Help searching the collection database
The British Museum collection database online currently includes
more than 1,500,000 records for the Museum’s objects from Africa;
the Americas; central, east, south and southeast Asia,
including the Sir Percival David Collection of Chinese
Ceramics; ancient Egypt and Sudan; Europe, ancient Greece and Rome;
the Middle East; Oceania; prehistory, and prints, drawings and
other works of flat art from all over the world. It is updated
every week and new records and images are continuously being
added as work on the database continues.
Searching
The most direct way to access these records is
through the free text search.
Any word entered in the search box will return
results from across all fields of the collection database and will
retrieve every record that has this word in it,
including plural versions of it (for example, lion will also
retrieve results for lions).
The search works in much the same way as most
online searches, so you can enter one or more words as well as
punctuation. For example:
British watercolour
British OR watercolour
"St Peter"
wood*
will find all records containing both
'British' and 'watercolour', or watercolours
will find records containing either word (OR must be
upper-case)
will find records containing that exact phrase
will perform a wild card search and find records
containing wood, woods, wooden, woodwork, woodcock, woodcocks
and so on.
You can narrow down your search by selecting one of the check
boxes below the main free text box.
Search by date
You can also search by date range. Or combine a date range with
words entered in the free text search to narrow it down.
For more focussed and accurate results, use the Advanced
search.