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Secretum (British Museum)
The (Latin for ) was a British Museum collection of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that held Artifact (archaeology), artefacts and images deemed sexually graphic. Many of the items were amulets, charms and votive offerings, often from pre-Christian traditions, including the worship of Priapus, a Greco-Roman god of fertility and male genitalia. Items from other cultures covered wide ranges of human history, including ancient Egypt, the classical era Greco-Roman world, the ancient Near East, medieval England, Japan and India. Many of the early donations or sales to the museum, including those from the collectors Sir Hans Sloane, William Hamilton (diplomat), Sir William Hamilton, Richard Payne Knight and Charles Townley, contained items with erotic or sexually graphic images; these were separated out by museum staff and not put on public display. Modern scholars believe the segregation was probably motivated by a paternalistic stance from the museum to keep what the ...
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British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, 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.Among the national museums in London, sculpture and decorative art, decorative and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings. The National Gallery holds the national collection of Western European art to about 1900, while art of the 20th century on is at Tate Modern. Tate Britain holds British Art from 1500 onwards. Books, manuscripts and many works on paper are in the British Library. There are significant overlaps between the coverage of the various collections. Established in 1753, the British Museum was the first public national museum. In 2023, the museum received 5,820,860 visitors, 42% more than the previous y ...
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British Museum Act 1753
The British Museum Act 1753 ( 26 Geo. 2. c. 22) was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain. The act provided for the purchase of the museum or collection of Sir Hans Sloane and of the Harleian Collection of manuscripts to be held in a new body, the British Museum. Legacy The whole act was repealed by section 13(5) of, and the fourth schedule to, the British Museum Act 1963. Bylaws, ordinances, statutes or rules in force immediately before the commencement of the British Museum Act 1963 under section 14 or 15 of the British Museum Act 1753 are not invalidated by the repeal of the British Museum Act 1753, but have effect in relation to each museum, with such modifications as may be necessary in consequence of the provisions of the British Museum Act 1963, as if they were rules made by the trustees of that museum under paragraph 5 of the first schedule to the British Museum Act 1963.The British Museum Act 1963section 13(6)/ref> See also * British Museum Act Notes ...
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Herculaneum
Herculaneum is an ancient Rome, ancient Roman town located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under a massive pyroclastic flow in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Like the nearby city of Pompeii, Herculaneum is famous as one of the few ancient cities to be preserved nearly intact, as the solidified material from the volcano that blanketed the town protected it against looting and the elements. Although less known than Pompeii today, it was the first and, for a long time, the only discovered Vesuvian city (in 1709). Pompeii was revealed in 1748 and identified in 1763. Unlike Pompeii, the mainly Pyroclastic rock, pyroclastic material that covered Herculaneum carbonization, carbonized and preserved more wooden objects such as roofs, beds, and doors, as well as other organic-based materials such as Herculaneum loaf, food and papyrus. According to the traditional tale, the city was rediscovered by chance in 1709 during the dri ...
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Stabiae
Stabiae () was an ancient city situated near the modern town of Castellammare di Stabia and approximately 4.5 km (2.79 miles) southwest of Pompeii. Like Pompeii, and being only from Mount Vesuvius, it was largely buried by tephra ash in the 79 AD Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in this case at a shallower depth of up to 5 m. Stabiae is most famous for the Roman villas found near the ancient city which are regarded as some of the most stunning architectural and artistic remains from any Roman villas. They are the largest concentration of excellently preserved, enormous, elite seaside villas known in the Roman world. The villas were sited on a 50 m high headland overlooking the Gulf of Naples. Although it was discovered before Pompeii in 1749, unlike Pompeii and Herculaneum, Stabiae was reburied by 1782 and so failed to establish itself as a destination for travelers on the Grand Tour. Many of the objects and frescoes taken from these ...
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Pompeii
Pompeii ( ; ) was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Villa Boscoreale, many surrounding villas, the city was buried under of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Largely preserved under the ash, Pompeii offers a unique snapshot of Culture of ancient Rome, Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried, as well as insight into ancient urban planning. It was a wealthy town of 10,000 to 20,000 residents at the time it was destroyed. It hosted many fine public buildings and luxurious private houses with lavish decorations, furnishings and artworks, which were the main attractions for early excavators; subsequent excavations have found hundreds of private homes and businesses reflecting various architectural styles and social classes, as well as numerous public buildings. Organic remains, including wooden objects and human bodies, were interred in the as ...
