During the first week of my first year at University College London (UCL) - just up the road from the British Museum - I had no place to stay in a college hall of residence. While a pain in the whatnots (commuting to and from Bath every day is not fun!), it meant that I had a couple of hours every lunchtime for a week with nothing to do - and the British Museum about 300 yards away.
I spent all of them in the British Museum; a different bit of it every day. There's plenty of stuff I still didn't see in that time (and saw on later visits); the British Museum, like the Smithsonian, has an incredibly high incidence of 'ooo! I saw something like that in a book! ... no, wait, it *was* that...and holy shit, that's the original!'
You already know many of the really big names; Rosetta Stone, Parthenon marbles, Warren Cup, Ur, mummies, et cetera; but there are other things; friezes from the palace of Sennacherib showing his capture of the rebellious cities of Israel. Or Mycenean pottery and blades. Or Arabic and Chinese ceramics. Or Saxon jewellery and Viking hacksilver.
*sigh*
I can understand the accusations of cultural theft; because - frankly - that is what it was; we typically gave a suitable amount of money to someone who had no right to be selling an item in the first place; and the more controversial items may well have to go back to their originating countries sooner or later.
But for now, they're still there, and you can spend many happy hours wandering through the history of the world, as expressed in monuments and trivia.
I love the place; it's my favourite museum in the world.
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Date: 2011-05-04 10:40 pm (UTC)I spent all of them in the British Museum; a different bit of it every day. There's plenty of stuff I still didn't see in that time (and saw on later visits); the British Museum, like the Smithsonian, has an incredibly high incidence of 'ooo! I saw something like that in a book! ... no, wait, it *was* that...and holy shit, that's the original!'
You already know many of the really big names; Rosetta Stone, Parthenon marbles, Warren Cup, Ur, mummies, et cetera; but there are other things; friezes from the palace of Sennacherib showing his capture of the rebellious cities of Israel. Or Mycenean pottery and blades. Or Arabic and Chinese ceramics. Or Saxon jewellery and Viking hacksilver.
*sigh*
I can understand the accusations of cultural theft; because - frankly - that is what it was; we typically gave a suitable amount of money to someone who had no right to be selling an item in the first place; and the more controversial items may well have to go back to their originating countries sooner or later.
But for now, they're still there, and you can spend many happy hours wandering through the history of the world, as expressed in monuments and trivia.
I love the place; it's my favourite museum in the world.