This small wood carving depicts the goddess Sekhmet as a woman with the head of a lioness. Sekhmet was both destructive and benevolent. Her priests healed humans and animals alike. The Langres museums were gifted their Egyptian collection in the first half of the 19th century, by corresponding members of the Langres Historical and Archaeological Society.

The torque is one of the most emblematic artefacts of the Celtic world. It was found around the neck of a wealthy woman buried under a tumulus excavated during the first half of the 20th century.

This statue of what seems to be an emperor was discovered in Langres in 1660. Its marble may be of Greek provenance, but it is not clear where it was made. It was almost certainly commissioned for a public place. It was given to King Louis XIV as an ornament for the gardens of Versailles. Its head and arms were added by the sculptor François Girardon (1628–1715). It is one of the major pieces of Langres’ classical heritage, but only entered the museum’s collections in 1980, on loan from the Louvre.

This mosaic was discovered in 1985–1986 during excavation work carried out to extend the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire. It covered an area of around 58 m2, and used to ornament the dining room – or triclinium – floor of a sumptuous dwelling in the early 2nd century CE. This mosaic was made in a Rhone valley workshop, using tesserae cut from stones of different colours and origins.

The motifs of craters, oenochoes and cups are references to the figure of Bacchus as a young man in the most detailed part of the mosaic. We know that this is Bacchus because of his attributes, the thyrsus and panther. The fruit motifs, notably apples and pears, that complete the iconography of the mosaic echo the function of the dining room.

Andemantunum (now Langres), the main settlement of the Gallic tribe of the Lingones, was home to four large necropolises. Excavations have uncovered significant vestiges associated with Roman funeral rites. Funerary stelae like this one used to mark out cremations in a necropolis. They might name the deceased, state their profession, and say something about them or their relatives.

Roman funerary rites changed in Late Antiquity as burial practices became more widespread. This glass jug was discovered in 1895 inside a sarcophagus, at the foot of the body. It is one of the finest examples of the output of a workshop that was probably based in Trier and specialised in ornamental glass motifs in the shape of snakes.

This clock used to stand in Diderot’s study, after Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777) presented it to him in 1768. Diderot refers to it in his Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre (Regrets on Parting with my Old Dressing-Gown). In the same book, he also describes how Geoffrin, a famous salonnière, decorated his home, her way to provide for him.

The sextant (one sixth of a circle) is a post 1757 variant of the octant (one eighth of a circle). In the second half of the 18th century, the combined use of a sextant and marine timekeeper made it possible to locate ships more precisely thanks to the addition of longitude to latitude measurements. The new data made it possible to calculate the coordinates of ships at sea, but also newly discovered lands, leading to significant improvements in cartography. The sextant was used widely from the end of the 18th century, and remained in use until the middle of the 20th century.

This globe was designed to demonstrate changing ideas of the world. It compares the map of the world at the end of the 18th century, on the globe itself, with a map of “The WORLD as known in CÆSAR’S time” on one side of the box. The other side lists the latitude and longitude coordinates of several cities around the world. Objects of this type illustrate the period’s taste for geography and cartography.

This engraving is based on a drawing by Nathaniel Dance (1735–1811) of Omai (1751 or 1753–1779 or 1783), the first Tahitian ever brought to England. When the navigator Tobias Furneaux (1735–1781) brought Omai to England in 1774, several portraits were made of the Tahitian, who aroused great curiosity and was feted by scholars and grandees. Diderot challenged the social and religious models of 18th-century France by comparing them with Tahitian practices.

When European sailors made contact with new populations, they brought back emblematic artefacts gifted by (or looted from) the locals. This Tongan bowl was used to drink a fermented beverage called kava. James Cook (1728–1779) brought an identical bowl back from Tonga in 1774.

This informal portrait represents Diderot in his beloved moiré dressing gown. Van Loo vividly conveys the philosopher’s features, especially his large forehead, piercing eyes and full lips.

This bust of Diderot by Jean-Antoine Houdon is inscribed “Denis Diderot, à ses concitoyens” (“Denis Diderot, to his fellow citizens”). Diderot presented the bust to his fellow townspeople in 1780, at the request of the city of Langres. According to a letter he wrote to his daughter, five plaster casts of the same bust came with this gift. The work was cast in bronze from a terracotta original presented by Houdon at the Salon of 1771 (this original was probably a commission from Prince Galitzine, Russian ambassador to the French court and Diderot’s friend). The sculptor sought to portray the philosopher as a man of truth and experience, strong-willed, his eyes unflinching. Diderot seems to have liked the bust well enough, believing it a good likeness. However, he looks older, more wrinkled, in the bronze cast of the bust than in the terracotta original at the Louvre.

