The British Museum · LondonGreat Russell St, WC1B 3DGGuided in Korean
Bible Museum StoriesReading the Bible through its objects, reading history through its civilisations.
The Ur of Genesis, the Egypt of the Exodus, the Assyria of Kings,
the Persia of Ezra. The peoples and kings and empires you have read
about in the Bible have left their traces in the objects the British
Museum holds today.
Frontis.The Great CourtTHE GREAT COURT · where the tour begins
Understanding the Bible through history and civilisation, and looking again at history and civilisation through the Bible.
Walking through the Museum, travelling together through the world of the Bible and the larger story of history.
01Foreword
Where this tour stands
“The Bible is not something we read only as a book — through real objects it can be understood far more vividly.”
Grace, guide · in London since 2001
Pl. 1The Lachish ReliefLACHISH RELIEF · Sennacherib’s conquest of LachishPhoto: Mike Peel / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Bible Museum Stories follows real objects and ancient records to look
at the times and cultures in which the events of the Bible unfolded,
and to consider how the Bible itself reads that flow of history.
Why did the empires that once ruled the world rise, and why did they vanish?
How was Israel shaped by the great civilisations and religions around it?
How did the world of the Old Testament pass through Hellenism and Rome into the age of the New?
Every object in the Museum carries a story — the lives and beliefs of
the people who lived in that age, their wars and their choices, the rise
and fall of empires. Following those traces alongside the biblical record,
events that had seemed unconnected begin to join into one larger history.
The Bible does not read history merely as the rise and fall of kings and
empires. Even where the world appears to turn on human will alone, it
tells of how God’s word and purpose run on and are fulfilled within
that history.
This tour does not set out to ‘prove’ the Bible. Working from
real objects and historical records, it is a storytelling tour: one that
comes to understand the age in which the Bible was written, and finds a
single larger story at the points where history and the Bible meet.
For those who have read the Bible for years, familiar stories can
look new again; for those to whom it is unfamiliar, it can be an
absorbing way to meet the world of the Bible by following ancient
history and civilisation.
02Tours
From the Bible to civilisation, five paths
Tours are currently run mostly as private tours, for your own party alone, and the format can change with the character of the group.
The depth and content of the commentary are adjusted to the ages, interests and prior familiarity with the Bible of those taking part.
All five are currently guided in Korean — English-language tours are being prepared, and enquiries in English are welcome.
Pl. 2The Enlightenment GalleryENLIGHTENMENT GALLERY · the room the Museum began inPhoto: Dale Cruse / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
01
Bible Old Testament Tour
바이블 구약 투어about 2 hours
Following the main historical current of the Old Testament through Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia — the civilisations and objects the Bible names. The historical setting in which its people and events unfolded, understood through the objects themselves.
02
Bible Old & New Testament Tour
바이블 신·구약 전체 투어about 3 hours
A fuller tour following the Bible’s larger arc from the Old Testament into the New, across the ancient Near East, the Hellenistic world and Rome. Rather than treating the two Testaments separately, it connects the historical change that lies between them.
03
Bible Artefact Highlights
성경 유물 하이라이츠about 2 hours
A highlights tour for those with less time who still want to see the central biblical objects. The world of the Bible in concentrated form, around the pieces that stand for each age and civilisation.
04
Easy Bible Artefact Stories
쉬운 성경 유물 이야기about 2 hours
An introductory tour for anyone not yet at home with the Bible or with ancient history. Rather than theological vocabulary and complicated chronology, it works through the stories of people and kings, cities and empires.
05
British Museum History & Civilisations Tour
대영박물관 역사·문명 투어about 3 hours
A broader tour of the Museum’s principal civilisations and histories, not confined to the Bible. From the ancient world to the history of Britain, connecting the collection’s defining stories.
Special Event · Open Tour
Open Tour · Objects of the Bible
성경 유물 오픈 투어
Once a monthGuided in Korean
An open programme anyone interested in the Bible or in Christianity can join
without a party of their own. It meets the British Museum’s principal
biblical objects and their stories in an easy, absorbing way.
It runs separately from the regular tours and is currently guided in Korean.
