British Museum

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The British Museum in 1872

The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history and culture located in London, England. First established in 1753, it currently houses one of the largest collections in the world. The building first used by the museum was the Montagu House built in 1675 by Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu.

Construction of the building that would replace the Montagu House began in the 1820s at the same location, and the museum was closed to the public, with only a few sections open to scholars. By 1861, the new building had already been unveiled and the museum reopened. Among its many features figured a new reading room as well as sections dedicated to housing artifacts from the Romans, the Assyrians, and the Egyptians. The museum lacked candles or lamps for fear of a fire and remained open only until natural light from the outside permitted, with some days having to close early due to the London fog.

History

19th century

Mark Twain near the museum's map

In October 1861, after his return to London, the Assassin Simeon Price read a short news item in The Times about an Assyrian eye artifact being discovered amidst the museum's recent acquisitions from excavations at Nimrud, Mesopotamia. Expecting the news to be a trap set by his former mentor Oscar Kane, Simeon had his protégé Pierrette Arnaud visit the Crystal Palace while going to the British Museum by himself. At the museum, Simeon found Kane and was given the ultimatum of either joining Kane or being arrested for desertion as he had already summoned the police. While trying to escape, Simeon broke his leg and was ultimately arrested.

In 1872, the American Templars discovered the museum held some pages of the Voynich manuscript; the New-York Tribune's founder Horace Greeley also learned this through a mole he had in President Ulysses S. Grant's administration. The Templars had their field agent Alice travel to London after the pages. A first attempt by her to recover them was seemingly foiled by Mark Twain, the Pinkerton detective Tommy Greyling, and the Metropolitan Police Service Sergeant Frederick Abberline, though she managed to evade capture on the museum's rooftops.

The next day, the group, aided by the Assassins Evie Frye and Jayadeep Mir, learned that the chase was a distraction: while Alice was on the rooftops, she had crooked constable Niall Hobday retrieve the personal details of Head Clerk of Acquisitions Edward Feather. Needing to locate the item quickly, she kidnapped and tortured Feather until he told her the number of the box where the pages had been archived.

Alice being confronted in the Reading Room

After setting a trap at a slaughterhouse, Alice and several Blighters returned to the museum to search the Acquisitions Department, managing to locate the pages before the Assassins and police confronted them. While the Blighters and the others entered a gunfight in the department, she attempted to slip away but was stopped by Evie and Tommy at the museum's reading room. Alice then threw a smoke bomb, which forced Evie to stay behind and attempt to control any fire that could arise from a stray spark while she slipped away, pursued by Tommy.

Also in the mid-to-late 1800s, the museum exhibited a mysterious ancient artifact that attracted the attention of both Assassins and Templars, though an Assassin-affiliated group managed to swap the artifact for a counterfeit and hide the original.

21st century

In 2016, an Assassin cell tracking down the Rings of Seth uncovered references to ancient Egyptian culture while investigating petroglyphs in New Orleans, leading them towards a particular sarcophagus unearthed in 1932 in the Valley of the Kings. Upon discovering that the sarcophagus had been loaned to the British Museum by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the group travelled to London. During their first museum visit, the group scrutinized the sarcophagus and a ring beside it in exhibition, surveyed CCTV cameras, identified access points into the building, and noted other security devices. At night, the group shut down the cameras and infiltrated the building silently, though this silence was shortlived when a vampire threw a security guard against the display case housing the ring and attacked them. The group managed to subdue their attacker, removing another ring from their finger, but the time that took allowed for the cameras to reactivate and the alarm to begin blaring. With guards and local police on their way, the group nonetheless managed to leave the museum without being apprehended.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (mentioned in Database entry only)
• Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Locus (first appearance)
• Discovery Tour: Ancient Egypt (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed: The Engine of History – The Magus Conspiracy
• Assassin's Creed Roleplaying Game – Forging History