The British Museum (of Things They've 'Nicked')

(Being the events of:)
JANUARY 13, 2010

Today, a few friends and I attended the fantastic and enormous British Museum! However, upon walking in, after getting over the initial shock of this monumental structure, of course, one begins to realize that the great majority of the items on display are, in fact, not British at all. There are huge sections elaborating on the history of ancient civilizations in Egypt and the Middle East, Africa, and South America, but the sections on English history, while still interesting, just seem to dull in comparison. It's funny, actually, that even one of the British women who leads the IFSA-Butler London branch admits the British Museum is actually just a collection of things they've taken from other civilizations and cultures, or 'nicked' as she called it.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a fantastic arrangement of priceless sculptures, jewels, and other historic pieces, and the whole 'stolen' business really didn't deter me, but rather just made me giggle a bit. The English do, quite surprisingly, almost take pride in being a culture of pick-pockets and thieves. That's the one thing they warn you about, quite rightly, at all of the orientation sessions. Every single time, there was always the slight aside that it's become almost a joke to the Brits. Oh well, good for them.

Anyway, we saw loads of fantastic things, and I took a ton of pictures of some of the things I found interesting, but I certainly didn't even come close to catching everything. I didn't even SEE everything, and we were there for almost three hours. That's how large this place is, and I'm already planning a trip back. I would advise anyone who's interested in visiting to go within the next couple of years - Greece REALLY wants a lot of their stuff back (there's an entire section of pieces from the Parthenon, but we'll get to that later). There was a little brochure that mentioned briefly how they came by so much of that stuff, and talked about how Greece was asking for it all back. Britain's reply? Nah, sorry, finder's keepers!

So have a bit of a laugh at the amount of non-English stuff, but in the end, just enjoy it! Here's some of the pictures, I'll try to explain what's in each one, but no promises. I've got a pretty good idea about the sections (thanks to a map that I'm pretty sure Katie stole..), so here goes:

The gates outside

This place is HUGE.

Inside, the ceiling. So cool..

After looking at the gigantic map and shrugging our shoulders, we decided to jump right into the Egyptian and Assyrian sculpture.

An Assyrian stone pillar with carved figures

Assyrian figures

Egyptian statue

Some HUGE ancient doors that once opened onto a city. Amazing. I think they were called the Balawat Gates.

Hieroglyphics on pieces of a wall 

I don't even remember what this was, but it looked cool

More Egyptian statues and a view down the hall of the exhibit

The Rosetta Stone! The single most influential item for our understanding of ancient Egyptian and Assyrian culture, due to its use in translating hieroglyphics. This was probably the most famous thing in the museum, and they knew it. We're talking everything from Rosetta Stone mugs, to Rosetta Stone neckties, even to Rosetta Stone paperweights in the gift shop. Unreal.

Another Egyptian statue. This one was massive. The info card said it was originally seated, so this is only like half the size of the original. I can only imagine back in the day, looking up at some huge statue. Really gives you a sense of awe for the things they built and sculpted.

A tomb

More giant statues.

Then we moved onto some Greek sculpture and architecture:

How do they even get something this big in the museum?! It's like half a house!

Just chilling in front of some ancient sculpture with some Asian schoolgirls

The Parthenon room/hallway. It was shaped like the Parthenon, and the pieces were placed along the walls, or in the case of figures, standing up in their places, as they would appear (and where) on the real thing. Pretty neat - some really old, cool sculpture. Greece is pissed.

I swear I took more pictures in that room, but apparently I was too excited for mummies. Who wouldn't be?! So we skipped some room that focused on the time of Alexandria, and didn't see the other couple rooms for Greek Architecture, but instead headed towards more Egyptian stuff, like mummies:

See?! I told you there were mummies.

More mummies!

I am like 95% sure this guy was in my Latin textbooks in High School.

Bones!

SO MANY MUMMIES!

A dead guy! Actually this was pretty interesting: this guy was buried like this, on sand and underground. There was a display opposite him of a guy who was just put in a box and buried underground. This guy's fluids and such were absorbed by the sand, and he became pseudo-mummified. The other guy rotted along with his box, so all that was left was a skeleton!

Some gold bracelets and other jewelry.

Moving right along, we headed to the section on the ancient Middle East:

Some swords and helmets

More weapons and stuff. Man the middle east was such a violent ancient civilization..

