Scavenger Hunt at the British Museum

A few years ago we took the kids to Paris.  I wanted to show them the Louvre, but had low expectations for them actually enjoying the museum.  I had heard of Scavenger hunts through art museums and found one for the Louvre.  We booked it and it was a huge success!  Not only did the kids enjoy the hunt, we had to go back to the museum later that night to do parts again and finish what we hadn’t gotten around to!  Since then the owner has expanded and opened hunts in Britain at the British Museum.  We contacted ThatMuse when in London and did the ThatBRIT Fun and Games Hunt in the British Museum.

How does the Scavenger Hunt work?

The basic premise is that you get clues to find certain objects in the museum.  You get a picture of the item and a general location and more details for bonus questions.  To prove that you found the item, you must take a selfie or a picture of your team members in the front of the item.  This gives you a great memento of the trip as well.  The bonus questions are a mix of learning things about the art or historic items, and a mix of doing fun things in front of the items.  Each item is worth a prescribed amount of points and when you meet the other team(s) at the end, you total everything up and figure out who wins!

A Sample Clue

This is a sample of one of the clues from the fun and games hunt at the British Museum:

LION HUNT FRIEZES Palace of Ashurbanipal, North Palace of Nineveh (Northern Iraq) Assyrian (Mesopotamian), 645 BC

In 12th century Europe lions begin to decorate royal coat of arms; this connection between kingship & lions was probably a result of the European crusades to the Middle East.  Here we have a chief source, the Assyrian Lion Hunt frieze – a true triumph of Man over Nature. King Ashurbanipal left his mark on his grandfather’s Palace at Nineveh (a city measuring 12kms/7.5 miles) with the North Palace, where these fine feline creatures – vicious, attacking & sad brutes meeting their grisly end – lined the walls.  Get a load of just what the fence of this hunting field was made of: shielded soldiers lined shoulder-to-shoulder (oh go on, earn 20 THATMuse points for a photo of your team lined up in profile like them & pointing to one of their rows (there are two human shields within this room)… I guess men were as disposable as lions to the Assyrians!  Apparently, the Mesopotamian lion, brought to extinction by the 19th C (quelle surprise!), was compared in size to a large St Bernard dog. Still, that doesn’t lessen the queasiness I feel when seeing the small boy standing above their cages (see his small protective cage above?) whose job it was to liberate those ferocious creatures (take 20 THATMuse points for a photo pointing one of these boys out). And yet the 21st C viewer finds compassion for these bloodied beasts, writhing in their last moments. For a bit of your own hunting, scour these gypsum alabaster reliefs & earn 50 THATMuse points by listing 4 of the 8 types of animals found in this room (not including lion or man!). No partial credit, but the BM tags do help!

GAME POINTS: 20

You can book private hunts or go on the group hunts that they host once a month.  We have done private hunts both times as they are so reasonable and our schedule has never worked with the public hunts.  Though we hope to do one soon and test our mettle against others. We competed against another family when we did the Louvre in Paris.  In the British museum, we divided up into 2 teams and competed against ourselves.  Both times were amazing fun and the kids loved it!  The best part about these hunts is that they are fun and educational.  They are supremely well written and researched.  I learn something new each time we do one and so do the kids.

If you want to make a museum the most memorable part of your vacation, you must book a THATMuse Treasure Hunt!