Midlist Writer: Websites for Writers: The British Museum

Monday, 30 August 2010

Websites for Writers: The British Museum

It's Monday, time for Websites for Writers, your weekly look at websites that can educate and inspire authors but aren't specifically about writing.

This week's site is the homepage of the British Museum. It should come as no surprise that one of the world's greatest museums has an informative and extensive website. If you're writing historical fiction or history it's an amazing resource, plus there are lots of photos of beautiful works of art and intriguing artifacts to fire your imagination. Take, for example, the so-called Aztec crystal skull, a favorite prop of fantasy novels and paranormal stories. Well, the British Museum has the real thing, or I should say the real fake since it's a modern forgery. Examination with a microscope shows that modern tools were used to make it, tools the Aztecs didn't have. Of course that just lead some hacks to claim the thing came from Atlantis! Whatever.

The cultures section offers a huge amount of real information about real cultures, rather than fantasy or New Age stuff. There are sections on just about everything else too, from the history of money (important in fictional world building) to a collection database of 1.8 million objects and online tours of various ancient cultures.

So get clicking, you're sure to find some inspiration!

Photo courtesy Rafal Chalgasiewicz via Wikimedia Commons.

1 comment:

Donna Volkenannt said...: Hi Sean,
Thanks for the link to The British Museum. Lots of interesting stuff there.
Donna V.; 1 September 2010 at 07:14

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