British Museum Visit 4th October 2011

Although we went back to Masterton, NZ we still need to catch up on our travels so….

Dennis continues…..

The world’s greatest Museum beckoned and we followed:

Stopping to check out a statue in one of the numerous Squares in London we came across Ghandi.  Perhaps his birthday?

The British Museum at last!

Beautiful glass roof in central courtyard

.Someone at the museum was crook and needed a Medivac in this chopper without a tail rotor

Probably the most popular attraction:   the Rosetta stone 196BC describing the formation of another Egyptian cult written in three languages to wit: hieroglyphics, Greek and Dometic (every day Egyptian)  The finding of this stone enabled the deciphering of hieroglyphics  this thing is so important it has a full-time security guard

Rosetta Stone 196BC

Awesome Egyptian  (nifty whiskers)  This poem is SO appropriate to the impression given by this statue.
“I met a traveller from an antique land
who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that it’s sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
” My name is Ozymandias, King of kings:
Look on my works ye mighty and despair!”
Nothing besides remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.        Percy Bysshe Shelley  1818

One for our granddaughter,her namesake Isis is depicted suckling Horus (a baby god)

Dionysos and Friend (Dennis = God of Wine in Greek)

An artist drawing the statue

Aphrodite (left) & Janette (right)

Sir Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist & very important patron of early science

Aboriginal shield made of bark recovered after the first contact by Cook's men with the locals.Note bullet hole.

Amazing clockwork powered ornamental ship. Just the thing to impress guests at your next banquet. The cannons could even fire!

Napoleon's Death Mask

This crucifixion scene is carved in boxwood and is the size of an egg. Exquisite!

And this scene is carved in ivory.....

5 golden neck bracelets from the U.K.

Early Christian symbols in Britian 100AD

Samurai Sword, shiny wave pattern at edge

Full amour. Samurai

Nifty piece of architecture on our way home after the Museum

Spooky Samurai helmet side view

Eros

Travelling down into the Tube Station on escalator

Roof detail in Tube Station. Metal sections bolted together

John Smith of Pocahontas fame