For dates and details, please send an enquiry.
03Collection
Walk through the Museum, journey through the biblical world
박물관을 걸으며, 성경의 세계를 여행합니다
Following the Museum’s own objects through Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia,
Persia, Greece and Rome, and meeting the ages and civilisations in which the
Bible was written. A storytelling tour, in which the objects, the history and
the biblical account run as one current.
Pl. 3The PedimentPEDIMENT · the ideal world civilisation drew for itselfPhoto: APK / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0
The larger story opens at the front of the Museum and its pediment. Looking at the road human civilisation has travelled, and at the ideal world it drew for itself there, we set that beside what Isaiah means by ‘a new heaven and a new earth’. In the Waddesdon Gallery we meet a reliquary connected with the crown of thorns, and in the Enlightenment Gallery we look at the age the Museum was born into, and at how it began.
The pediment and colonnade · the Holy Thorn Reliquary · the Enlightenment Gallery
Pl. 6Ramesses IIRAMESSES II · one pole of the dating of the ExodusPhoto: Rept0n1x / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
Egypt was one of the defining civilisations of the ancient world, with its many gods of nature and its kingship made divine. From the time of Joseph, through Israel’s life in Egypt, to Moses and the Exodus, decisive stories unfold against this land. Looking at the power of pharaoh, at Egyptian religion, and at how people lived, we come to understand what the Exodus means: God bringing out a people of his own from a world crowded with gods.
The Rosetta Stone · statues of the pharaohs · Egyptian divine figures
Pl. 9The Black ObeliskBLACK OBELISK · Jehu bringing tributePhoto: Nate Loper / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
Until the excavations of the nineteenth century, Assyria and Nineveh were known largely through the Bible and a few classical accounts. When the palaces and reliefs, the royal inscriptions and the cuneiform records came out of the ground at Nimrud and Nineveh, the empire the Bible had named could be seen in what it wrote and made itself. The northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria, and Judah too knew invasion and threat; at the same time the Bible pronounces judgement on Assyrian pride and violence. It was a formidable military power, and a civilisation of high learning and art.
The Black Obelisk · the Lachish Relief · the lamassu
Pl. 11Parthenon SculpturesPARTHENON SCULPTURES · fifth century BC
Pl. 12Head of AlexanderPhoto: Jastrow / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain
After Alexander’s conquests the Greek language and Hellenistic culture spread widely, and at his death the empire divided among his successors. Read from the Bible’s side, that rise and division are set beside the prophecies of Daniel. Alongside it stood the Hebraic tradition, with its one God, its law and its weight on a devout life; the meeting and the tension of these two views of the world form the background to later Jewish society and to the New Testament era. With the Bible translated into Greek, the conditions were also forming in which the gospel would travel into a wider world.
The head of Alexander · coinage of the successor kingdoms · the Parthenon sculptures
Ⅴ · the gods, peoples and nations around Israel
The Mesopotamian world
메소포타미아 세계
The peoples and nations of Canaan and Mesopotamia each had their own gods and
religious culture. Israel was in constant contact with them, and the Bible returns
again and again to the pull of those neighbouring beliefs and their idolatry.
We take this world in five parts.
Pl. 14The Mesopotamia RoomROOM 56 · the civilisations around the biblical worldPhoto: Paul Hudson / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
Pl. 15BaalBAAL · the Canaanite god of storm and fertilityPhoto: Nate Loper / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0Ⅴ-1 · the neighbours of Israel
The Levant and Canaan
레반트 · 가나안
The Levant displays run across a very long stretch of time, from the Neolithic to the Neo-Babylonian period. Within it we follow the traces of the peoples and nations the Bible names again and again — Israel itself, and Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, and Tyre and Sidon of Phoenicia. With the Philistines in particular there was conflict and war over a long period.
The figure of Baal
Pl. 16The Standard of UrSTANDARD OF UR · about 2500 BCPhoto: Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.5Ⅴ-2 · the call of Abraham
Ur of the Chaldees and Sumer
갈대아 우르 · 수메르
Ur of the Chaldees and Harran are the setting in which Abraham’s story begins. God called him to leave his country, his kindred and his father’s house for a land he would be shown, and that journey runs on towards Canaan. Looking at the city civilisation and religion of ancient Mesopotamia, and at how people lived there, we come to understand the world Abraham left.
