The British Museum

Well, after several days of very pleasant, sunny weather, things have turned cooler and showery.  This means it is a good time for museums, where we will be indoors and entertained.  Our only problem with museum walking is that Geralynn likes to read every descriptive plaque, while Don likes to look and cruise through.  So, G takes 4 times as long to visit any museum as Don wants to allow.

Don came up with a good compromise for this trip.  He has downloaded all of the Rick Steves museum tours onto his phone, so we can listen to the stories about the highlights while we cruise through the exhibits.

We started with the British Museum.  When you enter the British Museum you are in a huge, domed room.  The Great Court is Europe's largest covered square, bigger than a football field.

 

Off to the left of this giant room is the door that leads to the Egyptian room.

We entered through this door and there, right in front of us, was the Rosetta Stone!  We stepped up and admired the ancient key to heiroglyphics and then moved on through the Egyptian Rooms full of mummies and coffins and giant statues.  We are just amazed that Britain has been able to hang on to these treasures considering many museums have been forced to return artifacts to the country of origin.  These antiques are things that were looted from Egypt back in the days of Colonial Britain, when Britain was THE world power and British explorers and archeologists were roaming the world searching for precious artifacts.

From Egypt we moved on to Assyria, now known as Iraq.  As we entered this section of the museum we were awed by the two enormous human-headed winged lions.  Carved into the stone between for forelegs and back legs of these statues is the very first written language, cuniform, developed 5000 years ago.

Passing between these room-sized statues we entered the Nimrud Gallery and the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II.    Well, it is really a small-scale version of his throne room, but very impressive just the same.  The room is lined with gypsum relief panels depicting scenes of important battles and hunts.  The first panel was a picture of ole Ash himself with an earring, braided beard and fez, followed by his credentials: "The king who has enslaved all mankind, the mighty warrior who steps on the necks of his enemies, tramples all foes and shatters the enemy, the weapon of the gods, the mighty king..."  Other panels tell the stories of his mighty battles, royal lion hunts and other great feats. 

Our next region was Greece, where we enjoyed the Kouros (a statue of a beautiful male torso) and the typical red and black urns and platters before we enterd the rooms that hold the facia of the Parthenon.  When we were in Greece a few years ago we enjoyed our visit to the Parthenon, and thought the presentation of the replicas of the carvings of the frieze was very well done.  We guessed that the original frieze must be part of the rubble at the base of the Parthenon, but nooooo.  Here it is in the British Museum!  Those looters managed to strip the beautiful carvings and statues right off the building and bring huge slabs of granite back to London, where they are on display today.  WOW!

So, there is a lot more to see at the British Museum, but we were over-stimulated and exhausted after seeing all of these ancient treasures, so we went home for a rest.   

May 11, 2013

Our project for today is the British Library.  We took the DLR and Tube into town and entered the library.

Here is offered a room full of amazing and ancient documents.  Ancient maps, beautifully illustrated Bibles, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Gutenberg Bible, Leonardo DaVinci's Notebook, and the best of all--the Magna Carta.  

Who would ever imagine that I would be able to see a part of the real Magna Carta!