well i’m on my way…

I am a self-proclaimed museum person.  I like learning.  Which is one of the reasons I felt the need to visit the British Museum.  I also had to go in order to complete my Egypt experience that’s been left open from a year and a half ago.  I heard that all the good Egyptian artifacts are in England.  And from what I’ve seen today, so are all the Greek ones; from what I’ve heard the China and Indian exhibits are excellent too.  I was burnt out before I could get to them.

The museum itself is overwhelming.  There’s so much to see, too much, in my opinion.  I grabbed a map of the place before I even got in and poured over it to see what I absolutely had to see.  I don’t know how many museums I’ve gone to in the last six months (too many), and I’ve learned through experience that if I don’t prioritize, I’ll read every single thing I see until my brain hits overload.  I knew that this was not the time or the place for this kind of immersion.  I circled the rooms that I watned to see, taking into consideration the ‘Museum Highlights’, like the Rosetta Stone, Parthenon sculptures, and the possible origin of Noah’s Ark.   

The first exhibit I saw was an Easter Island statue.  He wasn’t as big as I thought he would be, but I don’t think he was from the many that look out at the Pacific.  Off the room he was housed in was a North America room-funded by the one and only JP Morgan Chase.  The exhibit, I thought, was lacking, as there was minimal information and artifacts about the different indigenous peoples from the different areas from North America.  Back in the Easter Island guy room, that was themed ‘Health and Death’-I guess on how different cultures deal with it, there was an interpretive artwork piece.  It was of thousands of pills-each in a little pouch made of netting, to represent health of people in Britian.  It gave some stats, like people will take more pills in the last ten years of their life than the rest of their life combined.  Just take a pill…

I hit the Egyptian room next.  I knew I was near the Rosetta Stone before I could see it, due to the hordes of people pushing and snapping photographs.  I was amazed that photography was allowed here, since most aritfacts, no matter how old are susceptible to light.  The stone is a significant clue to ancient history, since it allowed people to translate hyrogliphics (sp?).  What amazed me is that each word is phonetically spelled (like English for example), but then after the symbols for sound, there’s a picture of the object it’s describing.  The example they used was for a cat: three symbols sounding out ‘meow’, then a picture of a cat afterwards.  Seemed a bit redundant to me, but hey whatever works. 

I walked through the rest of the Egyptian exhibit, which was massive and well preserved.  Amazingly well preserved espeically compared to what I saw at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.  I wondered if Britain took all the good stuff, or if they’re just more into the whole preservation thing.  Could be a mixture of both…  Upstairs there were mummy rooms.  I had never seen so many mummies and their casings.  There were so many more than I had seen in Cairo.  There were even mummified cats-mummified into the same shape as the humans!  I’ll bet if there was a way to somehow get the Pyramids of Giza in this museum, they’d be here.   

 There was a sign about Iraq, and how since occupation in 2003 the main museum in Baghdad has been looted and robbed and most of their important stuff is gone.  The sign told how the British Museum has extended their help in conservation and any other ways they can assist in preserving the culture and artifacts from Iraq.  Sounds like a way to get an Iraq exhibit in the BM…I mean, it is important to document history and study things from the past, but keep the stuff where it’s from.  After seeing the Egyptian exhibit here in London, I wonder why I wasted my time at the one in Cairo…

The Ancient Greek rooms were just behind the Egypt ones, and I had to see them, although I started just walking though, turning my head back and fourth until I saw something that caught my eye, since it has only been a month and a half since I was there.  The Anthropology Musuem in Athens was excellent-massive and a bit redundant-but excellent.  After being overwhelmed by all the trinkets and jewellry, my sister and I and everyone else we met that had been there, no one seemed to be able to check out the entirety of the museum.  Well, now I see why.  All the cool stuff is here, in London.  The statues and sculpture were beautiful (but no Antinoos). 

I came across a room that was a re-creation of the Parthenon, which was under rehabilitation construction when we were there.  We had no access inside it, and there was scaffolding covering a good half of it.  Sooo…The British Museum is holding on to all the beautiful headless sculptures and marble murals while they restore it…?  Doubtful.

I came across some massive bull-like sculptures that made me stop and I held my breath.  (Unfortunately that doesn’t happen much anymore.)  They were so huge and ornate and beautiful.  I found the sign that explained what they were, and felt sad.  The sign said ‘The pair of human-headed winged bulls stood originally at one of the gates of the citadel, as magic guardians against misfortune.’  What a bad day for the Palace of Khorsabad–I wonder if the robbery of these gates was the misfortune, or only the beginning of many.  What came first, the chicken or the egg?    

So after my anti-globalization thoughts, I wandered to check out the rest of the museum.  I saw the oldest known chess pieces, call the Lewis Chessmen.  Walked through the Ancient European Exhibit:  trinkets, pottery, spears and other weapons, things that I find a bit boring.  They’re just…redundant.  What I like to see, which I was rewarded with soon after are tiles and housewares.  Other things I love looking at in museums are sculptures, carvings, mosiacs, bright colours…all things that the British Museum housed.        

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