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National Archaeological Museum, Naples
The National Archaeological Museum of Naples (, ) is an important Italian archaeological museum. Its collection includes works from Greek, Roman and Renaissance times, and especially Roman artifacts from the nearby Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum sites. From 1816 to 1861, it was known as the Royal Bourbon Museum (). Building The building was built as a cavalry barracks in 1585. From 1616 to 1777, it was the seat of the University of Naples. During the 19th century, after it became a museum, it suffered many changes to the main structure. Collections The museum hosts extensive collections of Greek and Roman antiquities. Their core is from the Farnese Collection, which includes a collection of engraved gems (including the Farnese Cup, a Ptolemaic bowl made of sardonyx agate and the most famous piece in the "Treasure of the Magnificent", and is founded upon gems collected by Cosimo de' Medici and Lorenzo il Magnifico in the 15th century) and the Farnese Marbles. Amo ...
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Private Case
The Private Case is a collection of erotica and pornography held initially by the British Museum and then, from 1973, by the British Library. The collection began between 1836 and 1870 and grew from the receipt of books from legal deposit, from the acquisition of bequests and, in some cases, from requests made to the police following their seizures of obscene material. From its foundation in the eighteenth century, the British Museum acted as the national library of Britain. It was one of six legal deposit libraries in automatic receipt of all works published in the UK; this included pornographic or salacious material, Sedition, seditious publications, those Subversion, subversive of religion and works that could later be deemed by the courts as libellous. From the nineteenth century, the subversive and libellous material was separated into the Suppressed Safe collection while the erotica and pornography were placed in a locked cupboard known as the Private Case. Access to the ma ...
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British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit library, it receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the United Kingdom. The library operates as a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The British Library is a major research library, with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains a programme for ...
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Elgin Marbles
The Elgin Marbles ( ) are a collection of Ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures from the Acropolis of Athens, removed from Ottoman Greece in the early 19th century and shipped to Britain by agents of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, and now held in the British Museum in London. The majority of the sculptures were created in the 5th century BC under the direction of sculptor and architect Phidias. The term ''Parthenon Marbles'' or ''Parthenon Sculptures'' () refers to sculptures—the Parthenon Frieze, frieze, Metopes of the Parthenon, metopes and Pediments of the Parthenon, pediments—from the Parthenon held in various collections, principally the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum in Athens. From 1801 to 1812, Elgin's agents removed about half the surviving Parthenon sculptures, as well as sculptures from the Erechtheion, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaia (Acropolis of Athens), Propylaia, sending them to Britain in efforts to establ ...
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Robert Harley, 1st Earl Of Oxford And Earl Mortimer
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, KG PC FRS (5 December 1661 – 21 May 1724) was a British statesman of the late Stuart and early Georgian periods. He began his career as a Whig, before defecting to a new Tory ministry. He was raised to the peerage of Great Britain as an earl in 1711. Between 1711 and 1714 he served as Lord High Treasurer, effectively Queen Anne's chief minister. He has been called a ''prime minister'', although it is generally accepted that the de facto first minister to be a prime minister was Robert Walpole in 1721. The central achievement of Harley's government was the negotiation of the Treaty of Utrecht with France in 1713, which brought an end to twelve years of English and Scottish involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1714 Harley fell from favour following the accession of the first monarch of the House of Hanover, George I, and was for a time imprisoned in the Tower of London by his political enemies. He wa ...
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Harleian Library
The Harleian Library, Harley Collection, Harleian Collection and other variants () is one of the main "closed" collections (namely, historic collections to which new material is no longer added) of the British Library in London, formerly the library of the British Museum. The collection comprises 7,660 manuscripts, including 2,200 illuminated manuscripts, more than 14,000 original legal documents; and more than 500 rolls. It was assembled by Robert Harley (1661–1724) and his son Edward (1689–1741). In 1753, it was purchased for £10,000 by the British government. Together with the collections of Sir Robert Cotton (the Cotton library) and Hans Sloane (the Sloane library) it formed the basis of the British Museum's collection of manuscripts, which were transferred to the new British Library in 1973.British Library.History of the Harley Library". The collection contains illuminated manuscripts spanning the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance. There are important early Bri ...
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Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Baronet, Of Connington
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st Baronet (22 January 1570/71 – 6 May 1631) of Conington Hall in the parish of Conington, Huntingdonshire, Conington in Huntingdonshire, England,Kyle, Chris & Sgroi was a Member of Parliament and an antiquarian who founded the Cotton library. Origins Sir Robert Cotton was born on 22 January 1571 in Denton, Cambridgeshire, Denton, Huntingdonshire, the son and heir of Thomas Cotton (1544–1592) of Conington (son of Thomas Cotton of Conington, Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1547) by his first wife, Elizabeth Shirley, a daughter of Francis Shirley of Staunton Harold, Leicestershire. The Cotton family originated at the manor of Cotton, Cheshire, from where they took their surname. They were prominent in Shropshire by the 16th century with centres of power at Alkington, Shropshire, Alkington and Norton in Hales where a member of the family, Rowland Cotton, gave one of the first architectural commissions to Inigo Jones. The family was cl ...
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