Oxford academics drank from cup made from human skull, book reveals

Oxford academics drank from a chalice made from a human skull for decades, a book that explores the violent colonial history of looted human remains has revealed. Hicks, whose forthcoming book, Every Monument Will Fall, traces the “shameful history of the skull”, said the cup was also used to serve chocolates after it began to leak wine. The cup was part of the lesser-known private second collection of his grandfather, the Victorian British soldier and archaeologist Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers, who founded the Pitt Rivers Museum in 1884. The elder Pitt Rivers bought the skull-cup at a Sotheby’s auction that same year. The seller was Bernhard Smith, a lawyer and graduate of Oriel College, Oxford, who mainly collected weaponry and armour.