Mike Neilson is an artist and specialist replica maker at the British Museum, he's responsible for making perfect copies of some of the Museum's most important treasures. The film follows him casting an exact copy of a colossal Egyptian statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III. Mike's work isn't meant to fool anybody, but history is littered with objects intended to deceive. Down in the basement curator John Taylor examines a collection of what seem to be mummified Egyptian animals, but x-rays reveal an entirely different story. Meanwhile, curators from the Museum's Middle Eastern department are called on by customs to help sort out a possible case of smuggling.