PapaMarshall

Day 15 – 9/9 – British Museum

The museum doesn’t open till 10:00 so we had a nice relaxing morning. Rather than taking the underground (There isn’t an underground station closer to the museum than the closest bus stop.) we took the bus – and walked a few blocks from the stop to the museum.

Once inside we got maps, agreed on a time and place to meet (1:30 in the cafeteria) and went our separate ways

Between Cheryl and I we took just over 200 photos. At great pain and personal peril I have culled what I believe are the most significant couple dozen or so for your viewing pleasure. In no particular order they are:

Gold Cape; Wales; Early Bronze Age (1900-1600 BC)
The actual Rosetta Stone
Drawing of Winston Churchill from the cover of Manga Magazine, 1943

Gold face mask from a Parthian grave in Niniva; 1st Century AD
Horned Helmet; London; 150-50 BC. This is almost certainly a ceremonial helmet, not a real battle helmet. However, it is the only Iron Age horned helmet to be found in Europe.
Gold model chariot drawn by a 4 horse team; from a horde found near the Oxus River on the border between modern day Afghanistan and Tajikistan; 5th – 4th century BC. The Egyptian god Bes is depicted.
The Babylonian Map of the world.  I’ll let them do the explaining:

The Silver Lyre; Royal Cemetery at Ur; about 2500 BC
Ram in a thicket; Royal Cemerty at Ur; about 2500 BC. Yes, we all know this is a goat, not a ram. This is one of a pair.  The other is in Philadelphia. And all I can think of is the W.C. Fields quote.
They had a great display on the development of written language. This panel shows the crucial step where pictures give way to something that can be read as text; 3300 – 3100 BC
Gold Oak Wreath with Bee and two Cicadas; Dardanelles; 350 – 300 BC.

Guided Bronze Headdress and Uraeus; Egypt; 700 – 300 BC. the Uraeus serpent worn on the king’s brow represented the patron goddess of Lower Egypt.
Lely’s Venus; Roman copy of a Greek sculpture; 1st or 2nd Century AD.
Helmet; Corinth; 650 – 570 BC

I spent the morning in the Money room – a display I didn’t get enough time to take in ten years ago when we were last in the museum. I won’t bore you with most of the really old stuff, but here are a couple of interesting pieces from the collection

Stone Money; Yap; 19th Century. Though no longer in general circulation this stone currency is still used for certain traditional transactions. Note that the small bowl on the right contains smaller denominations of stone circle coins.
Coffee House tokens; London; 1660’s. At that time England didn’t have small denomination coins. So different coffee houses issued their own tokens – kind of like your Starbucks gift card.
The Wizard of Oz; L. Frank Baum; 1900. The story is said to be an allegory about the debate of whether the US should adopt a bimetallic standard instead of the gold standard. The cowardly lion supposedly represents William Jennings Bryan – a leader of the “free silver” campaign. In the book Dorothy’s shoes are silver, not Red as in the 1939 movie.
“Movie Dollars”; In order to avoid legal complications by showing real money on TV or movies, reasonable looking fakes are produced.  These “Dr. Who” pounds were printed for the scene where the Dr. escapes from the tuba wielding Santas by causing the ATM to spew money.
Bit Coins; scrape off the hologram and you will find a code to enter to claim your bitcoins.

After lunch I went in search of figures.  I was particularly interested to see what they had in the way of goddess figures. I found lots from many different civilizations.  Here are a couple.

Two female figures, one feeding a child; Ur; 5200 – 4200 BC
Pained Jar shaped like a Woman; Possibly from Hacilar (Southwest Turkey); 6000 – 5500 BC
Marble Figure of a woman; Cycladic; 2800 – 2700 BC
Terra-cotta comic figure; Knidos; about 300 BC
Terra-cotta group of Three Dancers in a Ring; Mycenaean; about 1300 BC
Figure in the center is an ivory Woman with Dwarfism; Egypt; 3500 – 3400 BC. Women with the condition were associated with fertility. Figures of such people have been found in many temple deposits from the period.
Gold amulet of a god with headdress, mace, kilt, and boots; Hittite; 14th – 13th century BC.

OK, that’s enough.  If you’re still here thank you for sticking it out with me.

Following the museum we took a break and put our feet up.

Our alarms woke us up in time for Cheryl, Billie and I to head over to the St. Pancras church for their choral evensong service.

The choral part was performed by their “choir” – an outstanding quartet of young singers.  They started with Dufufle’s Ubi Caritas (a capella of course). Their voices filled the large sanctuary and resounded off the marble pillars. That was the easiest number they sang.  It was Great! The sermon was very good as well.

After that it was time to seek out sustenance; Italian tonight. We found a very good Italian restaurant just down the street from our hotel. And to make matters better, they have Old Speckeled Hen ale. I was able to confirm that yes, that is still my all-time favorite beer.

Tomorrow we are scheduled to tour Westminster Abbey and take a walking tour of the Westminster area, followed by a visit to Churchill’s war rooms.  Another full day, so I guess I should head for bed.

Nighty Night.

7 Comments

  1. The Manga magazine picture of Winston Churchill was from an exhibit of how Asian cultures view Wester cultures. This was a satirical article and shows Winston with a bone in his mouth instead of his cigar.
    The carved ivory statue from the India story “The Ramayana” where a demon steals Prince Rama’s wife (originally he held a weapon in each hand). Rama’s friend the monkey god (who can shapeshift and levitate things) helps him get his wife back.

  2. Incidentally, we had all gone our separate ways in the museum to peruse what interested us personally and Steve had leaned his cane up against his check while he used both hands to focus his camera. Someone grabbed his cane and took off walking away casually! Steve lunged for his cane and grabbed it back – the other guy gave it up with a shrug and disappeared into the crowd.

  3. We tried riding the bus back to our hotel so we could get back in time to go downtown to the St Martins evensong performance and a Ghost Bus tour, however the bus was 20 minutes late, then took another 20 minutes just to go around 2 sides of Russell Square and was continually stopping for red lights, pedestrians, and bus stops so we were almost an hour late getting back to our hotel to meet up with Billie and Steve. Billie smiled and said, let’s not stress out on our vacation and just skip going downtown. Randy mentioned he had spotted an Evensong performance at the St. Pancraz Church of England down the street so that’s what we wound up doing-what BEAUTIFUL voices.

  4. We’re never going to take the buses again – the underground takes us reliably where we need to go, just need to avoid the high usage times when the trains get crowded and overheated.

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