British Museum - Part II

I love this building!

This is the second time we've been here, but I have a feeling it's going to be a recurring theme, this place is like the Louvre of London, it's that big!  We went along with our various pod devices so we could listen to some of the History of the World podcasts as we saw the different objects.  It was kind of interesting to do it this way, it sort of was like our own personal audio guide, just really in-depth on only a few objects.

First up I wanted to see the really old, neolithic stuff, like carved reindeers swimming, but I couldn't see exactly which section that was in.  So instead we ended up in the Egyptian section, which seems to be almost the default section to end up in.  There are so many signs up saying "Do not touch" and yet still nearly everyone was all over the stuff.  It's pretty bad really, given just how many visitors the British museum gets every year.  And doubly so given that one of the main reasons the museum gives for not returning a whole bunch of objects is that they can look after them better than the country where they really come from.

Poor show really, on both the part of the visitors and the museum staff.  It may have to become a case of the Sistine chapel, were you just have a whole

Ramses II with a whole left by Napoleon

bunch of security guards standing around yelling out "No touching!"  Maybe then people will be a little more careful.

We saw the statue of Ramses II, apparently this guy was a great propagandist.  He would go around "updating" existing statues with his name.  And even though he never really won that many battles, he erected an awful lot of statues proclaiming his "victories".  So many so there were

Centaur vs Lapith

about 9 following Pharaohs who used his name in order to increase their status.  Nice work on his part.

Another Athenian statue from the Parthenon

Next up were the Elgin marbles, or rather the Parthenon sculptures.  I didn't really realise just how many he had taken, I haven't visited the Parthenon, but either it is really big, or it's looking remarkably bare, because there were three galleries worth of statues there.

The main subject of the podcast was one particular sculpture, of a centaur fighting a Lapith.  I think the Lapiths were a mythical people of Greek mythology, who are mainly known for their fight with the centaurs.  In this particular case though it is thought that the centaurs were meant to represent the foreign enemies, that foreigners weren't really human, and the Lapiths were the Athenians, fighting for their city.

It was also interesting to hear that the Parthenon was basically a museum for all the spoils of war at that time.  That the people of Athens would display there objects depicting their glory and the conquests over their enemies.  In fact, one of the historians was saying that if you were a foreigner at that time, the Parthenon would have been something you spat on, as it showed the Athenian arrogance.  Certainly different from now, where the British museum is almost the spoils of war itself.  The curator didn't really go into the controversy surrounding these objects, I think it's probably too divisive perhaps.  And he just wanted to focus on the amazing sculptures.

Greek gods surveying their realm

Four small clay cows

Next up it was back to the Egyptians, but this was much earlier than the Ramses II statue.  Just 4 little clay cows, found in a tomb 5,500 years ago, before the Pharaohs or the pyramids.  At this point people probably couldn't even drink their milk, and their meat would have been incredibly tough.  Instead they used them as walking blood banks, mixing their blood in with their gruel.  It was interesting that they chose these little cows in the podcast, as they were in the same room as the mummies, which are perhaps a little more spectacular. But then it is a very clever podcast, and they used this opportunity to talk about how people's tastes have evolved over the millennia.

Basse Yutz flagons

Dave was also keen to see a bit of the Celtic objects, seeing as how we are living in a Celtic land.  So it was off to the ancient British section and this 2,500 year old bronze drinking flagon.  This flagon was so much better than everything else from the same era, so you could certainly see why it had been chosen as one of the 100 objects.  If you look closely you can see a little duck figurine at the end of the spout.  The idea being when you pour your wine or mead it would look like the duck was swimming on the liquid.  Quite impressive artistry for something that old.

We were starting to get a little historically overloaded so it was off to see the models of the Olympic medals.  They are surprisingly large.  

There was also a little exhibit on the history of clocks.  I always love clocks, the ability to keep time before the advent of the quartz crystal was a difficult problem.  That gold ship was actually a clock, if you look really closely you can just see the clock face.  The idea was that it would be a magnificent centre-piece to your table.

Olympic medals

Yes, this is a clock