Part 1 of 3: British Museum (plus silly video) by da-AL

Posted on by da-AL

The British Museum is amazing!!! Join my husband and me for the eye-opening stroll we enjoyed…

The British Museum’s outside isn’t nearly as interesting as its inside.

During this vacation, we visited jam-packed London, Bath, Avebury Henge, Stokesay Castle, Harlech and Conwy and Penrith and Ullswater, and the Kelpies of Scotland. The British Museum (here’s Part 2 and Part 3 of our trip to see it) is best known for the Rosetta Stone that helped scholars decipher ancient Egypt’s hieroglyphic writing. Here’s the front of it at another site. So dense was the crowd that I could only snap these photos…

Rosetta stone from the back.
Rosetta stone from the side.

There’s much of the relief sculpture from the Parthenon, a Greek temple finished in 438 BC. (Btw, ever visited Tennessee’s Parthenon, from 1897?)…

My fave art at the Parthenon’s frieze is on the left, wearing a llama t-shirt…
The Parthenon frieze is huge! This is only a small portion.

On it, the faces of hunters are differentiated by their postures, rather than by their features…

Galloping around the Parthenon…
Sacrificial animals on the frieze weren’t thrilled about their lot.
Iris, the winged messenger goddess, roomed at the Parthenon.

The British Museum’s collection is overwhelming. We only had time to see a smattering of it…

Clay mastiffs warded off devils and demons in about 645 BC, northern Iraq.
This god has appreciated his mastiff’s protection from evil since 800-700 BC, in southern Iraq.
Lely’s Venus (Aphrodite) does what she can to stay strategically covered. She’s a copy from 1st or 2nd AD.
Compared to lots of other items at the British Museum, these poker-style game cards from Iran, are freshly minted — they’re from 1800-1900.
This protective spirit lost his sheaf of twigs. Palace of Sargon II, Khorsabad, Iraq, 710-705 BC.

After the museum, we meandered across the street — where a gift shop offered a different type of show…

What’s the silliest thing you’ve seen in or around a museum?…

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Published by da-AL

Happiness Between Tails speaks to and from the heart. It connects lovers — of pets, authors, books — and of my still-unreleased novels, “Flamenco + the Sitting Cat” and “Tango + the Sitting Cat.” The stories are my love letters to all who fear they're too odd, too damaged, too old, too whatever to find happiness. ContactdaAL@gmail.com • BuyMeACoffee.com/SupportHBT

57 thoughts on “Part 1 of 3: British Museum (plus silly video) by da-AL”

  1. Little clay mastiffs to ward off the devil. I wonder if those work for warding off evil politicians?
    So much awesome stuff in the British museum, I loved seeing your pics!
    Those solar nodding thingies are funny.
    Silliest thing in a gallery? Probably one of the Tracey Emin exhibits I saw at the Tate years ago, the one where she staged a messy bedroom and there was a tampon randomly lying there. Very odd, can’t say I thought it was art. As for a museum per se, I’m not too sure. I did one find a random crowbar lying on a pedestrian walkway as I was walking to the museum in Bristol once! xx

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    1. Wouldn’t that be nice if carrying around little mastiffs could lend us that power! Wow – I head of that installation & impressed that you saw the real thing! Here, we call all those places you mentioned museums — here, galleries are where one buys art — was having many confusing conversations until I caught on lol

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  3. The British Museum has an impressive collection … they had the habit of taking “Souvenirs” home, did they not … 😉 … lots and lots from Egypt as well … I wonder if they will ever give anything back to the countries of origin.

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