London - British Museum
British Museum!
On Saturday (9th June), Steve and I after a nice lazy lie in which is an Australian tradition on Saturdays.. *yawns and stretches* we took ourselves to the British Museum! Obviously, this post is a bit out of date, but to keep the time line real of when we actually went, I'll keep the date of this post as the 9th June.
Right, so we finally made it to the museum around 2:30pm in the afternoon, giving us 3 hours before they closed their big doors! We were first overwhelmed by its architecture just from the outside, we hadn't even made it inside yet. In 1794, the museum acquired something called Montagu House, in Bloomsbury and it remains on this site today. The Great South Front of the museum, was designed with inspiration from Greek Architecture by Sir Robert Smirke in 1823, but not completed until almost 30 yrs later. Since then, there have been numerous additions to the museum to accomodate its expanding collection (and what a collection it is!)
Indoors, we were greeted by a large, round, court with a glass roof and a circular reading room in the centre. This area named as the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court was opened by her majesty on the 6th Dec 2000 and set back the British a fabulous, £100 million. The roof itself is made up of a 478 tonne steel structure, and this supports 315 tonnes of glass arranged into a Jig-Saw puzzle. It is magnificent and it draws you in superbly.
Steve and I, didn't really have a plan nor a map of the place, we thought we would just "wing" it and see how much of the museum we could get through. Our tour started in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, probably for us one of the most interesting places to start. This culture was not one for making things small scale, on entry presented to us were a number of colossal statues of Kings (Amenhotep I , II & Ramesees II) from the Eighteenth Dynasty. Many of these statues were made out of Red or Black Granite and something called Red Breccia (?). On reading many of the informative plaques around the place, the Egyptians were big GOD worshippers particularly Osiris, Anubis, Isis & Nephthys (and I thought they only made up these names on Stargate because they sounded cool! ) *chuckles* Kidding, but they do sound cool dont they? Still, they really are spectacular. There were also a number of sarcophagus' on display, paying particular attention to the inscriptions, such detail. The photo's speak for themselves really.
On Saturday (9th June), Steve and I after a nice lazy lie in which is an Australian tradition on Saturdays.. *yawns and stretches* we took ourselves to the British Museum! Obviously, this post is a bit out of date, but to keep the time line real of when we actually went, I'll keep the date of this post as the 9th June.
Right, so we finally made it to the museum around 2:30pm in the afternoon, giving us 3 hours before they closed their big doors! We were first overwhelmed by its architecture just from the outside, we hadn't even made it inside yet. In 1794, the museum acquired something called Montagu House, in Bloomsbury and it remains on this site today. The Great South Front of the museum, was designed with inspiration from Greek Architecture by Sir Robert Smirke in 1823, but not completed until almost 30 yrs later. Since then, there have been numerous additions to the museum to accomodate its expanding collection (and what a collection it is!)
Indoors, we were greeted by a large, round, court with a glass roof and a circular reading room in the centre. This area named as the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court was opened by her majesty on the 6th Dec 2000 and set back the British a fabulous, £100 million. The roof itself is made up of a 478 tonne steel structure, and this supports 315 tonnes of glass arranged into a Jig-Saw puzzle. It is magnificent and it draws you in superbly.
Steve and I, didn't really have a plan nor a map of the place, we thought we would just "wing" it and see how much of the museum we could get through. Our tour started in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, probably for us one of the most interesting places to start. This culture was not one for making things small scale, on entry presented to us were a number of colossal statues of Kings (Amenhotep I , II & Ramesees II) from the Eighteenth Dynasty. Many of these statues were made out of Red or Black Granite and something called Red Breccia (?). On reading many of the informative plaques around the place, the Egyptians were big GOD worshippers particularly Osiris, Anubis, Isis & Nephthys (and I thought they only made up these names on Stargate because they sounded cool! ) *chuckles* Kidding, but they do sound cool dont they? Still, they really are spectacular. There were also a number of sarcophagus' on display, paying particular attention to the inscriptions, such detail. The photo's speak for themselves really.
From there, we moved into the Middle East - the Assyrian Sculpture. These plaques show beautiful detail and tell such stories. These sculptures (or plaques) were found in the ancient city of Nimrud located south of Nineveh near the river Tigris. Nimrud was named after Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero. Ruins of the city can now be found in modern day Iraq, 30km south of Mosul.
The next section, "Seige of Lachish" , these plaques are from Nineveh. This city, located on the east bank of the Tigris river was named as the "Exceeding Great City" in the book of Jonah. A crown prince known as "Sennacherib" turned it into a magnificent city, and built within a beautiful palace. Ninevah, began to show weakness as a city and in 612 BC fell from attack by the Medes, initially, followed by the Babylonians and Susianians. This culture was quite interesting as well. Like the Egyptians, they told their stories on wall inscriptions, these however without any colour.
From the Middle East, we travelled to Ancient Greece. Here we looked at artifacts from the Palace of Minos at Knossos. This palace was one of the largest of the Minoan palaces, and close to supplies of fresh water, wood and stone for building and good communication by sea and inland. This part of the gallery had pottery, bronzes and vases from the palace but also from other parts of Crete. The Athenians also produced these amazing vases with black figures painted on a red terracotta base and even the opposite of red figures painted on black backgrounds. Really Arty!
The afternoon was getting late and we managed to make it to The Mausoleum of Halikarnassos before they started to usher us out of the museum. I snapped hurriedly at these great marble features. Just before we got BOOTED out the door I managed to snap a picture of the 4 great minds of philosophy.... and I'll leave with this definition of PHILOSOPHY : is the discipline concerned with the questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic). ... Stay Tuned....
For pictures from our fabulous excursion go to : http://picasaweb.google.com/hillsj/BritishMuseum
