As K-culture has recently captivated people around the world, awareness of 'museums' is also being renewed in Korea.
Now, the term 'hip place' is no longer awkward.
But once you actually enter the museum, you become lost among the numerous artifacts, not knowing where, what, and how to see them.
The 'Lending the Museum' series was planned with the hope that it would serve as a friendly guide for those who get lost in museums.

The first book in the series is "Museums for Rent: Britain," which introduces the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, two of the world's top three museums.
Docent Bong-gi Son, with 26 years of experience, carefully selected around 100 historically significant artifacts with interesting stories from among the 8 million and 2.8 million artifacts held by the two museums, respectively.
Thus, the historical narrative, cultural context, and artistic beauty contained in major relics that should not be missed, such as the Ashurbanipal Library, the world's first clay tablet library; the Rosetta Stone, which unveiled the veil on Egyptian civilization; the Elgin Marbles, the Parthenon that left Greece; the fun and intriguing Lewis Chess Pieces; the Trajan's Triumphal Monument, which is a replica of a replica; and Tipu's Tiger, which contains Sultan Tipu's wrath, are unraveled through detailed descriptions and friendly storytelling.
While reading this book, readers will feel as if they are meeting a docent at the entrance to a museum and moving along with him.

If you go to Exhibition Room 10, you can see a relief mural depicting a lion hunting scene.
In the Nineveh Palace Wall Painting, created in 645 BC, King Ashurbanipal is shown hunting a lion that is running towards him.
The lions growl and rush at the king, but are hit by the king's spears and arrows, and fall here and there with blood spurting out and flesh torn.

A closer look at this mural, which excels in its detailed observation and realistic depiction of animals, including their angry eyes, splendid manes, and bulging leg muscles, reveals that the outlines of the objects being emphasized are deeply carved, preserving their vividness as if they were about to spring to life.
--- p.45

The Book of the Dead, a guide for the dead, contains the ancient Egyptian belief and hope that if you live a good life according to your conscience, even if reality is difficult, you can go to a peaceful afterlife.

So, what kind of peaceful afterlife would the Egyptians go to after death? The ancient Egyptians called the afterlife "Sekhet Iar," meaning "field of reeds."
This signifies a paradise rich in water and grain ruled by Osiris, and shows that the afterlife they dream of is not heaven, but the happiest time in this world.
--- p.67

The murals of Nebamun, which show ideal pleasure, are characteristic of ancient Egyptian painting.
In Egyptian painting, when depicting a human figure, the face was drawn in profile, the eyes and chest in front, and the feet in profile.
They believed that the face was most clearly revealed when viewed from the side, the eyes from the front, and the feet from the side.
The reason why the ancient Egyptians painted in a way that best showed the features of the person was so that they could easily find their own bodies after death and resurrection.
They believed that even if the body decayed, the essence and characteristics of the soul remained.
--- p.70

When the Greeks first encountered Egyptian culture, they were involuntarily discouraged.
They felt that their own culture was shabby compared to the splendid Egyptian culture.
So the Greeks disparaged Egyptian culture as an African civilization and gave the name of the Sphinx, a monster from Greek mythology, to the guardian deity in front of the pyramid.
The original name of the guardian deity who guards the pyramids, with the body of a lion symbolizing courage and the face of a king symbolizing wisdom, is 'Horus of the Horizon'.
Horus is the name of a god who symbolizes the pharaoh as the king of the earth in Egyptian mythology.
The relic with this magnificent name was given the name Sphinx, a Greek monster, purely due to the Greek inferiority complex.
--- p.82

The true value of the Ramses statue lies in the fact that it changed Europeans' perspective on human history.
Before the discovery of the Ramses statues, Europeans believed that great Western art and civilization originated in Greece.
But the Ramses statues proved that long-held beliefs and hypotheses of Europeans were wrong.
They learned that the Greek civilization, which they considered great, originated from the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations.
--- p.98~100

