Meso-Spontania

My brother gave me some advice for Spring Break: plan, but be open to spontaneity. My Monday typified that advice perfectly.

I had planned my day pretty carefully. I was going to spend the morning and afternoon in Greenwich, and then go the see The Woman in Black in the evening. Unfortunately, when I checked to TFL (Transport for London) website, there were “serious delays” on some of the Tube lines I would be taking, so I changed my plans.

Because of the “serious delays” on the Tube (they turned out to be no more than five minutes or so, but too late, I was on to plan B) I decided to go to a closer museum. The Cartoon Museum is by the same Tube stop I use to get to school, so I headed there.

Now it’s good news/bad news time. Bad News: the Cartoon Museum is closed Mondays. Good News: it is within sight (sorta) of the British Museum! Engaging plan C! So dear readers, as much as I would love to tour you around Greenwich or Cartoon Land, it is off to Ancient Mesopotamia for us!

Since the British Museum is FRIGGIN’ HUGE and impossible to do all in one day, I decided to concentrate on the exhibits for Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome.

This is the outside of the museum. Not all of it mind, merely all that would fit in frame.

The Great Court has this huge circular structure (it’s actually the reading room) in the middle of it. I like this picture because I got some nice shadows from the glass roof.

This is another picture of the Great Court, showing the open space.

Egypt may have been a mistake. I had forgotten that every school child ever has a lesson on Ancient Egypt where they visit a museum. I was swimming against the tides of at least one primary and on secondary school. Despite the crowds, the exhibits where fascinating. Here are some of the artifacts.

The very first artifact I saw was the Rosetta Stone. It is a lot bigger in person.

“If you ever find yourself near Rameses, get down on your knees.” No, I didn’t kneel, but I did grab a picture of this huge bust of Rameses while quietly humming Joseph to myself.

Colossal Scarab. Sorta speaks for itself, don’t it? This is one of the largest images of the scarab beetle known. For scale, the green sleeved hand in the pic belongs to a little girl around the age of 7 or so.

These are some mosaics from Halicarnassus. I still can’t believe people walked on these pieces of art. In case you were wondering, no, that man is not posing. I don’t even know who he is; it is just impossible to take a picture in a stairwell without people walking through frame.

These are some paintings from the walls of the tomb –chapel of Nebamun, a rich accountant from around 1350 BCE (we don’t say BC anymore, it isn’t hip, and AD is now CE). These paintings show an idealized version of Egyptian life, rather that the realities of life for the poor and middle classes.

This is the sarcophagus of Artemidorus from about 100-120 CE. I was fascinated by this because of the portrait. It was not uncommon in this period to have portraits painted of the deceased, but most of the time the paintings got separated from the mummies over the years. Arte is unique because we can compare his portrait to images generated from modern facial reconstruction techniques, such as CAT scans of the skull. Turns out, Arte’s portraitist probably flattered him a little; giving him more delicate, slim features, but the portrait was almost certainly done from life.

Some pictures are just more impressive big. This is a wall of reliefs from the interior of a funerary chapel of a Mairotic Queen. Fun tidbit about Mairotic rulers: whenever a queen ruled, her title was “Kandake.” Of course, Westerners got this all wrong, and said that the Ethiopians (wrong) were always ruled by women called “Candace” (very wrong). (Fun Fact: Spell checker wants me to change Kandake to Candace.)

After the relief I turned right, and instantly the noise level dropped as I entered the galleries for Ancient Mesopotamia (which, granted, is a bit redundant, since there is no “modern” Mesopotamia). There were some lovely things to see; here are a few of them.

Apparently, Ashurbanipal, the last great Assyrian king, was a major bibliophile (Cuneiphile? I MADE A CUNEIFORM PUN!)  Anywhozle, he created a huge library in his palace with thousands of tablets that included works divination, astrology, medicine, mathematics, and the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. The palace was destroyed, and many tablets damaged, but here are some of them.

This is a lyre, made of silver, which was discovered in the Great Death Pit, a famous burial site. The pegs and strings are replicas, but the original pegs are on display in front of the lyre.

