Sunday, June 5, 2011

Catching Up: May 25, 2011 The British Museum

Walking to the British Museum through the Sicilian quarter.
Photo by Andy
In front of the British Museum.
Highlights of the British Museum with Tim
The Nereid Monument

Two Important Themes of the Museum:
  1.  Most of the objects in the museum were taken or stolen
  2. Historical humility

8 Most Important Objects in the British Museum according to Tim Slover:
The Lewis Chessmen

  1. The Nereid Monument: tomb for King Arbynus. Aurae not nereids on the front of the monument. Combination of East meets West architecture. Persian meets Greek. PALIMPSEST.
  2. Parthenon: The Greeks admired horses. Two things are depicted on the Elgin Marbles: panathenaic festival games and the hecatomb (the sacrifice of 100 bulls to Athena). The Battle of Lapith also depicted.
  3. The Ram in the Thicket and The Standard of Ur: Ancient Sumaria. 2600 B.C. Made of Lapis Lazuli, gold and other precious gems/stones.
  4. Ancient Egyptian Rooms: Oldest mummy dates back to 5000 B.C.
  5. The Lewis Chessman: 1150 A.D. Came from Norway. Four sets total, but only one remaining.
  6. Celtic Roman Tableware: 400 A.D. A true treasure of the British Museum.
  7. Sutton Hoo Ship Burial: King Gradewall buried at sea in 625 B.C.
  8. Easter Island Statue: 400 A.D. Easter Island settled by Polynesians. By 1000 A.D., the civilization was extinct. White guys who came to the island found hundreds of statues. Scientists think that all the trees were used up to roll the statues around to different places on the island. They were status symbols, it is thought.

Honorable Mention: The Waddesson Bequest Room...ten times better than the crown jewels, as far as I'm concerned, and no crowds to be seen.




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4 comments:

  1. Kirsten MeltonJune 6, 2011 at 7:05 PM

    Here's what 10-year-old Miss Laura Melton wrote about her first visit to the British Museum on April 5, 2001:

    "After lunch we went to the British Museum. The Reading Room library was HUGE - books lined
    all the walls. I loved seeing all of the Egyptian artifacts like the statues and the mummies. There was even a mummy of a cat!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Laura InnesJune 7, 2011 at 6:27 AM

    AWWW!!! Did you get that from my li'l journal?

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  3. DanaJune 7, 2011 at 1:28 PM

    That's fun, Kirsten! Laura, the Sutton Hoo ship was found when I was a bit younger than you and it was a biiiiiiiiiiiig deal. Not much has been found from that era.

    :-) fun!

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  4. DanaJune 11, 2011 at 10:34 AM

    Love the Sicilian quarter picture (don't think it was up when I first looked at this). I've never heard of/seen the Sicilian quarter. All the pictures are great! Can't wait to hear about the queen's birthday goings-on :-)

    ReplyDelete

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