you don't fancy it Kowal2701 (talk) 17:51, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

That rarely brings improvements in my experience. They would probably all just be knocked out wholesale, leaving the less well-informed reader unaware that the BM is extremely large, with collections of superlative range and depth in many areas. Johnbod (talk) 18:01, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Idk, I think we can still communicate that with the "just the facts" approach. I'm struggling to find sources, can't find a decent overview in any academic encyclopedias. Kowal2701 (talk) 18:26, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

• A far bigger problem imo is that all the links to the BM site predate the last of their all-too-regular revamps, and just take you to a main page. Some have archive links that work, but on my sample many don't. These need to be renewed, with quotes, or better yet a book used. Not the sort of thing most GOCE editors will touch. Johnbod (talk) 18:19, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

  Oh, there are lots of problems! It's a big article, after all, and made longer in simple scrolling terms by all those lists (unlike e.g. Louvre, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and some examples given in Wikipedia:WikiProject Museums/Guideline#Interior and contents). But the unsourced repetition of grand claims wears particularly fast. NebY (talk) 18:46, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

  all those lists The lists strike me as extremely excessive. Just to take the ancient Greek collections as one of those I know most about and am most interested in: is e.g. the hoard of tools from Naxos really an important enough highlight to mention in the main article on the museum? In a broad article like this, it's surely best to talk about the really famous objects that normal people visit the museum to see, rather than overwhelm with detail about relatively obscure things. For Greece things like: the Parthenon Marbles, Bassae Frieze, Lion of Knidos, Townley Collection. For Egypt the Rosetta Stone. Elsewhere maybe the Benin Bronzes, Sutton Hoo helmet, Lewis chessmen. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 12:35, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

  I get the impression various editors just have to add their particular favourites. A similar problem applies to images in art gallery articles! Murgatroyd49 (talk) 12:54, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

  A reasonable guess, but Who Wrote That indicates that a large number of the list items were added by the same editor. NebY (talk) 17:55, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

@Jononmac46:, would you like to join this discussion? NebY (talk) 18:02, 17 November 2025 (UTC)