British Places

I made the sojourn back to the British Museum today. It was glorious. I also went went to a few other places of interest near it which were really fun. Lots of adventrues today.

So I went on another four tours of different galleries today at the British Museum and had another four awesome and interesting times. The first tour was of Ancient China. I arrived a few minutes late because I was up late (seems to be a habit for me now, a bad one at that) and woke up later than I wanted. Oh well. The tour started off with some Bronze vessels which were put into burial chambers and carried food and drink. They were really cool. Then I saw some lacquered things. Most of the things in the gallery were some wood which was then covered with a super thin layer of tree resin and then dried. Then another layer of tree resin and another dry. This happened over 20 times and that's how you get lacquered things. They are better than bronze because they don't deteriorate as much. There were also pottery tomb-figures from 700 AD. Thy were usually completely painted and much larger. They stood guard. All the bodies of the soldiers or priests or any other people were mass produced but the heads were all different. Efficient! Calligraphy was really important to China and they wrote on almost everything, pottery, paper, scrolls, armor, bones, etc. The guide said each character represents a meaning, not a sounds becuase there are lots of different dialects. Like 2 means the same thing to everyone but we say "two", the French say "duex", the Spanish say "dos", etc. The same goes for each Chinese character. I did not know that. My favorite thing was the statue of a green guy holding the scroll of bad deeds (picture 1).

have reliefs. One relief had a Chief'sThe next tour was of Mexico. The gallery for the Mexican stuff was deigned by a Mexican guy and a lot of stuff in it is on permanent loan from the Mexican government. There were happy lady masks from 800 AD in the Veracruz region. The women would be given hallucinogenics and then sacrificed so they were usually smiling when they died. The Maya built large temples and above the doors they would put reliefs about Gods or Kings. There was one relief with the King holding a flaming sword while his wife pulled a throny rope through her tongue as a blood-letting (picture 2). The blood would collect in a basket and the basket would be burned. Yup. The Mayans thought that the Earth was created from the God's blood so they gave their blood back through blood-letting and sacrifices. That doesn't make it any less gruesome. There was another relief with the Chief about to blood-let himself by stabbing his "most prized possessions" if you know what I mean. *shudder* There was a lot of stuff from the Aztecs as well. There were statues and figurines of Gods and other things. The most impressive thing to me was the mask made out of turquoise. It had teeth made out of bones and the eyes were made out of shells. Very creepy looking but still cool (picture 3).

The next tour was of Ancient Egypt. There was a Pre-Dynastic burial from 3300 BC. They would dig a hole in the sand and put the body in there with some of their posessions (picture 4). That was natural mummification, or complete preservation. The Egyptians wanted their bodies to be preserved because they thought that after they died, their spirit would need to get their body back to go to the Afterlife. That's why they artificially mummified people, to preserve their body. They needed a back-up plan if the body didn't get preserved so they made the coffins in the shape of their body (thus the human shaped sarcophogi). Those might not work either so they would have statues of themselves in the tomb too. Also, basically the only people mummified were rich (everyone else was still buried in the ground, like before) and they couldn't do work in the Afterlife so they hda statues of their servants made so they would have servants in the Afterlife. We saw the Book of the Dead. It is a collections of spells to help you in the afterlife. On the page I took a picture of, there is a guy getting his heart weighed in front of one of the gods (picture 5). The Egyptians thought that the heart guided everything you did (they actually threw out the brain during mummification, the only organ they didn't keep). I find that a kind of romantic notion and sort of like it. Anyway, they would have their heart weighed and if it weighed too much, a beast would eat it and, obviously, that wasn't good. If it was ok, you would get to meet Osiris and go to Eternal Rest. I liked the Egyptian tour a lot.

The last tour was of Assyrian Sculptures. The Assyrian Empire was from 1200-600 BC and was located in Iraq. There were these gate things that used to be at the doors to a Temple. They are of a lion-bird-man. Crazy looking. The main thing in the gallery was these reliefs that lined the Temple. The reliefs were of the many things that the King who built it did. They lined the hallway you had to walk through to get to the King. They were meant to humble anyone walking in to see the King. They used to have inscriptions in between the top and bottom but they were all the same and the archeaologist who discovered them, cut them out when he transported them here (picture 6). Depressing. There was a giant slab that was behind where the King sat. It had a picture of the King being blessed by the Gods. Everything used to be painted in bright colors too.

I forgot to mention that after the first two tours, I went outside the museum had a lunch of lunchmeat sandwiches, chips, and mandarin oranges. Delicious. I loved the oranges. The last tour ended and I decided to walk the 5-10 minutes to King's Cross and St. Pancras Stations. On the way, I passed by St. Pancras Parish Church (picture 7). It was built in the 1700's and modeled after a building in the Acropolis in Athens. A very different looking church I must say.

Also on the way was the British Library. I popped in for about an hour. It was so cool. There were letters between Jane Austen and her sister. I saw a real Gutenberg Bible (the first book made by printing press). There were the original sheets of paper that the Beatles wrote their song on. There was a handwritten copy of the War Requiem. The first folio (collection of his plays) by Shakespeare. There was a bunch of other stuff that was really neat as well. To go into the Reading Rooms, where all the sweet books are, you have become a member or something so I couldn't go in there.

I finally got to my real destination. St. Pancras Station is one of three great examples of Gothic architecture in London. The other two are the Houses of Parliament and the Royal Courts of Justice. I like them all a lot. St. Pancras was done in a Gingerbread House Gothic style I guess (picture 8). There was a lot of scaffolding unfortunately. Then, I went to King's Cross and made the obligatory pilgrimage to Platform 9 and 3/4 (picture 9). A German family took my picture (not a good picture, I will have to go back and get a better one sometime). I was going to take the Tube from there back to the flat. When I was waiting on the escalator , I saw a ton of people on it (picture 10). Before I got to the bottom though, sirens went off and the intercom said, "There has been an emergency, evacuate" which we all did. Turns out that the station was overcrowded so they made everyone leave (I heard this on the intercom outside). I walked to the next station over and by then, King's Cross was open again. Haha. Too weird. It was interesting riding the Tube at rush hour. I haven't done that in a while. Lots of people, very little space. I got back to the flat and made dinner. Now I am here basically.

See ya!