Six legendary galleries. Twelve hidden treasures. One unforgettable adventure through human history.
In each room, track down your two treasures. Read the clue carefully — they're hidden in plain sight!
Tick your scoresheet each time you find a treasure. Bonus point if you can answer the explorer question!
Talk to your guide and parents. Every object has a story — see how many facts you can remember at the end.
This dark slab of granodiorite rock is arguably the most important object in the whole museum. Found by French soldiers in Egypt in 1799, it has the same message written in three scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and Ancient Greek. Because scholars could already read Greek, they used it as a key to decode hieroglyphs — unlocking 3,000 years of Egyptian writing overnight.
Meet one of the oldest mummies in the world — and he wasn't even mummified on purpose! This man, nicknamed "Ginger" for his still-visible red hair, was buried in the hot desert sand around 3,400 BC. The dry conditions naturally preserved his body. He is over 5,000 years old, making him older than the Great Pyramid of Giza itself.
These magnificent marble sculptures once decorated the Parthenon — a great temple built on a hill in Athens dedicated to the goddess Athena. Carved around 438 BC, they show scenes from Greek mythology and the Panathenaic procession, where Athenians brought gifts to their goddess. The craftsmanship is so detailed you can see the fabric folds in the carved stone robes as if the cloth were real.
This spectacular reconstruction is a tomb built for a powerful ruler from Lycia (now Turkey) around 390–380 BC. It was built to look like a Greek temple, with towering stone figures of sea nymphs called Nereids posed in flowing robes between its columns. In the ancient world, building your tomb to look like a temple was the ultimate way to say: "I was important."
This mummy belongs to Katebet, a woman who served as a chantress — a singer — in the temple of Amun, the king of the gods. She lived around 1,300 BC, during the reign of Ramesses the Great. Her mummy case is covered in golden paint and intricate hieroglyphs naming her and her titles. Beneath her wrappings, she still has a golden face mask. She was clearly someone of great status and importance.
The Egyptians didn't just mummify people — they mummified animals too! Cats, ibis birds, crocodiles, bulls, and even baboons were considered sacred to certain gods. Millions of animal mummies were created as offerings to the gods. A mummified cat was an offering to Bastet, the cat goddess. A mummified ibis honoured Thoth, the god of wisdom. Keep your eyes peeled — there may be some surprising animals in this room.
This is arguably the most iconic object in the entire museum after the Rosetta Stone. The original helmet was found in fragments and painstakingly reconstructed by experts. With its iron frame, bronze decorations, and haunting face mask — eyebrows with boar's tusks at each end, a nose and moustache — it is the face of an Anglo-Saxon king. It would have gleamed in battle, inspiring both awe and terror in anyone who saw it.
These extraordinary shoulder clasps are made of solid gold, inlaid with garnets (deep red gemstones) and millefiori glass in an intricate interlocking pattern. They were used to fasten a king's cloak at the shoulders. The garnets came all the way from Sri Lanka and India, proving that Anglo-Saxon England was connected to trade routes stretching across the entire known world — long before anyone thought of them as "Dark Ages."
Carved from walrus ivory and whale teeth around AD 1150–1200, probably in Norway, these chess pieces are wonderfully expressive. The queens look worried, biting their fingers in anxiety. The bishops hold their crooks piously. The rooks are wild-eyed berserker warriors biting the tops of their shields — a terrifying Viking battlefield tactic. Their tiny carved faces are full of personality even after nearly 900 years. You may recognise them from the Harry Potter films!
This extraordinary carved whalebone box dates from early 8th century Northumbria (northern England). Every panel is covered in intricate scenes mixing Roman history, Jewish legend, Christian stories, and Norse mythology — a remarkable snapshot of how different cultures and beliefs were colliding and blending in early medieval England. The carvings are so detailed they were made with a tool barely the width of a matchstick.
This breathtaking object is one of the most precious things in the British Museum. The double-headed serpent is made of wood covered entirely in a mosaic of over 2,000 individual pieces of turquoise, with red and white shell accents. It was almost certainly worn as a chest ornament by a high priest or ruler during sacred ceremonies. The serpent was a powerful symbol for the Aztecs, representing the god Quetzalcoatl — the feathered serpent creator god.
This solemn mask is carved from a single piece of green serpentine stone and may represent the rain god Tlaloc or the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli. Aztec masks like this were used in religious ceremonies, worn over the faces of priests or placed over the heads of the dead. The eyes would originally have been inlaid with other materials — shell or obsidian — to make them glitter and come alive. Even today, its gaze is extraordinarily powerful.
Tick a box for each treasure you successfully find. Can you collect all 12? A perfect score means you are an official Voyumar World Explorer — well done!
Ask your Voyumar guide to verify each find and sign off your completed sheet at the end.