Buzz
Museum-goers often encounter only a small portion of the items museums actually possess. Many artifacts are stored away for preservation due to their fragility or because they are under research. Space limitations also play a role. These hidden treasures, numbering in the thousands, range from rare items to ancient relics, and sometimes they get lost in storage. Museum professionals continue to uncover remarkable finds, from long-lost “Darwins” and iconic artworks to significant historical artifacts, burial sites, and even ancient structures.
10. The Prestwich-Evans Axe
A single flint tool reshaped the way scholars viewed human evolution. In 1859, French miners uncovered a hand axe. Geologists Joseph Prestwich and John Evans took an interest and made history by photographing the artifact before extracting it from its original location.
At the time, many experts believed humanity had been on Earth for only a few thousand years. However, the axe was found alongside fossils of woolly mammoths and rhinos. This was the first undeniable evidence suggesting that humanity’s origins stretched back a few thousand years earlier than previously thought.
Today, the tool is estimated to be around 400,000 years old. Over time, other discoveries would surpass its age, such as the oldest-known tools uncovered later in Ethiopia, which are dated to approximately 2.5 million years old. Nevertheless, the Prestwich-Evans axe remains significant for challenging the belief that humans were young and not a product of evolution.
Following Prestwich’s death in 1896, the axe became part of his artifact collection, which was donated to the Natural History Museum. In 2009, researchers rediscovered it in storage and brought it into the public eye.
9. Unique Mummy Shroud
While reassessing their Egyptian collections, a senior curator at the National Museum of Scotland made an unexpected discovery. Hidden away for nearly 80 years was a paper package, originally wrapped in the 1940s, bearing a note that stated its contents came from an Egyptian tomb.
Inside the package was a piece of textile. Having been folded for decades, the fabric was fragile and brittle. To prevent damage, the material was carefully humidified and gradually unfurled. The process took almost 24 hours, and as the cloth was opened, conservators began to suspect it might be a funerary shroud, noticing painted details emerging.
When fully opened, the artifact exceeded all expectations. It was indeed a funerary shroud, and the painted depiction on it represented the deceased as the god Osiris. The remarkable artwork seemed to blend Roman-period Egyptian styles, though it didn’t perfectly align with any known period or style.
Hieroglyphics identified the deceased as the previously unknown son of Montsuef, a prominent official who passed away in 9 BC. This discovery places the unique shroud of his son at over 2,000 years old.
8. Trajan’s Unknown Statue
The statue of Roman Emperor Trajan (r. AD 98–117) faced challenges right from its discovery. In the 1980s, the bronze figure was unearthed from a Roman fortress in Bulgaria. Candidiana was a settlement that spanned from the second to the seventh centuries and served as one of several Roman outposts connected by a road running along the Danube in the North.
Despite its intricate decorations and value, the statue was never publicly displayed. It was severely damaged, possibly during a barbarian invasion that destroyed Candidiana. The fragmented pieces were transferred to Bulgaria’s National Museum of History and subsequently forgotten.
For many years, the broken pieces were stored on the laboratory floor, mixed with other statues and artifacts. In 2016, someone finally noticed the shattered emperor and realized that this remarkable artwork had remained unknown to the outside world.
The motifs adorning the statue were also quite unusual, depicting scenes from mythology featuring ancient heroes and gods. Unfortunately, the museum lacks the resources to restore the statue to its former state or the space to properly showcase it.
7. An Egg From The Beagle
The ship that took Charles Darwin on his renowned specimen-collecting journey was the HMS Beagle. The naturalist’s expedition spanned from 1831 to 1836, and during it, he collected 16 chocolate-colored eggs from what is now Uruguay. It was believed that the entire clutch had been lost.
Meanwhile, volunteer Liz Wetton painstakingly cataloged the egg collection at Cambridge University’s Zoology Museum. As she only worked a few hours each week sorting through thousands of eggs, it took her a decade to finally reach one dark-brown egg. Inscribed on it was 'C. Darwin,' and the shell bore a jagged crack.
Wetton assumed the museum was aware of the egg’s existence, but it turned out no one knew it was there. After some investigation, curators traced its origins to the Beagle with help from 19th-century zoology professor Alfred Newton, who had been a friend of Darwin.
Newton had written about Darwin sending him an egg from the common tinamou. Incredibly, Newton’s notebook also explained how the shell had cracked. Darwin had placed the egg in a box that was too small, causing the damage either during or after the voyage.
6. Pieces of The Enchanted Pose
Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte is renowned for his unique works. After an exhibition in 1927, one of his paintings disappeared. The 114 cm by 162 cm canvas, titled The Enchanted Pose, featured two neoclassical female nudes. When the painting failed to sell at the exhibition, it was returned to Magritte, but after that, it seemed to vanish without a trace.
In 2013, the art world finally received a breakthrough regarding the lost painting. While scanning two other works by Magritte, experts discovered a quarter of The Enchanted Pose hidden beneath each piece. These artworks, housed in museums in New York and Stockholm, together revealed the complete left side of the missing painting.