A room full of red and brown urns? You know what that means: Greco-Roman Artifacts exhibit.

I’m a girl. I stop and look at jewelry. Besides, this is no ordinary crown or tiara, but a diadem, a name which makes it sound infinitely cooler and more romantic. In the center of the band is a tiny little Eros, and he is surrounded by rosettes, palmettes and forget-me-nots.

This is a belt which is, believe it or not, made of silver. Also, it is hard to tell from the pictures, but this belt has a circumference not much bigger than that of the diadem. This thing is tiny. Other than the size, I was intrigued by the belt buckle, which is designed as four intertwined snakes.

I was surprised to learn that blown glass was such an old commodity, but this vase is from 200-300 CE. It is a little hard to see, but the vase is actually decorated with pinched ribs.

These are Greek auloi, or pipes made of wood, metal or bone, that were played with reeds, like an oboe. These pipes were usually played in pairs, that is, two reed in your mouth at the same time (as a clarinetist, I don’t even want to think about how you would work that).

After the Greco-Roman galleries, I had a little time to kill before a tour I wanted to take. Here are some of the pictures from my wanderings.

This is a statue of Thalia, the muse of comedy. This statue struck me because of how wonderfully it was preserved; she was carved in 2^nd century CE.

This is a huge, beautiful clock that was built in 1589. The picture really doesn’t do it justice, it is at least 3 feet tall, and it is sitting up on a pedestal. I was fortunate enough to be next to it when the hour struck, and I got to hear it play “Vater Unser”, by Martin Luther.

One of my classes is reading a book about longitude, John Harrison, and chronometers, so clocks have been on my mind lately. This is a rolling ball clock, so called because the tray that the bottom of the clock has a little steel ball that rolls back and forth along the runners, triggering a release when it reaches each end, so the tray tips, and the ball rolls back. This type of clock is very unreliable, but darn cool to watch.

This is a display of alarm clocks through the ages, which I thought was just kinda cool. My favorite is the big white one, far right on the bottom, which is also an automatic tea-maker.

The tour I was waiting for was an Eye-Opener highlights tour of the money exhibit. Here are some of the pics from that collection.

They actually let you hold some of the coins here. This is a picture of me holding a teensy silver coin from Judea. The image is of a Jew, sitting down depressedly at the feet of an armed guard. The actual lettering of the coin reads more like “IVDAEA”.

This is a map, of sorts, that charts the rise and progression of coinage throughout the world. To me, the most interesting part of this chart is the top right. You see that spade-looking thing? Well, that is an early Chinese coin, which was developed independently of coinage in the rest of the world. Following down the line of Chinese coins, you can see it approach the more familiar shape of round with a square hole, which represents the square earth and domed heavens in Chinese mythology (I love random facts).

I know this is not the best picture, but I wanted to post it anyway, because these are pieces of eight (go ahead, make a pirate joke). Apparently, this was the first ever international currency.

More Chinese money! The Chinese were the first ever people to use paper money, and consequently the first people to experience inflation as a result of overprinting (oh, human nature, you fickle fiend you). This note was worth one thousand “cash coins”, the little coin with the 7 underneath it.

After I finished with the museum, I headed back to the flat to eat dinner and get ready for Woman in Black. I had ordered my tickets from lastminute.com, and they had sent me an email telling me about a 48 hour ticket sale going on. Of course, I looked over the shows being offered. Imagine my thrill when I saw I could get a ticket to see Macbeth at the Greenwich Theatre for the next night. See! Not going to Greenwich had paid out after all!

But, for now, let’s focus on Woman in Black. It was phenomenal. The show is a thriller, and not the kind of show I would seek out on my own usually (I scare easy), but I kept hearing great things about it, so I screwed my courage to the sticking place and went. The story is brilliant. It is only a two-man show, but the actors were amazing, and it was so easy to get caught up in the story. Lucky for skittish me, there was a big crowd of secondary school kids in the audience, so every time I squealed in fright (sadly often) there were the screams of some preteen girls to drown me out. Despite being scared, I LOVED the show.

That’s all for now. Up next: Greenwich! (For real this time.)