The British Museum

A few weeks ago, we added to my museum experience by visiting the British Museum in London. This is another free museum, although they do suggest a £10 donation. That's a little steep. Anyway, we were looking online to see what was going on over there, and I was very excited (you know, for me) to find that they are currently hosting the Rosetta Stone and the mummy of Cleopatra. So we were off within ten minutes of finding that out.

Here are a couple establishing shots:

When you get into the museum, there's a big foyer area, which opens up into a hugeass atrium. The picture below shows only part of it.

I think we took this picture of the museum floor plan to have as a reference in case we needed one in our wanderings, but it's pretty cool, so I'm including it here. It gives you a slightly better idea how big the atrium is, since it's multiple times bigger than any of the exhibition rooms. The circle in the center holds another room for a special exhibit, which you have to pay a ton for, so we didn't go. I think the current one had something to do with angels, but I don't remember...

Anyway, our hope was to see the areas for Ancient Egypt and Greece, as well as Asia, maybe the Americas, and then I think there were also some special science-related exhibits that sounded cool, too. Since we didn't leave Brighton until maybe almost noon, and had to stop and have a nice lunch once we got to London because I was starving, that only left us with about three hours to explore. Thus, only Egypt and Greece were gotten.

Here's the Rosetta Stone. It was the very first thing we saw when we walked into the first room. Naturally, there were many people taking pictures of it. I think it's kind of sad, though, that most people would snap a shot of it, having heard of it, and move on, not bothering to read the several pages of information on display all around the case. What's the point of going to the museum if you don't learn something?

Here are a bunch of Egyptian statues and stuff. We spent too much time here, taking pictures and reading stuff. Ed had to urge me along.

I don't think this is part of the Sphinx's nose, contrary to what the images next to it seem to suggest.

This guy.

This is me, excited and shit:

These guys are cool, because they're not supposed to be viewed obliquely, since that gives them five legs. Of course, we had to take the picture at an angle, to show that.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery.

Next was Ancient Greece. I took this picture of the floor plan of Minos' palace, because I like the floor plan. The labeling leaves something to be desired, though. Mostly blanks in there, although I guess they only label stuff if they have enough evidence to assume the purpose of a room.

Although I didn't take any pictures of the jewelry, we played this game where I would choose which one I would take if I had the choice. Truth be told, though, I wouldn't pay for any of it. Ancient, handmade jewelry is crap.

In contrast to Egypt, there were quite a lot of miniatures in Greece.

Some of them seemed to have been made by children, or Homo erectus.

Heads will roll.

Actually, a lot of the large statues' heads were missing, tragically.

The title of this one refers to it as one sneaking up on Aphrodite bathing. As if you could sneak up on a goddess. 

Rooster.

There were a bunch of miniatures of malformities in humans, but for some reason I don't have any pictures of the weirdest ones. I think were were photoed out by then.

 There's always room for K-I-T-T-Y, though. These are mummified Egyptian cats. We done got back into Egypt somehow. I think my mom might get ideas about preserving her cats when The End comes.

As they say around these parts, inside these wrappings is LI'-trally the mummy of Cleopatra. I didn't know she was so young when she started her reign. (Update: I'm now watching a documentary on the murder of Cleopatra's sister that says they never found any physical evidence of this family. I looked back on the website for the British Museum, and apparently this chick was Cleopatra of Thebes, not Cleopatra VII, and lived 150 years later than the famous one. I guess because it was so crowded in there and I had to crouch down to see this thing, I didn't really get a good look at the info card.)

We took a picture of this guy because he looks Vulcan, and I think I specifically said he looks kind of like Spock's dad, Sarek.

Here's a reconstruction from a skull. Neato.

Miniarcophagi? Minicophagi? Sarcophaginiatures?

So that was all fun. I would like to go again to see what we missed, but seeing other places might have to come first. In other news, I'm going with Ed to North Cyprus tomorrow for a week, so I'll have plenty to talk about when I get back. I also made us a reservation to go into the Stone Circle at Stonehenge in late August, so something else to look forward to.