Thursday, August 29, 2013

The British Museum

 I first visited the British Museum when I was very young, but only in my imagination.  I read The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbitt in which an ancient Egyptian queen comes to the museum to take back some of her possessions.  The museum has been special ever since.
The museum was first opened in 1759, a building to house the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, who wanted his artifacts to be available for everyone to see.  It was the first national public museum in the world and has never charged for admission.  Special exhibits do have an entrance fee, but the regular exhibits are open to anyone.  Of course, a donation is always welcome.
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 Gates to match the scale of the British museum building.

 Simple forms and shapes


 More wonderful carvings.
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A couple of people to help give scale to the grand columns.
People are not allowed to take photos in the museum, but the museum collection is on line . Lots of Greek, Roman,  Egyptian, early Anglo-Saxon, Arabic, etc. etc.  We saw the  Rosetta Stone, up close, and I was surprised at how small the script was given that it is chiseled into the stone.  The top third of the stone is hieroglyphics, the second third is Demotic, an Egyptian form of writing, and the bottom third is ancient Greek.  All three sections are translations of each other, and this stone was crucial in learning the meaning of the hieroglyphics.

1 comment:

  1. I think it's great there's no admission fee. EVERYONE should be able to view such treasures.

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