Woah. Solid gold thing you wear around your neck. I don't even know what to call it. Apparently, the guide calls it the 'Mold Gold Cape', but it doesn't look like any cape I've ever seen.. You don't see Superman out there flying around with this thing weighing him down..

One of the bodies dug up from Stonehenge. Hey, I've been there!

Some jewelry and stuff on the left. Looks like a pretty rock on the right, but I don't know what I was going for here..

A shield, some weaponry, and some pots.

Pikachu's helmet. Like, seriously ancient Mesopotamia? Pokemon was SOOO 8 years ago..

MORE jewelry and stuff (probably some shiny rocks or something)

Then, we FINALLY get to section on ancient Britain:

Some guy who fell in the mud and was pulled up hundreds of years later! (But on a serious note, they think he was brutally beaten and then his body was dumped in the swamp, poor chap.)

Helmets and cool rocks and stuff

Ancient coins

Statue heads from ancient England

I think this was just like a platter, but it looks sweet.

The 'Hinton St. Mary Mosaic'. Apparently, it's the oldest portrayal of Jesus in existence. Huh, how about that, eh?

We continued on (see how small the British section was) to the general European section.

A cool farmer's staff from Ireland! Me homeland!

Weapons n' stuff (I bet that's the name of a real store..)

I see.. GOLD!

More weapons and silver things

The Sutton Hoo section. Apparently it's famous, but I don't know too much about it. Something about a Viking shipwreck. The helmet is supposed to be the main piece, it's in the case on the right. I liked the shield, myself.

Then we walked through several sections of European history, with each section encompasses a certain time period:

I want one just to say that I'm drinking from a solid-gold chalice.

Tons of stuff in here. Lots of porcelain, silver, and gold. Lots of tableware and little figurines, too.

A very sweet shield

Some swords and a cool helmet

Eye-watering gold display.

I can't remember what these things are called, but this whole gold and extravagant piece is for the sole purpose of holding a supposed piece of Jesus' cross. It's in the center, attached to a ruby

Ancient guns are just really cool-looking. It made me think of 'Pawn Stars' though, and how much some of these could be worth

An ancient hand-cannon and crossbow

After that, there was a cool section on old watches and clocks:

This thing was REALLY cool. It had a ball that ran back and forth along a track that winded along a sheet of metal. It would take 30 seconds to get halfway through the track, then it's weight would cause the sheet to turn slightly, which turned the clock. Pretty ingenious, although I think I read that it was pretty inconsistent.

Old clocks. I think clocks are so interesting; I just want to take them apart and see how they work

Another cool clock that had figures at the top that would come out every hour and dance around

This was another cool piece. It's actually a clock, but when it hit a certain time, it would play music from little piano keys inside, then it would shoot it's cannon and roll across the table. It was meant to be used to start feasts and stuff like that. Amazing

Well, that was the majority of the sections that we saw. I certainly saw TONS more than just the pictures I took. As we made our way towards the gift shops on our way out, I snapped some more pictures of the inside:

One of the big staircases. Those are sculptures of lions on either side

In the entranceway

The entrance to the Egyptian and Greece Sections. Amazing that something like this is inside.

The central area, with a cool staircase that winds around

Some totem poles

And we didn't get to this section, but this Easter Island Statue was visible from outside, so I snapped a quick picture

And there were TONS of little British kids in school groups running around in their uniforms and drawing pictures of pieces they saw. It was adorable. Plus, they had adorable little British accents.

And that was it! Here's me stopping to snap a quick picture as we left to go grab some lunch

One more for good measure.. and let's add a bit of look-off-into-the-distance epicness. There we go.

And so ended our trip to the British Museum. We didn't get to see everything, so I'd definitely like to go back and see the rest of the Greek sculpture and architecture, the Asian sections, the African sections, and even the American section! But that's next time.. and you can be sure I'll have more pictures when that time comes!

Good music to contemplate history to:

Josh Ritter - "The Temptation of Adam", off his album "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter"

Probably one of my favorite songs of all-time. A great song-writer and album

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Well, I'm almost caught up picture-wise, but I'm still behind a couple of days so I'll get on that as soon as I can. Missing everyone back home, but I'm having a blast here!

Cheers!