The Standard of Ur · the flood tablet · cuneiform writing
Pl. 17The Babylonian ChronicleBABYLONIAN CHRONICLE · the record of the fall of JerusalemPhoto: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Ⅴ-3 · empires change hands, Judah falls, the exile begins
Neo-Babylonia
신바빌로니아
After Assyria, mastery of the ancient Near East passed to the Neo-Babylonian empire. It attacked Judah, took Jerusalem, and carried many of its people into Babylon. Judah fell, and the history the Bible tells enters the exile. Through the tablets and the records we follow the fall of Judah and the deportations that came with it — and then the Neo-Babylonian empire itself falling to Persia, and another age beginning.
The clay records of Babylon · the Babylonian map of the world
Pl. 21TeshubTESHUB · the Hittite god of the stormPhoto: Szilas / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0Ⅴ-4 · the power that stood against Egypt
The Hittites
히타이트
By the thirteenth century BC the Hittites were a power strong enough to face Egypt. They fought Egypt at Kadesh in the time of Ramesses II and afterwards made a treaty with it — weight enough to matter in the politics of the ancient Near East. They appear in the Bible more than once, and we look at them not as a minor neighbouring people but as one of the great powers that made up the world of the biblical era.
The relief of the storm god Teshub, from Carchemish
Pl. 22The Cyrus CylinderCYRUS CYLINDER · the rule that allowed a returnPhoto: Joyofmuseums / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
The Persian empire, the setting of the book of Esther, was vast and held many peoples and cultures within it. Its policy allowed the traditions and religions of conquered peoples a comparatively wide place, and under Cyrus those who had been deported were encouraged to return home and restore their own worship and temples. The Cyrus Cylinder is an important witness to that way of ruling. Here begins the new age in which the Jewish exiles return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple.
The Cyrus Cylinder
Pl. 25The Hinton St Mary MosaicHINTON ST MARY · fourth-century Roman BritainPhoto: Nate Loper / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
Christianity reached Britain under Roman rule, and through the Anglo-Saxon centuries and the Middle Ages it settled gradually into the history and culture of this island. Through the objects we look briefly at that change — from Roman Britain into the medieval Christian world, and at how the faith took root here.
The Hinton St Mary mosaic · the Franks Casket
Pl. 27AugustusAUGUSTUS · emperor at the birth of JesusPhoto: Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.5
Pl. 29Coin of Herod the GreatPhoto: PHGCOM / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain
Ⅶ · the roads the gospel travelled
Rome and the New Testament
로마와 신약성경
When Jesus came, Judaea lay under the rule of Rome. Through the Herodian dynasty raised up on Roman power, through Pontius Pilate, and through the emperors and the coinage of the day, we look at the political world of his time. Following the tension around a Messiah who came as ‘king of the Jews’, the crucifixion, and then the early church and its persecution in the Roman world, we meet the background of the New Testament as it runs from the Gospels into Acts.
Busts of the emperors · coinage of the period
Plates have been cropped to the proportions of the page.
The photographer and the licence for each are given beneath it.
04For whom
You do not need faith in order to come
An interest in the ancient world is enough.
Anyone interested in the Bible
Come without background knowledge. The commentary starts from the objects rather than from difficult terms.
Anyone who loves ancient history
From Mesopotamia to Rome, the current of civilisation can be followed in order inside one building.
Curious about Christianity, without holding the faith
Belief is not assumed. The objects and the history come first, and with them the age in which the Bible was written.
Families
Best from about ten years old and up. Stretches that lose the children are passed over.
Church and mission groups
The route and the time spent at each point can be set to what the group cares about.
Travellers with only a short stay in London
Two or three morning hours to take in what matters most in the Museum, leaving the rest of the day to yourselves.
05Guide
Read to you from a layperson’s seat
Grace
GUIDE · at the British Museum
Trained in interior architecture in Korea, and living in London since 2001.
