What is currently available on the database?

History of the project
Images on the database
Sponsors and donors

The database is updated weekly and currently includes:

• Coins from ancient Greece and Rome, the wider Mediterranean, the ancient Middle East and Iron Age Europe, as well as paper money from across the world, plastic cards and ephemera relating to modern money and banking
• Objects from the Sir Percival David Collection of Chinese ceramics
• Objects from the ancient and contemporary civilisations and cultures of the Middle East from the Neolithic period until the present
• Objects from Africa, Oceania and the Americas representing the contemporary, archaeological and historical cultures of the indigenous peoples of four continents
• Prehistoric objects from the early Palaeolithic period to the end of the Stone age across the world, including the earliest human tools in Africa and Asia
• Objects from ancient Egypt and Sudan, from the Neolithic period (around 10,000 BC) until the twelfth century AD
• Objects from Ancient Greece and Rome (including Roman Britain), from the beginning of the Greek Bronze Age (about 3,200 BC) to the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century AD
• Archaeological and other objects from Europe, dating from the earliest times to the present day
• Objects covering the material and visual cultures of Japan, Korea, China, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, South and South-East Asia, and dating from the Asian Neolithic period (around 4,000 BC) to the present day
• The Museum’s collection of two-dimensional works from all over the world: almost entirely works on paper (drawings, paintings or prints), but including other categories of objects such as icons, rubbings, papercuts, mummy-portraits, wall paintings, watch papers and scrolls.

Detailed information about the two-dimensional works

The remaining records, nearly 500,000 relating to coins, medals and paper money, will be released by the end of 2009.

Work is continuing on the parts of the collection that have not been catalogued and new entries are being added to the database at the rate of about 3,000 a month. But the size of the collection means that it will take many years to complete.

Image: Miyake Gogetsu, hanging-scroll. Chinese beauty playing the flute. Ink, colour and gold on silk