The British Museum

Before I left for England, I was talking to my friend Mike who lived in England for two years and I was asking him for suggestions about what to see while I was here. He suggested the British Museum. I'm SO glad he did!! I would have bypassed it and I would have really been missing out. There is some very cool stuff here. I saw stuff I didn't think I would see in my lifetime - ever - let alone see in London. Anyway, my only regret is that I didn't have more time to spend here.

The museum was doing a special display on China. These little earthy guys were just cool. They were out in the lobby as a draw to get you into the exhibit.

Here's a closeup of my little clay friends.

This statue was in the lobby of the museum. The picture doesn't show how big, old, and cool he is.

Nereid Monument and a Very Bored Man

The Metopes

The Pediment Sculptures. These sculptures were originally in the triangular pediment above the columns at the Parthenon's main entrance.

Welcome to Egypt.

A limestone fragment of the Beard of the Sphinx. The Great Sphinx is near the Great Pyramids in Cairo. This is part of its beard.

Okay, all you linguists, get excited! This is the Rosetta Stone!! WOW!!!!!!! Okay, so I never thought I would actually see the Rosetta Stone. How cool is that?!? The inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone are the same passage written in three different languages. The top third is hieroglyphics, the middle third is medieval Egyptian, and the bottom third is Greek. At last! Linguists could finally read hieroglyphics. They had already figured a few things out about hieroglyphics when this stone was discovered in 1799 but when linguists figured out how to read "Ptolemy" they had finally cracked hieroglyphics. Incidentally, this stone is dated back to 196 B.C. Honestly, by the time I left England, if you told me something dated from 1750, I thought, "Oh, it's new!"

This is Ramses. He's imposing. And it's just his top half. The rest of him is lying near a temple in Thebes. Okay, I don't know if they left the rest of him there, but that's where they found him.

Mummies ... ooooh, creepy!

This guy is Ginger. He died 5, 400 years ago. He's old. He was named Ginger because he still had wisps of red hair on his head. Ironically, rich people paid a lot of money to be mummified and this guy got mummified for free. How economical.

This lion guarded an Assyrian palace. He's really the only picture I took of the Assyrian exhibit because my batteries were dying and I wanted to get pictures of the Greek stuff.