Our second trip to the British Museum took place today, and we agreed to temper our time there with a bit of whimsy later in the afternoon. The civilizations we tackled on this day were ancient Egypt and Europe with a a few top-ten exhibits thrown in for interest. We went for the Elgin Marbles first, a top-ten exhibit from ancient Greece that is steeped in controversy. All of the statues and friezework in this cavernous room were taken from the Parthenon in Athens, and Greece wants them back. There are compelling arguments on both sides for where they should belong which I won’t get into here, but we enjoyed debating the issue over lunch later in the day.
The second floor of the museum houses the Egyptian mummies along with many artifacts associated with daily life along the Nile, and we had just completed this area a couple days ago when symptoms of museumititus started to appear. Today we went straight for ancient Egypt on the first floor where all the giant granite statues are displayed with huge slabs of hieroglyph-laden stone, some still bearing the bright colors with which they were painted thousands of years ago. All these objects are located down a long hallway with arched, cased openings pointing up to thirty foot ceilings. The walls are painted with soft off-whites to provide a neutral backdrop for the massive statues on display. We spent a lot of time studying the hieroglyphics depicting the cartouches of the great pharaohs, mostly Rameses, Amenhotep, and Thutmose. We learned that it was common practice for these great kings to usurp the statutes and artwork of their predecessors and carve their likenesses on works dedicated to the guy that just vacated the throne. I never get tired of looking at hieroglyphic writing, and there were many examples in the exhibit with both concave and convex styles. Each character is a work of art in itself, and I can’t imagine the time it took to create these massive walls full of writing. My favorite hieroglyph is the owl for some reason. The Assyrian lion-hunt reliefs were located nearby, and they were so mesmerizing to me on our first visit that I had to run back through them again. We had studied a little more about this sport of kings, and the scenes took on much more meaning this time around.
We tackled European civilization from Stonehenge up to the Victorian Era, and we stayed mostly in the areas of British history. The majority of the displays were fashioned from treasure hoards discovered by unsuspecting farmers or by archeologists during digs on known historical areas. The exhibits are breath-taking because of their beauty, size, and state of preservation. We loved the thought of a farmer plowing the back forty hectares and unearthing a cache of 2000 year-old swords and enough gold coins to fill a beer barrel—wow. Our favorite exhibit in this area was the Sutton Hoo treasure, which was discovered in Suffolk, England and is a top ten exhibit to boot. Between the years 600 and 700, AD, an ancient Anglo-Saxon king was buried in his thirty meter ship along with priceless treasure and, it was discovered in the 1930's when a landowner requested an investigation of a burial mound on her property. The most famous item in the hoard is the burial helmet which has become a symbol of the British museum and the history of England—stunning. In the Dingle Peninsula post from Ireland, I mentioned a collision of history and beauty, and we were able to witness another such event here while staring in awe at the Sutton Hoo treasure.
Sutton Hoo Burial Helmet
We finished our touring at the museum by viewing Victorian dainties and the last top-ten exhibit of the day, the Lewis Chess Set, a complete set of 12th century gaming pieces carved in great detail from walrus ivory. Lunch was sandwiches from Subway spread out on a long metal table in the Family Learning Center. Classes at the Southern Cross Academy were in session again as the kids broke out the laptops and worked on their lessons inspired by the things we had just witnessed on our second visit to the British Museum. We’ve determined that one more trip is in order at some point next week.
The Southern Cross Academy in session at the British Museum
The kids’ reward for completing their studies with enthusiasm on this day was a trip to the legendary Kings Cross station and a visit to platform 9 3/4, the starting point for every journey to Hogwarts at the beginning of the school year. It didn’t take very long for the children to make their way through the queue, and we took some fun, memorable pictures of the two of them running with the trolley, scarves flying—very cool. Deena and I took our rewards from the kids’ joy with cokes and lattes in the nearby cafe.
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