The painting on the jar depicts Penthesilea just before she is killed by a spear thrown by the Greek hero Achilles during a duel with him.
Achilles' face is hidden by his helmet, while Penthesilea's helmet is removed and thrown out.
The queen's spear misses Achilles' chest, and Achilles' spear pierces her neck, causing blood to spurt from it.
At that very moment, their eyes met, and Achilles fell instantly in love with the Amazon queen's beauty.
In this work, which expresses a cruel yet fateful love, one can feel the essence of Greek civilization that centers on humans.
The sadness seen in this work contains human emotions that cannot be found in god-centered civilizations such as Egypt and Mesopotamia.
In Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations, enemies were merely objects to be killed, and it was unimaginable to depict scenes of loving one's enemies.
--- p.123~124

After a long civil war, the Roman citizens, who had tasted peace and abundance, worshipped him as a god and awarded him the title of 'Augustus', meaning 'the noble one'.
But he was not a god.
Having killed countless people in war and witnessed the deaths of many friends and soldiers, he had to endure everything for his own survival and the survival of the Roman Empire.
Also, remembering the death of his uncle Caesar, he could not trust anyone.
So, when he attended the Senate meeting, he wore armor under his toga and had ten bodyguards protect him.
We can get a glimpse of Octavianus' attitude toward life from the words he left just before his death, after divorcing Livia, the wife of a subordinate general he met at a banquet, and taking her as his wife and spending the rest of his life with her.

Was my acting worth watching?
If you liked the play of my life
Please give us a round of applause.
--- p.165

The Thorn Reliquary passed to the Habsburgs in Vienna in 1544, who were more interested in the gold and jewels surrounding the reliquary than in the thorns themselves.
From then on, the secularization of the reliquary took place.
In 1860, the royal family entrusted the reliquary to an antique dealer for restoration.
However, instead of restoring the reliquary, he made a fake, kept the original for himself, and returned the fake to the Habsburgs.
The original was later purchased in 1898 by the Vienna branch manager of the Rothschild Bank and donated to the British Museum.
--- p.201~203

The English word 'CAST' refers to an object made by melting iron, pouring it into a mold, and then hardening it, and means a copy, not an original.
In England, which had become wealthy through the Industrial Revolution in the 17th century, the Grand Tour became a fad, especially among the children of the nobility.
It was a kind of study abroad trip, visiting France, Italy, and even as far away as Greece, under the pretext of broadening one's horizons.
But in Britain, which was on the cultural periphery, only a few people could afford such a journey.
In response, the British government began creating replicas of major European historical sites and artifacts and exhibiting them for young people who could not study in other countries for physical or economic reasons.
The V&A exhibition room that houses such replicas is called Caste Court.
Popular works here include the triumphal monument of the Roman emperor Trajan and Michelangelo's David, an exact replica of a plaster cast gifted to Queen Victoria from Italy.
--- p.216~217

Sultan Tipu, who was defeated in the Third Anglo-Mysore War in 1792, was furious at having his two sons taken hostage by the British, so he composed this piece. It is said that he liked it so much that he kept it in the music room of his palace and showed it to visiting guests.
In the work, the tiger symbolizes Tipu Sultan.
The king often compared himself to a brave tiger, and identified himself with the tiger to the point of decorating his residence, carriage, clothes, and weapons with tiger motifs.
Less than a year after Tipu's tiger was taken into British hands, it was unveiled to the British public, and crowds of Britons flocked to the V&A.
This was the first Indian artifact to be exported from India to Britain.
The British are said to have enjoyed the pride of the British Empire as they watched Sultan Tipu, who had resisted the British, become a spoil of war and be displayed in the form of a savage tiger in London, the heart of the British Empire.
--- p.224~225

Jane Morris, the protagonist of "Dream of the Day," often posed for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who painted the work.
She was the wife of Rossetti's friend William Morris, and at the time this picture was painted, Rossetti and Jane were having an affair.
Her hair shaded by leaves, the green trees around her, and the green clothes she is wearing make her look like a fairy who has just jumped out of the forest.
Her gaze, as if lost in a daydream, is fixed on something invisible, lost in it.
She is sitting on a fig tree branch and holding a branch of a honeysuckle vine.
Sweet-smelling twigs of honeysuckle symbolized secret love in Victorian times.

--- p.255~257