{"id":148,"date":"2012-06-25T08:25:40","date_gmt":"2012-06-25T13:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/?p=148"},"modified":"2012-07-09T19:47:18","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T00:47:18","slug":"the-british-museum-and-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"The British Museum and Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, June 22nd<\/sup><\/p>\n

Happy Birthday, Kevin!\u00a0 You\u2019re OLD!\u00a0 Heehee!\u00a0 Today was a day that Kevin and I were really looking forward to –\u00a0 the British Museum!\u00a0 We chose to do it today because 1.\u00a0 It was supposed to rain all day (and mostly did) and it\u2019s inside, and 2.\u00a0 They\u2019re open late on Fridays.\u00a0 We headed out bright an early, and got to the museum nice and early.\u00a0 We tried to develop a bit of a plan of attack, which was immediately stricken by massive crowds, so we headed upstairs instead.\u00a0 It\u2019s a very interesting museum, for several reasons.\u00a0 Some of the galleries have quite clearly been renovated to be more up to date, especially some of the really popular ones, like the Egyptian rooms, but others definitely date from times gone by.\u00a0 Some, like the room dedicated to the history of the museum itself, are cool that way.\u00a0 It\u2019s a giant room with glass front shelves to the ceiling, with an truly enormous collection of natural history and artifacts from every stage of human existence.\u00a0 It felt very much like some sort of Darwinian explorer- naturalist\u2019s collection.\u00a0 Others are a bit old in the \u201chaven\u2019t been updated since the 80\u2019s\u201d sort of way, but despite fading displays, the fact remains that the collection of the British Museum is amazing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Outside the British Museum<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The museum is very cool looking on the inside.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The museum about the museum. I like this room. All shelves of artifacts and other awesome stuff<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

MUMMY!<\/p><\/div>\n

Some of it is cool in that it is totally unique –\u00a0 we saw the Rosetta Stone, the Lindow Man, a hand axe believed to be one of the earliest ever made from Olduvai Gorge, and so on.\u00a0 Some of it is cool because it\u2019s hard to imagine just how old it really is, like the mummies preserved so well you can tell what color their wrappings were and so on.\u00a0 The mummies, btw, were pretty cool.\u00a0 One of them came in 5 coffins, the largest of which was probably big enough to comfortably hold 3 or 4 people lying side by side.\u00a0 HUGE!\u00a0 Some of it, it\u2019s hard to imagine how they got it there in the first place.\u00a0 There are things like entire pillars out of Ancient Egyptian temples.\u00a0 I can just imagine some British explorer in a pith helmet trying to get that thing loaded onto a ship \u2013 \u201cPish, tosh and nonsense!\u00a0 It\u2019s just a bit of souvenirs!\u00a0 Something to remember the old country by.\u00a0 It\u2019ll load up a treat, there\u2019s a good chap!\u201d\u00a0 There are also these gigantic entrance facades from some sort of Assyrian city or something, and again, I can\u2019t imagine the truck\/ boat\/ plane\/ people large enough to carry them.\u00a0 Probably the most mind boggling is the Roman mosaics.\u00a0 They are, mostly, wall mounted in these gigantic frames that take up the entirety of a stairwell.\u00a0 How do you move something like that?\u00a0 In pieces?\u00a0 One tesserae at a time?\u00a0 Must be quite the job.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Giant Lion-y city guard-y thingies!<\/p><\/div>\n