Sarpedon, son of Zeus, was killed in the Trojan War. “Sarpedon’s body washed […], Apollo ordered Sleep and Death to take him to Lycia where his family and friends would give him a magnificent funeral”. This painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1781. It was Berthélemy’s reception piece at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Diderot praised the “good composition” and “pleasant effect” of the work, despite some reservations, notably about Apollo’s leg (“a little too big for his body?”) and the sky (“rather even in tone”).

The frontispiece, located opposite the title page, seeks to provide the reader with a snapshot of the work. At the centre of the picture is the veiled figure of Truth. Reason tries to lift her veil, while Philosophy attempts to tear it away. In contrast, Theology kneels at the foot of Truth, and Imagination seeks to embellish her with a garland of flowers. The other allegorical figures evoke the disciplines covered in the Encyclopaedia, including History, Geometry, Astronomy, Physics, Optics, Botany, Chemistry and Agriculture, but also Poetry, Music, Painting and Architecture.

Dubois was a great cabinet-maker under the reign of Louis XV. This curved dresser with two drawers is decorated with floral marquetry veneers and gilt bronze. It is a fine example of the work of Parisian cabinetmakers. Their technique and style marked French and European cabinetry.

The case holds ten instruments, some of them signed Michael Butterfield, a manufacturer of scientific instruments based in Paris. The set includes instruments for measuring (protractor, sector, folding square, divider) and drawing straight lines (rule, ruling pen), right angles (square) and circles (two compasses). Diderot used similar tools for his own studies on squaring the circle.

Great care was taken to produce accurate drawings. However, the stiff postures of the subjects suggest taxidermy birds. Some plates feature the birds against an elaborate background, as though drawn from life in their natural environment. A scale indicates their size.

This illustration, the first of two plates devoted to the cutler’s art, presents an idealised vision of the trade. It brings together two separate spaces and activities: the workshop where the cutler and his assistant practise their craft, and the shop where the cutler’s wife sells their products. The cutler lies stretched out over a plank in the foreground, sharpening a blade against a grindstone operated with a crank mechanism. Under this image are numbered and captioned illustrations of the cutler’s tools: a bow drill, pincers, an anvil, a grindstone and its mechanism, etc.

Claude-Julien Braillard designed this Rococo clock using a clock mechanism devised by Joseph de Saint-Germain. The clock’s curves are adorned with botanically-inspired bronze mouldings and scrolls. The green-tinted horn contrasts with the gilt metal. The clock is representative of the French decorative arts that shaped European tastes in the mid-18th century.

Carl Linnaeus, also known as Carl von Linné, gave the puffin its scientific name, Fratercula arctica, in 1758. The same year, Linnaeus, who invented the binomial system and the classification of species, named human beings Homo sapiens. There is a plate illustration of the puffin in the Encyclopaedia.

Betskoi, Catherine II’s advisor on education, wrote this ambitious proposal to reform education in Russia. His plan included provisions for every population group, from the care of abandoned children to the education of elites. Diderot supervised the translation of this work into French, adding his own comments in praise of the project.

The blades are stamped “à la Perle” and inscribed “Diderot A L’Angre”. It is a rare surviving example of Didier Diderot’s work as a cutler.

The Cyclopaedia was published in 1728 and was so successful in England that it was reprinted several times. Its translation into French inspired Diderot and D’Alembert’s own Encyclopédie. The collective nature of their project was a break with the past: no single individual could claim to know everything.

Joseph Vernet was a celebrated artist in his day, and was especially renowned for his landscape and seascape paintings. In 1753, he returned to France after a long period in Italy. He was a prolific artist, having to meet the demand spurred by his popularity. In 1766, Vernet delivered two oval paintings to Madame la Présidente de Bandeville (widow of Pierre-François Doublet, Marquis de Bandeville): La source abondante (The Bountiful Spring) and Les occupations du rivage (Seashore Occupations). There are two versions of this pair of paintings, and the painting we see here probably belongs to the second. It has the same date as, and is identical to, the painting presented at the Salon de l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in 1767, as part of a set of seven landscapes.

After visiting this Salon, Diderot took a whimsical approach to art criticism. Writing on these paintings, he pretended to move on from his critique of Vernet’s works: “I wrote the name of this artist at the top of my page and was about to describe his works, when I left for a seaside spot celebrated for the beauty of its sites […]; I was walking with the teacher of the children of the house […] towards the finest sites in the world. My plan is to describe them to you”. Diderot then goes on to describe this walk, which is in fact an imaginary stroll through Vernet’s landscapes paintings.

In Promenade Vernet, Diderot takes an essentially poetic – less critical, freer – approach to art criticism. In his writings on art, he defined “magic” as an artist’s ability to make “what is represented seem real”. The paintings discussed in Promenade Vernet exemplify this magic: Diderot writes that “nature appeared grave in areas deprived of light, tender on the bright plains. […] I was not mistaken. But how to convey their effect and magic?” Diderot saluted Vernet’s talent when he said, discussing the position of the clouds in the composition of the painting: “Vernet wants his [clouds] to have the movement and magic of the one we can see”.