England: the Royal British Museum

You may recall the saying that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" incidentally it still hasn't. But while the British were ruling vast swathes of the world they did a pretty good job of bringing back big pieces of those swathes. The resting place for most of those cool pieces is the Royal British Museum. This is an enormous museum. We planned the better part of a day and really only got part way through one wing. One could easily spend forever here so it is important to prioritize: the two most famous holdings in the museum are the Egyptian exhibit including the Rosetta Stone and the parthenon. 

The Egypt exhibit was very impressive. They had giant lotus topped columns as tall as the large exhibition halls and more mummies than one would be strictly comfortable encountering and giant sculptures. We saw a door of the dead, it has lots of writing on it for the person who is supposed to go through it. You will notice that it is more of a wall than a door, this is because living people can't use the door, just ghosts. We also found a ram with a pharaoh beard. Literally. 

The jewel of the exhibit is of course the Rosetta stone which was the key to translating hieroglyphics. This is a monument to the ingenuity of archaeologists and linguists and whoever the guy with the chisel was. However, it is rather difficult to see because it is surrounded by a horde of tourists all trying to get a picture. Utter chaos and this in the nation that brought us queuing.   

The Parthenon exhibit was a bit more manageable. The parthenon is in Greece. It is a giant ancient Greek temple that is famous for having remarkable sculptures and reliefs. Are the reliefs still on the building in Greece? No of course not. They are in the British museum where they are protected. The sculptures are huge and there are lots of them. 

Unfortunately, it is also hard to tell what they are because pieces of them are missing. 

Fortunately, we found a scaled down replica of the reliefs close to the palace. 

What I found more exciting than the Parthenon pieces or Egyptian mummies was the Assyrian exhibit. This could be because it was much less crowed or because I didn't actually know anything about Assyrian art but am relatively familiar with marble sculptures and mummies. I also thought it was better preserved than the Greek stuff. They had a giant gate. Imagine Samson walking away with that remarkable specimen! The metal reinforcing strips were all engraved with scenes of battles and lion hunts. There was also a really impressive series of reliefs telling the story of some king of Babylon going on a lion hunt. The story went on for rooms and rooms. It was much much bigger than the Parthenon. They also had really cool sculptures of griffins and hippogriffs.  

Some other fun things I liked in the museum were some little mouse shaped pots. 

A clock shaped like a boat that would drive around the dining table and shoot off little cannons every hour.


A whole library of cuneiform tablets.





And we got a fancy little lunch at the museum: scones and meringues and sandwiches. We felt very British.