This tour reads the Bible and history from a layperson’s seat rather than a theologian’s, and sets out to keep it plain.
The commentary is kept up to date with the Museum’s new displays and with current research.
The more material and the more points of view are added, the more richly the same object can be seen.
The tour follows the questions and interests of the party rather than a fixed script,
so that the objects, the history and the biblical account run naturally into one another.
Pl. 30ExplainingEGYPTIAN SCULPTURE GALLERY · following the hieroglyphs
2001living in London since
KOtours guided in Korean
06Reviews
What those who came have written
Excerpts from reviews left on MyRealTrip by participants on our
Korean-language tours, translated here into English.
The Bible joined to real history, and to real objects
“Seeing the history the scriptures speak of together with the actual objects, and hearing it explained, felt like confirming with my own eyes that the stories of the Bible unfolded inside real history. It had depth and yet was never dull, and the time went without our noticing it.”
Participant on our Korean-language tour · MyRealTrip · excerpt, translated
Explanation that stayed with me
“Expert, and yet made easy to follow, so that I learned a great deal. It stayed with me afterwards — this is the first time I have gone back to look at photographs of museum objects after a trip. For me it was a rewarding journey that gave me much to reflect on in my faith.”
Participant on our Korean-language tour · MyRealTrip · excerpt, translated
A large family, a wide span of ages
“We were a party of nine, and the pace was set to the family so that not one of us was left behind. The history, the objects and the biblical material were explained expertly and yet simply, and all of us listened without noticing the time.”
Participant on our Korean-language tour · MyRealTrip · excerpt, translated
A memory made with my parents
“My mother’s health is not the best, and even so she says she listened without noticing the time. Hearing the history and the biblical story connected together made it easy to understand, and worth the while. When the family is next in London, this is a tour we would want to take again.”
Participant on our Korean-language tour · MyRealTrip · excerpt, translated
With children of school age
“We came with two boys, one in middle school and one in his last year of primary school, and even they listened right to the end. Explanation that tied the Bible to the historical objects was both useful and enjoyable. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the objects behind the Bible, or wanting a few worthwhile hours with their children.”
Participant on our Korean-language tour · MyRealTrip · excerpt, translated
Civilisations compared, with expertise and range
“Expert knowledge and real enthusiasm at once. The character of Ur and Sumer and Assyria, and of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilisations, and the differences between their views of the world, were all explained in a way that was easy to take in. Thoroughly worthwhile.”
Participant on our Korean-language tour · MyRealTrip · excerpt, translated
07Visiting
A tour begins with an enquiry, and is settled together
Send an enquiry and we will look at the size and ages of your party,
what interests you and the direction you would like the tour to take, and then
suggest the programme that fits. Once a booking is confirmed, the detailed
schedule and route for your group, and everything else you will need to know,
are sent to you separately.
Meeting point
Advised once your booking is confirmed
It varies with the route and the day, either inside the Museum or nearby. The exact place and time are sent separately once the booking is confirmed.
Length
About 2–3 hours, depending on the tour
There is a break part-way through.
Language
Korean
Tours are currently guided in Korean, and the depth of the commentary is set to the ages and prior knowledge of the party. English-language tours are being prepared — write in English and your enquiry will be answered.
How it is guided
iPad material · personal receivers
Maps, excavation photographs and passages to compare are looked at together, and you are given a receiver so the commentary stays clear in a crowded gallery.
What to bring
Wired earphones with a 3.5 mm jack
They plug into the receiver. If you do not have a pair, they can be bought on the day.
Getting about
On foot
All the walking is inside the Museum.
Museum admission
Free
There is no admission charge for the British Museum’s permanent collection.
After the tour
The Museum stays open
Stay on as long as you like.
Everything else
Sent with your booking confirmation
The detailed route, what to prepare and the arrangements for your tour are all set out when the booking is confirmed.
08Tour Enquiry
Tell us the dates and the party, and we will suggest the tour
A Bible Museum Stories tour changes in content and in manner with the
interests and the make-up of the party. The schedule, the programme and the
arrangements for your tour are settled individually once we have read your enquiry.
You are welcome to write in English.