A third section was uncovered in 2016 when a conservator at the Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery noticed a previously used canvas beneath another Magritte painting. An X-ray revealed the bottom-right corner of The Enchanted Pose. It seems that Magritte repurposed the old canvas for a new creation, cutting it up in the process. The upper-right part of the painting remains hidden somewhere out there.
5. Unexpected Human Remains
At the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, a display case regularly draws attention. Inside, a 150-year-old diorama shows lions attacking a man and his dromedary. During recent renovations, it was discovered that the stuffed animals still contained parts of their skeletons.
A CT scan of the mannequin revealed an even more disturbing discovery. The head contained an actual human skull with its teeth still intact. This was a shocking revelation because the life-sized figure had been assumed to be entirely synthetic.
Delving into its history uncovered a disturbing pattern involving a pair of French naturalists. In 1830, Edouard Verreaux and his brother caused an uproar when they stuffed an African tribesman. Edouard was also the taxidermist responsible for creating the lion-dromedary display in the mid-1800s, which passed through several museums before arriving at the Carnegie in 1898.
The skull cannot be returned to its place of origin as there is no record of where the Verreaux brothers obtained it. In fact, such records might not even be reliable, as the brothers were known to falsify information to secure more sales.
4. The £3 Million Masterpiece
Around 150 years ago, the Swansea Museum cataloged an oil painting by an unknown artist before putting it away in storage. When it was rediscovered in 2016, an art historian immediately recognized the style of the 17th-century Flemish painter Jacob Jordaens.
On the back of the painting, merchant’s marks—including the letter A and the coat of arms from Jordaens’s hometown of Antwerp—confirmed that the artwork was created between 1619 and 1621.
A former student of Peter Paul Rubens, Jordaens became famous in his own right. But this discovery was not just any painting by a master—it was an unknown preliminary version of what would later become one of his most iconic works, Meleager and Atalanta.
This discovery makes the painting exceptionally rare. Although it was initially a bit of a painted-over mess, restoration work soon uncovered a beautiful scene of the mythical pair surrounded by horses, dogs, and people. The artwork offers new insight into Jordaens’s techniques and is valued at a remarkable £3 million.
3. The Mamluk Porch
A historic letter discovered in the Louvre’s archives led the museum to a hidden treasure. The letter, penned by a curator from the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, another French museum, sought help identifying items that could potentially be Islamic architecture.
The curator referred to a vaulted structure, attaching sketches and a catalog number. The Mamluk Porch was eventually transferred to the Louvre in 2004, comprising 300 distinct blocks of architectural detail.
Years of research and funding were dedicated to uncovering its origins. In 15th-century Cairo, a Mamluk ruler constructed a chamber at the entrance of his residence, using stones from the walls and vaulted ceiling of the lobby. In 1887, the structure was dismantled and shipped to France for the 1889 World Fair. Despite its significance, the stones remained in storage until the discovery of the letter.
Additional sketches created in Cairo by a French architect prior to the disassembly of the portal played a crucial role in the reconstruction. The result was a stunning monument, 4 meters (13 feet) tall, adorned with floral patterns in varying shades of limestone. This porch is also the first Mamluk architectural piece ever displayed in a museum.
2. Chalk Sketch Worth $10 Million
Sir Timothy Clifford, a distinguished scholar from Scotland, spent his sabbatical at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York. During his visit in 2002, he was sifting through a box of designs when he stumbled upon a black chalk sketch of a candelabrum. The piece was simply labeled 'Italian, circa 1530–1540.'
Fortuitously, Clifford was an expert in Italian Renaissance art and immediately recognized the sketch as the work of Michelangelo. The drawing, measuring 43 centimeters (17 inches) by 25 centimeters (10 inches), had been acquired by Cooper-Hewitt along with other designs in 1942 for just $60.
Prior to that, the sketch had been obtained by the dealers P&D Colnaghi in 1921, during an auction of Lord Amherst of Hackney’s collection. At the time, the museum mistakenly attributed the candelabrum sketch to Perino del Vaga, Michelangelo’s contemporary, known for producing many design drawings while Michelangelo rarely did.
Since then, the sketch has been confirmed as a genuine work of Michelangelo by various Renaissance scholars and has been valued at over $10 million. Clifford believes it was originally commissioned for the Medici tombs and would have stood around 2 meters (6 feet) tall if the tomb’s construction hadn’t been halted following the sack of Rome.
1. Dead Archbishops
In 2016, during renovations at the Garden Museum in London, workers uncovered a removable concrete slab. Lifting it revealed a staircase that led to a hidden chamber. Among the first discoveries was an archbishop's miter placed atop a coffin.
A total of 20 coffins were uncovered. After examining the nameplates and researching the building's history, it was revealed that five of the coffins belonged to former archbishops of Canterbury. All had served during the 17th century, with Richard Bancroft, who served from 1604 to 1610, being the most notable. Bancroft was instrumental in the creation of the King James Bible.
The museum, formerly St. Mary-at-Lambeth Church, stands near the Archbishop of Canterbury's London residence. Despite its location, the discovery of the crypt came as a complete shock. Constructing such a tomb so close to the Thames posed a risk of flooding. Additionally, during the Victorian era, hundreds of coffins were moved to clear the grounds, yet this prominent group remained undisturbed in the hidden tomb.
