Friday, July 3, 2009

The British Museum

Today's assignment was to find a picture on Flick'r that was taken at the British Museum and attempt to duplicate it. After a perusal of the photos from 2009, I selected one of a mummified cat and set out to locate the Egyption section of the museum. There are many, many rooms of exhibits. In looking at the map, there may be as many as 95 rooms on four different levels. I saw smart people walking around carrying folding chairs provided by the museum. One little girl was sitting in a corner with her head on her hand, looking quite exhausted. An older gentleman reclined on a bench looking like he didn't have the energy to crawl to the exit (I could sympathize with him!). Others were walking around looking quite perky -- new arrivals, I assume. Exhibits include Ancient Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Persia, Africa, and more modern eras, such as Medieval Euope and Roman Britain. There are also rooms devoted to clocks and watches and money. One could truly spend several days wandering about inside in order to see everything. I located the mummified cats and took a number of photos, posting the best one to Facebook. Then I continued around the museum, taking photos of various items that looked interesting.



French Frog is waiting for the water to come on so he can splash about a bit.



The statue of a bronze baboon


An African mosaic panel



An Egyptian Mummy


Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead. This is my favorite Egyptian god, not because he is a jackal or because he is the god of the underworld, but because I learned about him on "Johnny Quest" when I was a kid. This was an ancient American cartoon back in the........ a long time ago.


A Persian sculpture. Ancient Persia is now Iraq


This is a flagon for serving mead. I liked this because at the back is a dragon and at the very front is a tiny duck. Behind it you can see a closeup photo enlargement of the duck. (Check this out, Sheila!).


A mosaic of Dionysus


This noble lion guards the Great Court of the museum.