They say you cannot see the world in a day, but they clearly have not been to the British Museum. After five hours of exploration, I came out questioning three things: time, empire, and how exactly one steals a whole moment without anyone noticing.

From the moment I stepped into that majestic pillared facade, I knew I was in for a strange mix of wonder and discomfort. The museum is free to enter, which is ironic considering how nothing inside was. Nearly every artifact I laid my eyes on had been, at some point, liberated from its rightful home and gifted a spot under the grey London skies. And yet, there I was. Spending the entire day willingly trapped in this paradox of beauty and theft, walking through civilisations neatly tagged and sealed behind glass. It is hard to describe the feeling of seeing civilisations you grew up reading about suddenly standing before you—intact, labeled, and suspiciously far from home. As a child, I imagined the mummies of Egypt, the gods of Greece, and the scholars of Mesopotamia in the pages of my history books. As an adult, I found them all in London, organised by region and casually missing context.

I started with Egypt, like most people do, because if there is one place that absolutely screams "we took this and we are never giving it back," it is the room with the Rosetta Stone. It is placed proudly, as if the museum singlehandedly cracked ancient languages.Then I was greeted by a towering statue of Ramesses II, that loomed like a stone sentinel, his chipped mouth still smug, as if daring me to question why his torso was in London and his legs, presumably, still sulking somewhere in Egypt. The galleries sprawled from there; rooms full of painted coffins so intricate, they looked like divine contracts. Their surfaces were covered in hieroglyphs; prayers, invocations, instructions for the soul's journey, written in a language meant to outlive empires. The eyes painted on the lids stared outward, as if still watching for Osiris. And then the mummies. There was no build-up. No ominous soundtrack. Just a glass case. And a person, wrapped in linen, impossibly old, heartbreakingly human. You expect something ghostly, but what hits you is how real it is. Brown, leathery skin stretched tight over cheekbones. Eyelids still shut. Fingernails visible. A spine slightly curved, as if they had just shifted in sleep. Some still had wisps of hair. Some wore gilded death masks with expressions frozen mid-transition between human and divine. One mummy lay so still, so intact, I felt like whispering an apology just for looking too long. Another had x-rays on display beside it, revealing amulets placed carefully inside the wrappings meant to shield the soul from danger. The body had been packed with linen like precious cargo, prepared with such tenderness that it almost hurt to imagine them now, reduced to a display label and a passing glance.

Next came Greece and Rome, because if this was a guilt trip, I might as well go full imperialist. If Egypt was enchanting, the Greek and Roman exhibits were pure drama. As in, literal scenes of centaurs battling Lapiths, gods reclining mid-feast, and philosophers forever caught in thoughts; all carved in cold marble, all very far from the sunny Mediterranean. The Parthenon Marbles (or as Greece likes to call them, "Our National Trauma") sat imposingly under diffused skylight, displayed as if they were British-born. I remember reading about these as a child, how they once adorned the Acropolis, how they were taken during Ottoman rule, and how Greece has spent decades politely requesting them back, to no avail. But oh, what a sight they were. Gods in motion, horses in mid-gallop, muscle and divinity carved into cold marble. I wanted to feel angry, but the artistry made me ache in a different way. The kind of ache that comes from realising the past is real, was real, and it is not just a bedtime story or bullet point in a multiple-choice exam. Just a few steps away was the Nereid Monument, an entire Lycian tomb from the 4th century BCE, now reconstructed like a divine LEGO set. Columns, sculptures, even the tomb chamber itself. It felt like a sacred space air-dropped into Bloomsbury. Rome, of course, offered grandeur with a touch of smugness. Augustus with his propaganda busts. Julius Caesar, forever stern. Roman generals who once led legions now reduced to torso sculptures, missing arms but not ego. There were utensils, board games, keys, makeup—all proof that Romans really were the blueprint for modern life. Organised, efficient, narcissistic.

Then I walked into Mesopotamia, Assyria, Persia, the civilisations that gave the world writing, law, mathematics. It was awe-inspiring, seeing the origins of structured thought and governance etched into tablets and walls. But something felt distinctly wrong. Maybe it was the captions that read "excavated from Nineveh, now modern-day Iraq," or "discovered by British archaeologists during the 19th century." Discovered. As though locals had somehow forgotten their own ancestors existed until a man in khakis and a mustache showed up with a shovel and divine right. And then came the Lamassu. Winged bulls with human heads. Massive, stoic, majestic. Each footfall echoed near them as if they still guarded their palace gates. I half-expected one to blink.

I ended my tour in the Reading Room. A dome of knowledge, designed to be silent and reverent. Books everywhere, some rare, some ancient, most English. Standing beneath the great dome, I thought of every scholar, poet, and madman who once studied here, unaware that the very items they wrote about sat just floors away. This room felt like a monument to a version of history curated, cropped, and colonised. I thought of all the knowledge that did not make it here. Manuscripts burned, languages lost, oral traditions erased; histories that never got the chance to be catalogued because they were not written in ink approved by the empire.

I exited the British Museum after nearly five hours, intellectually bloated and morally conflicted. I had spent a day time-traveling, witnessing humanity's finest artistry and worst greed. The contradiction is unbearable, but also unmissable. Because while I was angry about how these pieces got here, I was also grateful I got to see them. From pharaohs to philosophers, warriors to weavers, priests to peasants; every part of the ancient world had a voice here, even if it had been filed under the wrong address.

So yes, the British Museum is a thief's scrapbook. But it is also a mirror held up to our shared history, flaws and all. It is the story of how we built, conquered, worshipped, calculated, danced, and dreamed. And that story is still unfolding. I left thinking not just about what I saw, but about what I did not: restitution, accountability, and perhaps someday, return.