London3

London Day Three - 29 May 2005

Day three was set aside for the British Museum. I spent the whole day there, and
barely scratched the surface. If I lived in London, I'd be going there at least once
a month.

It was definitely the coolest museum I have ever been in. I have seen comparable
exhibitions for one or two cultures at a time, but never this many all in the same place.

This place had the best collection of Mayan artifacts I've seen. It had (of course)
a huge section on Celts and Romans, a great Asian section, and lots of great Greek and Egyptian stuff (including of course the Rosetta stone, which was smaller
than I imagined it to be... I didn't get a picture because of the constant crowds
around it).

So, first off some pictures from the outside and atrium. This atrium was huge,
which you don't really get from looking at the pictures.

African art display outside

Iron antelope

Atrium

Sumerian tablet

I sort of blazed through the Egyptian and Greek section, since I saw plenty of that
at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. They had some really big pieces, which
unfortunately were being climbed on by children of bad parents ;)
One of the weirdest was a huge tablet with religious writing on it that
was converted by someone into a millstone at some point.

Ate lunch at the museum cafe, which had expensive fancy food.

Falcon

Sarcophagus

Millstone Tablet

Big Scarab

Ex-Greek Temple

Marble Conch

Fancy Shmansy

There was an excellent collection of cuneiform and other primitive writing stuff
on display. The seal-cylinders were pretty amazing. Some of the writing looked
like an alien script, especially when it was on the alien-featured sculpture!