Our fifth, and next to last, real day in London was spent at the British Museum. I’m not sure there’s a good way to describe the British Museum. Given how much stuff it has in it, it wasn’t nearly as jam-packed as I would have thought. Then again, my expectations of it were probably largely formed by having read the Amelia Peabody series of Victorian-era Egyptology mysteries, wherein the main character’s husband is constantly complaining about how poorly organized the Egypt section of the museum is. I suspect it’s changed a bit during the intervening 100 years or so, and it probably wasn’t really all that bad even back then, given that those books are fiction, after all.
Right, anyway, back to the point. The present day museum is huge. (See the picture below of the glass ceiling enclosing its large central courtyard.) I’m sure it is only displaying a fraction of its holdings, and yet, it’s still completely overwhelming. We were trying to be picky about what we went to see, so we would still have time to do stuff in the afternoon, but even so, after a few hours, the brain starts to protest about being too full. We concluded that the best way to see the museum is probably to go for one or two hours on multiple days, spread out over a longer period of time, so you can actually still concentrate. However, ideal as that situation may be, it’s not what we did.
Mickey had been there before several times, so she split off from us to go see some of the stuff she hadn’t seen in depth already. My mom and I got the audio guides for a sort of “Best of the British Museum” self-tour. Even just doing that, we didn’t get through all of it. We did, of course, start in the Egypt area, as that is what the museum is probably most famous for. Again, it induced book-deja-vu feelings in me, seeing all those things that I’d read about in person. Of course, I don’t know much about Egyptology that I haven’t picked up incidentally through reading fiction, so I can’t go into very much detail, but there were many statues of pharoahs and deities made out of very old, very big rocks, which pretty much anyone with even the slightest sense of history can find impressive. Below is the head of a pharoah (I no longer remember which one) and a collection of statues of Sekhmet, lion-headed goddess of war, as well as a centaur-shaped gate from Persia. The Persian gate has an incredible amount of detail on it, and the audio tour pointed out that it actually shows 5 legs, rather than just 4, because it shows the centaur having both of his front legs for viewers head-on, but also 4 legs for viewers on the side. So clever.
And of course, there was the Rosetta Stone, of interest to any language geek.
I also paid especial attention to the Enlightenment Gallery, which is a newer exhibit. It is set up not so much to feature particular items, but to show the way people at that time viewed the world, and how those views have in turn profoundly shaped our own ways of thinking. It’s essentially an exhibit dedicated to the explosion of intellectual curiosity as an encouraged way of being, so I of course enjoyed it very much. Plus, the walls are lined with books, so I felt at home. Here are pictures of a celestial globe, featuring constellations rather than continents, and an orrery.
We also did a whirlwind tour through some of the other areas, particularly Asia. They had a very interesting room dedicated entirely to Korea, with some nice attention paid to the invention of the hangul writing system, which made me wish I could ask my former Korean students more questions about their history. There was also a room dedicated to Japanese craft traditions, including some pottery pieces made by people who have been declared living National Treasures, and you could see why. Unfortunately, at that point we were trying to find Mickey so we could eat lunch, so I didn’t get many pictures. From the general Asia section, I did get this one, which I love simply for the pose, (I called it “Bodhisattva Chilling”):
Eventually we did find Mickey, and we had a rather late lunch at the restaurant located at the top of the Reading Room structure in the middle of the museum courtyard. It was very good, and if we had just been half an hour later, we could have had tea instead of lunch. I never did get to have tea while we were there, although my mom and Mickey did go have it together the next day. Darn, I’ll have to go back.
After lunch, we did some souvenir shopping in the Covent Garden area. I found one store that was dedicated to sort of Victorian-era type toys, with all sorts of neat foldout cardboard marrionette stages, pop-up books, paper dolls, miniatures, dollhouse accessories, etc. This shopping area was also set up around a courtyard and very near the Royal Opera House, which became apparent because there was an opera singer standing in the courtyard, singing for change. She was followed by a classical string group who were quite energetic, with even the cellist playing while standing and jumping around. (I don’t think my neck could have taken supporting the cello that way, with the tuning peg against the back of the head. She seemed to handle it well, though. I bow to her infinitely superior skill.)
That evening, we met up with Ken and all went to see the play The History Boys. I actually have more to say about the play, but I intend to write an entire post about it later. Really short version: It was both good and thought-provoking. And we got to ride home in an actual London taxi, complete with extremely knowledgeable driver. An excellent end to a day.