We saw the Parthenon as well, or rather, the bits of the Parthenon Friezes.\u00a0 Those were probably less impressive than they should have been, just because they built this simply enormous room to hold them all, and they\u2019re a bit dwarfed by their surroundings.\u00a0 Also, they\u2019re pretty beat up.\u00a0 They were removed to the British Museum following something that nearly destroyed the building, and the guy was given emergency permission to take what he could, so that it was not further destroyed or robbed.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he could have come a little sooner, as there are plenty of friezes missing heads and things, with the little tag that says that Lord such and such, or Mr. so and so has it in their private collection since 18-whatever it was.\u00a0 Which brings us to another thing Kevin and I found a bit funny about the British Museum \u2013 the stuff they stole.\u00a0 The prime example of this is a bit of a stone Codex, which is a small cylinder of stone, carved with cuneiform on the outside.\u00a0 It\u2019s believed by many to be one of the first writings about the rights of man (which it\u2019s apparently not, really) but in any case, this thing has come to be of great importance in Iran.\u00a0 They put it on their coinage and such, and the tag with the Codex had an explanation of how, several years ago, it was lent to the Iranians, to be put on display, but then they took it back, and gave them a replica instead, so they could continue to care for it.\u00a0 Now, some of this sort of protective attitude, I believe.\u00a0 I mean, with the unrest in some of these places, who can say what will happen to some of the treasures in their museums. But there are definitely things in the British Museum whose original owners are probably more than capable of taking care of them.\u00a0 It\u2019ll be interesting to see what happens in the future.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The Parthenon Room<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

One of the Parthenon Statues<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A helmet from Sutton Hoo, a very important archaeological find<\/p><\/div>\n

Another thing that was fascinating in the Museum were the hoards.\u00a0 A hoard is a very specific thing in the UK \u2013 if you find a certain amount of metal artifacts or Neolithic artifacts, you have to tell the government.\u00a0 Now, that still ends very well for you, because even if you are not allowed to keep your findings, you are still paid half the value of the collection as assessed by people who are not trying to buy it from you cheap.\u00a0 The other half goes to the owner of the land you found it on.\u00a0 Some of the things people have found is CRAZY, and reading the ways in which people find this stuff is wild.\u00a0 For example, a 9 year old was digging, and unearthed a silver platter two feet across.\u00a0 Someone was plowing, and hit a sack full of metal (mostly silver) household goods from the 15th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 People have found hundreds of Roman coins, the remains of a Roman jewelry store, Anglo Saxon arms and armor, just about anything you could think of.\u00a0 There were entire rooms dedicated to hoards some no one dug up.\u00a0 All I can say is, if I ever actually lived in England, I\u2019d totally own a metal detector.<\/p>\n

We took a break halfway through the day to get some lunch, and also to visit the British Library.\u00a0 The collections at the British Library are not open to the public, much in the same way that you can\u2019t go check anything out of the Library of Congress.\u00a0 However, the British Library does have a display of rare, interesting and valuable books.\u00a0 Like\u2026 the Magna Carta.\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 And one of the Gutenberg Bibles, and Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s sketches, and original copies of \u201cYesterday\u201d where the Beatles were writing in the lyrics.\u00a0 There was also Shakespeare\u2019s First Folio, and a bunch of illuminated texts and Bibles from all over the world.\u00a0 Pretty cool stuff.<\/p>\n

By the time we headed back to the British Museum, it was already well afternoon, so it\u2019s a very good thing they were open late!\u00a0 There were a few of the Greek rooms that were closed for renovation, but we did make it through the entire museum!\u00a0 When we finally left, it was after 7, and we were hungry!\u00a0 We decided to head back toward the tube station, and see if we could find anything along the way.\u00a0 Lucky for us, right next door to the Holborn tube station was an AMAZING Korean restaurant.\u00a0 At the street, it\u2019s literally just a door; the whole restaurant is in the basement. \u00a0So good it was!\u00a0 They brought burners to the table, and cooked right there, and we even got seconds on this noodle dish because we\u2019d eaten the first one so fast.\u00a0 It made a pretty perfect birthday dinner for Kevin, and both of us were stuffed to the gills, but totally happy.\u00a0 Couldn\u2019t have asked for a better ending to the day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Literally, it’s this door, and then the tube station is out of the picture to the right. So tasty!<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, June 22nd Happy Birthday, Kevin!\u00a0 You\u2019re OLD!\u00a0 Heehee!\u00a0 Today was a day that Kevin and I were really looking forward to –\u00a0 the British Museum!\u00a0 We chose to do it today because 1.\u00a0 It was supposed to rain all day (and mostly did) and it\u2019s inside, and 2.\u00a0 They\u2019re open late on Fridays.\u00a0 We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":408,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kevinandsarah.theladyadventurer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}