the British Museum

Day at the Museum

It was a wonderful day to travel to London - not too much traffic, no rain ... you get the picture! Jane, Beth and Kristen Smith went on a "sketching" mission to the British Museum. It was really awesome! It was FREE! WE ALMOST GOT KICKED OUT TWICE! Woo Hoo! ;) Good times, good times ... Well, the points-of-interest were the Roman and Egyptian sections ... it was AWESOME if I do say so myself. If you know me well, you know I love, love, LOVE anything Egyptian and Roman! (Check out the cool ceiling ... aawwww)

I had a fun time taking action shots of the Smith clan ... the first shot I should have taken was when we were told we couldn't eat our lunch where we were sitting - which was right near a number of other lunch-eaters! Hmmm ... it was hard to understand what this guard was saying - he never really clarified why exactly we weren't able to eat there. He just told us to "pretend we didn't know we could eat there". Interesting ... well the other time we were about to be booted on our booties was near the Asian section - I was leaning down, reading about something (obviously, I'm a sponge - I soak up information!) and then the alarm set off! The Museum-Nazi then yelled to get off of the area in front of the display - I didn't realize Beth had sat down on the same ledge. HA - we were both yelled at! Good times ... good times.

Can you believe this? I saw a plaster cast of the death mask of Napoleon. It was tucked away in a room - I was very impressed, thank you very much! ;) Other interests were the mummies that were there - I enjoyed reading about the findings in their coffins and enjoyed looking at the x-rays of the skeletons inside of the mummy wraps (sounds like a kind of music ...). NOTE: check out the reflection of my Crocs on the 'skeletal remains' picture!

The bust of Alexander the Great was interesting to read about - it so happens that very few people were allowed to sketch and/or sculpt his likeness. Alexander seems to have been a bit vain - he requested that his hair look 'flowing' and that he was 'clean shaven'.

The beautiful statue of a woman with flowing garments is called "the Lady of Trentham" - it's named so because the name of the estate it came from was Trentham. Also, the statue had been outside for a number of years and the toll on the statue became bad enough, the owner brought it indoors and later sold it. You can see the wear of wind and rain on her hands, especially. She's lucky she didn't do the dishes! lol ;)

The actual Rosetta Stone is also at the British Museum - the Rosetta Stone, as I'm sure you all know, is a large tablet-like stone which was found near Rosetta, Egypt in 1799. Because of this stone, Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered. WOO HOO!

Finally, I saw ... (get ready) the Book of the Dead. Yes, that's right, folks. The Book of the Dead. For those of you who haven't seen 'The Mummy', the Book of the Dead is a collection of ancient Egyptian funeral texts from different periods of history. The book contains prayers, magic formulas and hymns to be used by the soul of the deceased for guidance and protection on his or her journey to the afterlife.

Well, that concludes my journey to the British Museum. Just think, I'll be dragging my children and hubby to this wonderful place! I can hear them now, echoing through the halls ... ;)